■ Japan
Child suicide rate rises
The number of Japanese public schoolchildren who committed suicide rose by 11 percent, marking the first increase in five years, a government survey showed. Of 137 suicides, up by 14 from a year earlier, the number of deaths among boys slipped by one to 81 but among girls jumped by 15 to 56, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The number of suicides among elementary school children rose to five from three while that among high school students jumped to 98 from 84. Some 64 percent of children's suicides was due to "unknown" causes while 12 percent of them was attributed to family problems. Japan registered a record high 34,427 suicides last year.
■ Kuala Lumpur
Python skin smuggler busted
Malaysian officials have arrested a man found in possession of some 1,000 snakeskins believed to be python skins worth more than 16,040 ringgit (16,326 US dollars), a report said yes-terday. Acting on a tip-off, Customs Department officials on Thursday found the 1,034 skins inside a lorry the man was driving in Padang Besar in the northern Perlis state bordering Thailand. "We believe they were bound for (northern) Penang state to be processed into leather products," state customs director Ahmad Akbar Zahari said. Those convicted of python skin smuggling can be fined up to 10 times the value of the seized goods or 50,000 ringgit or sentenced to a jail term of up to three years, or both.
■ Hong Kong
Girl kills self for teacher
A 15-year-old Hong Kong schoolgirl threw herself to her death from a high-rise apartment after exchanging a series of loving e-mails and text messages with her former teacher. On the night of her death, Yip Ying-sin sent a series of text messages to teacher Yung Yin-hung two hours before her suicide telling him: "I will really leave ... you drive me to leave." Yung told an inquest Friday that it was too late at night to call a helpline. The teacher and student had exchanged messages online with Yip writing on one occasion: "You love me very much and I love you very much too."
■ Singapore
Don't breed mosquitoes!
Singapore is to fine people who allow mosquitoes to breed in their homes in a bid to curb dengue fever, a sometimes fatal disease that has soared to a 10-year high in the island-state. First-time offenders, previously let off with a warning letter, will be fined S$100 (U$60.72) starting next February, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Singapore, with a population of just over four million, recorded 8,597 dengue cases by Dec. 17 -- a near 80 percent leap over the same period last year. Three people have died from the disease this year. Authorities say mosquitoes breed in stagnant water, notably in plant pots and roof gutters.
■ Malaysia
Pirates strike again
Pirates armed with machines guns kidnapped two senior crew members from a tugboat in a busy waterway between Malaysia and Indonesia. About 20 men on two fishing boats forced the Singapore-flagged tugboat to stop in the Malacca Straits on Wednesday night, said a police official who declined to be named. The pirates, believed to be Indonesians, fired on the vessel, damaging its communication equip-ment. They robbed the 12 Myanmar and Indonesian crew members of their valuables, then abducted the vessel's Indonesian captain and chief engineer.
■ France
Storm kills at least six
A powerful storm packing hurricane-force winds lashed northern France on Friday, killing at least six people -- some crushed by falling trees -- and forcing officials to close down the Eiffel Tower and the famed Paris parks. France-Info radio said a seventh person had died, but authorities could not immediately confirm the report. At least a half-dozen people were reported injured from Normandy to Paris. The winds, clocked at up to 130kph, delayed flights out of Paris, cut electricity to some 220,000 homes and damaged cars, scaffolding and other property, officials said. A 61-year-old Parisian woman died when her car was crushed by a tree in the chic 16th district, Paris police headquarters said.
■ Germany
Hitler was a tax dodger
Among other crime, Hitler was also a tax dodger He is better known for invading Poland and starting the second world war. But Adolf Hitler was also an inveterate tax dodger, it emerged Saturday, who systematically evaded paying his tax bills both before and after he became Germany's dictator. According to new records discovered in a Munich archive, by the time he became Germany's chancellor in 1933, Hitler owed more than 400,000 Reichsmarks in unpaid taxes. The money -- the equivalent of about US$7.9 million today -- was written off the following year under a secret deal with the tax authorities. Hitler's previously hidden records also document that he first aroused the suspicions of German officials in 1921, shortly after he became Nazi leader. The Munich tax office politely asked him where he had got the money from after he bought a luxury car. Hitler replied evasively and said he earned only a "modest" income from newspaper articles.
■ Ukraine
Candidates campaigning
Rival presidential candidates staged overlapping campaign trips to the eastern industrial city of Kharkiv on Friday, sparking fears of more tension ahead of a Dec. 26 rerun election. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko warned of possible provocations, and there were reports of brief scuffles between supporters from opposing camps. With just nine days remaining before the Supreme Court-ordered repeat election, Yushchenko and his rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, stumped for votes and traded accusations about provoking more unrest and violence in the divided country. At a meeting with supporters in a Kharkiv theater, Yanukovych described the opposition movement as a "planned, elaborate and financed move aimed at seizing power in Ukraine."
■ United States
Ex-Nazi could be deported
Officials asked an immigration judge Friday to deport John Demjanjuk, a Ukranian-born retired auto-worker who during World War II was an armed guard at three Nazi concentration camps, the Department of Justice announced Friday. Demjanjuk's US citizenship was stripped in April this year, on grounds that included his "willing" service in a Nazi unit "dedicated to exploiting and exterminating" Jewish civilians in Nazi-occupied Poland, the Justice Department said in a statement. Demjanjuk, 84, was a guard at the Sobibor death camp, and the Majdanek and Flossenburg concentration camps, the statement read.
■ United States
Jackson hosts kids
Popstar Michael Jackson hosted about 200 children Friday at his Neverland Ranch in California, the final such gathering before Christmas and ahead of another pretrial hearing on Monday in the child molestation case against him . Jackson personally greeted the children and parents, spending 10 minutes talking to them before leading them across a bridge toward the house. "I love you," Jackson told the children, adding "merry Christmas". The children shouted "Thank you, thank you!" and "Merry Christmas!" Jackson, dressed in black pants and a black jacket with white embroidery, carried a large black umbrella to protect him from the sun's rays.
■ United States
Beatles' guitar sold
A classic Gibson guitar used by George Harrison on the Beatles' Revolver album and by John Lennon on the White Album sold Friday to an anonymous bidder for US$567,500, Christie's auction house announced. The cherry-red SG Standard guitar belonged to Harrison from 1966 through 1969. He used it in recording sessions and in several of the band's increasingly rare public appearances, and loaned the guitar to Lennon during White Album sessions, according to Darren Julien, whose Julien Entertainment co-sponsored the auction. Among other items purchased was a two-page letter sent by a hallucinating Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love. The 1991 letter was faxed to her from the Nirvana front man's Sheffield, England, hotel. It sold for US$19,120.
■ United States
Seniors want medical pot
Nearly three-quarters of older Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use, according to a poll conducted for the nation's largest advocacy group for seniors. More than half of those questioned said they believe marijuana has medical benefits, while a larger majority agreed the drug is addictive. AARP, with 35 million members, says it has no political position on medical marijuana and that its local branches have not chosen sides in the scores of state ballot initiatives on the issue in recent elections.
But with medical marijuana at the center of a Supreme Court case to be decided next year, and nearly a dozen states with medical marijuana laws on their books, AARP decided to study the issue. "The use of medical marijuana applies to many older Americans who may benefit from cannabis," said Ed Dwyer, an editor at AARP's magazine.
■ United States
States not bio-attack ready
States in the New York metropolitan region are still falling far short of being able to respond effectively to a biological attack or other large-scale public health emergency, according to a study by a nonpartisan public health organization. After three years and millions of dollars in federal assistance, the report found that "bio-terrorism preparedness planning still lacks strategic direction, well-defined priorities and appropriate levels of resources to match the needs." Connecticut and New Jersey both cut spending on public health in their most recent budgets, and both even failed to spend all the money given them by the federal government. "People got spooked with the flu vaccine shortage and the incredibly long lines," said Dr. Shelley A. Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit group based in Washington. "If that is going on with just a plain old flu shot, can you imagine if this was a major public health crisis? We are not ready."
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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