■ China
Flooding kills nine more
At least nine people died, six went missing and an estimated 150,000 were evacuated after floods swept through Dazhou in southwest China. Torrential rain since Wednesday left up to 5m of water in city streets. The Dazhou area had its highest rainfall in about 100 years from Wednesday to Friday, totalling 461mm. Summer floods and landslides have killed about 1,000 people in China this year. About 1.5 million people were evacuated last month. Last year, summer floods and landslides killed 1,343 people, the lowest death toll for several years, according to government statistics.
■ Indonesia
Radio announcer arrested
Police have arrested a former radio announcer who called a radio news station to report a deadly car bombing that did not happen. Former radio announcer Dedi Hartono said he made up the story "because there was no earth-shaking news." He called Jakarta news station Elshinta to report that a car bomb had exploded outside a discotheque in the town of Cirebon in western Java, killing two people and damaging several cars. The news was picked up by foreign news agencies. Hartono said he previously called Elshinta to report a typhoon and a landslide. "These two stories are for real. I witnessed the incidents myself," he said, but they could not be verified.
■ Australia
Man arrested for WWII crime
An 83-year-old Hungarian immigrant, Charles Zentai, faces extradition to Hungary after Australian police arrested him over allegations he abducted and brutally murdered a Jewish teenager more than 60 years ago. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nazi-hunting organization, supplied material evidence to authorities. Zentai emigrated to Australia in 1950 and worked as a nurse in the Perth area, and is suspected of having tortured and murdered 18-year-old Jewish man Peter Balazs in Budapest in 1944 while serving in the army of Hitler's wartime ally, Hungary. The former warrant officer and two accomplices allegedly took the man to a barracks in Budapest and tortured and killed him before dumping him in the Danube River. He is then alleged to have escaped to Germany after the war by passing himself off as a refugee.
■ Vietnam
Gold banned from food
Authorities have banned gold being added to food, after a restaurant in Hanoi served gilded dishes it said had enhanced nutritional value. According to a scientific council set up by the health ministry, "gold is not on the list of micro-substances" needed by the body. Since January, the Kim Ngan Ngu Thien, or "Golden Feast" restaurant, had been serving meals mixed with gold dust. The restaurant was ordered to stop last month pending a decision by health authorities.
■ Nepal
Motoring passengers banned
The government, which has been battling a communist insurgency, has banned passengers from riding on the back of motorcycles to stop drive-by shootings by rebels. The Home Ministry said in a notice yesterday that motorcycles have been misused by terrorists to launch attacks and that "terrorists riding on the back on motorcycles have used weapons to attack." Maoist rebels, who mostly operate in rural areas, are known to use motorcycles to attack targets in cities and towns. Motorcycles are commonly used as family vehicles with parents and children riding on the same motorcycle, much like in Taiwan.
■ Germany
Sex scandal widens
Germany's embattled chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, suffered a major embarrassment Friday when the architect of his controversial reform program became the latest victim of a sex and corruption scandal. Peter Hartz, the head of personnel at Volkswagen, Germany's biggest car manufacturer, quit yesterday after being accused of allowing top VW union leaders to take luxury trips abroad and spend up to 30,000 euros of company money on prostitutes. One of Germany's most respected newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, alleged that a lap dancer from Lisbon was even flown at company expense to the Georges V hotel in Paris to entertain two VW board members.
■ United States
Video game denounced
A US media watchdog group has denounced the maker of the hugely popular video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas over graphic sexual content that allegedly exists in the game and can be unlocked with an Internet download. The game's plot is already objectionable to many people: Its main character carjacks for fun and profit and picks up women along the way. But some say its content becomes sexually explicit if players download and install a modification to the game.
■ Germany
Virus writer sentenced
A court on Friday handed a suspended sentence to a German teenager convicted of creating the Sasser computer worm, which created havoc as it raced around the world last year. Sven Jaschan, 19, was found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data following a four-day trial in the northwestern town of Verden. He was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months, court spokeswoman Katharina Kruetzfeld said. The court, which tried Jaschan behind closed doors because he was a minor at the time of the offense, said in its ruling that he "acted out of a need for recognition" and not for commercial aims.
■ United Kingdom
Three jailed for torture
Three people were jailed Friday for torturing a child they accused of being a witch with powers to change from human to animal form. The child, who was eight at the time of the offenses, was cut with a knife on her chest, beaten, kicked, starved, whipped with a belt and had chilli peppers rubbed in her eyes. An aunt and another female relative wept as they were jailed for 10 years at the Old Bailey central criminal court in London. A male relative was jailed for four years for aiding and abetting child cruelty. Judge Christopher Moss told them they had mounted a campaign of cruelty that amounted to a campaign of torture.
■ Brazil
Deal reached on AIDS drugs
Brazil reached an agreement late Friday with the US pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories that will lower the price it pays for the AIDS drug Kaletra in return for refraining from breaking the company's patent to produce a generic version of the medicine. Though financial terms were not disclosed, the government said the agreement would save it at least US$18 million next year and a total of US$259 million over the next six years. Brazil, which provides free AIDS treatment to all who need it, currently spends about US$107 million a year on the drug.
■ United Kingdom
Hotels to be `shamed'
A row erupted on Friday over reports that some hotels cashed in on the discomfort of those forced to spend the night in central London by ratcheting up the price of rooms. The British Hospitality Association, which represents hotels across the UK, promised to "name and shame" anyone found to have exploited the chaos. The allegation surfaced on Thursday as many of those unable to reach their homes opted to stay overnight near their offices. One customer claimed to have been charged ?270 (US$470) for a ?65 room.
■ United Kingdom
Mayor launches fund
London Mayor Ken Livingstone and the British Red Cross have launched a fund for those affected by Thursday's attacks on the city. The London Bombings Relief Fund, which is to help victims and the families of those killed, already had at least £250,000 (US$435,000) pledged yesterday. "I believe it is the wish of Londoners that those who have suffered deaths of their loved ones or serious injury should also be helped by all Londoners," Livingstone said on Friday. He said all citizens should donate money because the bomb attacks could have killed anyone in the capital.
■ United Kingdom
Pedal power returns
London's streets creaked and rattled with nervous new cyclists on Friday after bicycle sales rocketed in the wake of bomb blasts on three underground trains and a double-decker bus. Seasoned cyclists told of weary walkers offering them up to £300 (US$500) for their bikes as they headed home on Thursday, and of giving impromptu lessons to shaky beginners. Tim Davies, who manages Cycle Surgery near Holborn, said: "the shop is so close to where the bus got hit that we thought we'd be evacuated. But by 11 o'clock we were running around like crazy. We'd normally sell five to 10 bikes a day, but we sold at least double that in a few hours," he said.
■ United Kingdom
Ads for book withdrawn
British booksellers Waterstone's on Friday pulled advertising for a new novel about suicide bombers creating mayhem in London. The book Incendiary was published on Thursday, the same day of the attacks on the city. Pictures promoting the novel show plumes of smoke curling above London's skyline. The wording reads, "A massive terrorist attack ... launches this unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel." Waterstone's has removed all advertising for the book from today's newspapers -- except for the Guardian's Guide, which went to press before the advert could be pulled.
■ United States
Omarion pleads for prayers
London was the scene of carnage on Thursday after the series of deadly blasts, but American crooner Omarion, who suffered no injury or inconvenience, wants people to pray for him. "Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning," a statement by the singer's publicist said. Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer's statement concluded, "He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support." Omarion was in London for yesterday's Live 8 show, his publicist Shana Gilmore said. Asked why anyone should pray for him, Gilmore said, "He wasn't hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that."
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
RSS