■ Australia
Texting driver jailed
A 23-year-old Australian who killed two children when he crashed his car while using a mobile phone was yesterday sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail. A jury in Melbourne found Marcus Johnstone guilty of two counts of culpable driving and one count of negligent driving causing injury. The court heard that Johnstone was reading a mobile text message moments before he crashed into a power pole. The two children who were traveling with him died in the crash. Johnstone was sentenced to a non-parole period of two years and three months.
■ China
Rocket man jailed for life
One of China's top rocket scientists was sentenced to life in prison for corruption and embezzling 160 million yuan (US$19.9 million dollars) in public funds, state press said yesterday. Li Jianzhong (李建中), former head of the prestigious China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, was sentenced in a Beijing court on Tuesday, the Beijing News reported. The academy's financial officer, Zhang Lingying, was also sentenced to 20 years for her part in helping Li misappropriate 120 million yuan of the funds, the paper said. Li was convicted of seven counts of corruption, including two counts of misappropriating public funds valued at 120 million yuan and 40 million yuan respectively, it said.
■ Indonesia
Diggers killed by landslide
A landslide in an unauthorized sand-digging location killed 12 workers and injured two others in Indonesia's West Java Province, a police spokesman said yesterday. The workers were collecting sand in a digging area in Cipatat district that had been shut down by local authorities when an avalanche of gravel came down on them on Tuesday. "Twelve dead victims have been identified from the incident. Officers are still finding out whether it was an accident or a crime of negligence," Bambang Kuncoko, a spokesman at the national police headquarters, told reporters. A local official in Cipatat said the diggers lived nearby.
■ North Korea
Women told to follow Kim
The government yesterday urged its women to rally around dictator Kim Jong-il while encouraging them to have more babies to build a stronger nation. Rodong Sinmun, the North's Communist Party newspaper and mouthpiece, issued the call in an editorial marking International Women's Day. "All the women should ardently follow and uphold Kim Jong-il's Songun [military-led] idea ... bearing deep in mind that the prosperity of the fatherland ... and the independent dignity and praiseworthy life of the Korean women are all guaranteed by Songun," it said. Rodong stressed women's leading efforts in the development of the state.
■ Philippines
Police halt rally
Police yesterday broke up a rally marking International Women's Day and detained a leftist lawmaker and a militant labor leader for leading the protest. Congresswoman Risa Hontiveros Baraquel, a representative of the leftist Akbayan party-list group, and Joshua Mata of the Alliance of Progressive Labor were taken into custody for illegal assembly, police said. The two were among more than 1,000 activists, mostly women, that marched to call attention to various women's issues including abuse. The protesters also demanded the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
■ United Kingdom
Singer charged over drugs
Troubled British rock star Pete Doherty has been charged with seven counts of drug possession, police said on Tuesday. The Babyshambles frontman will appear at Thames Magistrates Court today, police said. He is accused of having 0.406g of heroin, 0.776g of crack cocaine, 0.332g of cannabis resin and 5.94g of cannabis on Dec. 18 last year in Riverside Close in the east of London. And on Jan. 14 this year, police allege he had 3.103g of heroin, 3.664g of crack cocaine and 2.503g of cannabis in Dunlace Road, also in the east of London.
■ Belgium
British beef ban to be lifted
EU food safety experts unanimously agreed yesterday to lift a 10-year beef export ban imposed on Britain at the peak of the 1990s mad cow scare, giving a boost to its struggling beef industry, the EU executive said. "The UK has made great strides in tackling this disease, and has met all of the criteria that were set for the lifting of the beef export ban, in line with scientific and veterinary advice," EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection Markos Kyprianou said in a statement. British beef exports to the EU were halted in 1996 as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease spread through the country.
■ United States
Deported man jumps for it
A man who was being deported to China leaped from a parked Northwest Airlines jet on Tuesday in an apparent effort to stay in the US, authorities said. He was quickly recaptured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. The incident occurred just while Flight 11 to Tokyo and Beijing was parked at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, said Greg Palmore, spokesman for ICE in Detroit. Immigration officers had placed Yong Zhu, 26, on the plane and were waiting for it to take off when he opened an emergency exit door and jumped, Palmore said.
■ United States
Killer's car pulled from eBay
A 1982 BMW advertised as once belonging to one of the gunmen in the Columbine High School killings was pulled from an online auction, a spokesman for eBay said. "If the owner wanted to sell this car, there's nothing stopping them from doing so," eBay spokesman Hani Durzy told the Rocky Mountain News. "They just can't market it as being owned by Dylan Klebold." Durzy, citing privacy reasons, would not say whether the San Jose, California-based eBay would apply any sanctions to the prospective seller, whose handle is "isubars." The car was bought without knowing who previously owned it, the seller said on the site.
■ Argentina
Mayor ousted over fire
Buenos Aires Mayor Anibal Ibarra was removed from office on Tuesday amid a day of political acrimony and allegations that poor government safety regulation contributed to the death of 194 people in a December 2004 nightclub fire. A city legislative panel voted 10-4 with one abstention to remove the former ally of President Nestor Kirchner, acting on a day of heightened political tensions in a city divided by street rallies for and against the mayor's removal. The 48-year-old Ibarra had been a rising political star of the left, but as the city's top political leader, he was the focus for much of the outrage over the failure to prevent the blaze at the Cromagnon nightclub and the fumbled response to it.
■ United Kingdom
Two arrested in depot heist
Two workers at the cash depot that was hit in Britain's biggest-ever robbery have been arrested, police investigating the heist said on Tuesday. The two -- one male, one female -- were agency staff sub-contracted to work at the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, southeast England, where ?53 million (US$93 million) was taken on Feb. 22. "They have been agency staff for Securitas and have been arrested and interviewed and released on bail," assistant chief constable Adrian Leppard of Kent Police said. He refused to say whether or not they were cleaners.
■ United States
SUV used to avenge deaths
A recent university graduate from Iran rented a sport utility vehicle (SUV) in order to inflict the maximum amount of injury while driving through a popular campus gathering spot at the University of North Carolina, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, who told authorities earlier he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world," drove a rented Jeep Grand Cherokee because it had four-wheel drive and could "run things over and keep going," according to the application for a warrant to search Taheri-azar's home.
■ United Kingdom
Police stand by policy
A review into British police procedures for dealing with a suspected suicide bomber following the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man last year has found no reason to change the policy, police said on yesterday. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead last July as he boarded a train at Stockwell underground station after police mistook him for a suicide bomber. The shooting came a day after four men had failed in an attempt to bomb the London underground network and two weeks after four men killed themselves and 52 others in a suicide attack.
■ United States
Sites to receive Pearl award
Kevin Sites, who provides dispatches from armed conflicts around the world for Yahoo News, will receive this year's Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. Sites was chosen for his "style of work, the solitary commitment to truth, the selection of the newsworthy, the focus on the human faces, and the human fate," said Judea and Ruth Pearl, parents of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002. Sites is traveling alone to cover every major global conflict within one year for Yahoo's "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" feature.
■ Sweden
Airport thieves spark chaos
Authorities evacuated parts of an airport in southwestern Sweden on Tuesday after masked gunmen robbed a passenger plane that had just landed from London and left a suspicious package that police said looked like a bomb. Stunned passengers waiting to disembark the jet witnessed the brazen robbery at the Landvetter airport outside Goteborg. At least five robbers, some armed with assault rifles, crashed through a gate at the airport and held up luggage handlers as they were unloading crates of foreign currency from the plane, police spokeswoman Anna Rosenberg said. No one was injured. The robbers left a suspicious package on the tarmac, and sped off in two vehicles. They spread nails on the road to block police from pursuing them, she said. Both vehicles were found burned a few kilometers from the airport.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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