■ New Zealand
Church group ripped off
Members of a church group in Wellington who donated money for heart surgery for the wife of a Tanzanian bishop were victims of an e-mail scam, it was revealed yesterday. Wellington Anglicans, who have helped fellow church projects in the Diocese of Kagera, Tanzania, for some years raised NZ$14,000 (about US$8,860) after their Bishop Tom Brown received an urgent e-mail appeal from his opposite number who said his wife would die without surgery in South Africa. The scam was uncovered last week when a Wellington church group visiting Tanzania asked the bishop's wife how she was recovering, to be told she had never been ill, had not had an operation and knew nothing of the appeal made in her name.
■ Japan
Four dead after rain
Record rainfall killed four people and left another person missing in the south, and about 100,000 people were advised to evacuate the region, officials said yesterday, as heavy rains continued to trigger mudslides and floods across the country. A man was killed Saturday in a mudslide in Kagoshima, on Kyushu, while he was driving, and a man and a woman were killed in two other mudslides, state official Ryuichi Fukubeppu said. A woman was killed after a levee on a river broke, he said. Officials were searching for a 76-year-old man who went missing, apparently after being swept away by a swollen river, police official Juniji Imamura said.
■ Philippines
Filipinos wary of Arroyo
Many people still distrust President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was expected to stay clear of politics in a key speech in Congress, according to a nationwide survey released yesterday. On the eve Arroyo's annual state of the nation SONA address today, Pulse Asia said its latest survey showed that "a big plurality of Filipinos remains critical of presidential performance and continues to express distrust" in her. Arroyo has been getting low public trust and approval ratings since last year when allegations she cheated in the May 2004 presidential election first broke out.
■ China
Quake death toll rises
The death toll rose to 22, with 106 injured, after an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale hit Yunnan Province on Saturday, state media said yesterday. The earthquake triggered landslides and rockfalls, destroying 1,400 houses and damaging 38,000 others in Yunnan's Yanjin County, the provincial seismological bureau said. Eight of the injured people were in a serious condition, the official Xinhua news agency said. The epicenter was in Shizi Township, at a depth of 9km, and the main areas affected were Shizi, Dousha and Yanjing townships, the bureau said in a report posted on its Web site.
■ Hong Kong
Tsang to tackle pollution
Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) said yesterday that he will meet southern Chinese leaders next month to tackle rising pollution, which is deterring investment and harming health in the region. The talks are the latest effort from Tsang in his battle to clean up the territory's air. "Hong Kong's air is more polluted than it was 10 years ago, but I want you to know that I take this issue very seriously, and I am working with my colleagues in the government to deal with it as best and as quickly as possible," he told RTHK radio.
■ United States
Marriage proposal stalls
Romance almost killed them. Adam Sutton of Georgia had the idea of proposing to his high school sweetheart, Erica Brussee, midair in a chartered Cessna aircraft. Sutton had asked the pilot to fly low over the tarmac on the way back to the airport, where his friends and relatives had spread out a giant bed sheet saying, "Erica, will you marry me?" the Rome Tribune reported on Saturday. The pilot was circling over the airport so Brussee could read the marriage proposal, when the plane stalled and then hit the ground. Brussee broke a leg while Sutton and the pilot just had cuts. She said "yes" -- in the ambulance. The engagement ring, however, was lost in the wreckage.
■ France
Ahmadinejad writes again
President Jacques Chirac has received a letter from his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Elysee Palace said on Saturday. The letter had been written in "very general terms" and had been handed over by the Iranian ambassador in Paris last Tuesday, the statement said without disclosing details of the contents or saying whether Chirac would reply. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also received a letter from Ahmadinejad recently which was rejected on Friday by the government as unacceptable. The tone of Ahmadinejad's letter to Chirac had been different, the Le Monde newspaper said in yesterday's edition.
■ United Nations
UN candidate wants Blair
Jayantha Dhanapala, a senior adviser to the Sri Lankan president and a leading candidate to succeed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said he would like to give British Prime Minister Tony Blair an ambassadorial role similar to that of former US president Bill Clinton after he quits Downing Street. At the Sri Lankan High Commission in London, Dhanapala said: "We have Bill Clinton already using his enormous energy and charisma. He came to Sri Lanka just after the tsunami and I know he had a tremendous impact on the people because of his very genuine compassion for the suffering of the people. I'm sure that Tony Blair, if his services are available, would be used by the UN for similar purposes."
■ United States
JFK files to go online
The information technology producer EMC and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum are launching a massive project to post millions of documents, photographs and video material on the Internet. The late US president's official papers will be digitized first, and could be available on the Internet in 18 months, the library said. The library has 8.4 million pages of documents relating to Kennedy's presidency, private life and congressional period. There are also 40 million pages on 300 other people connected to the Kennedy era and 400,000 photographs.
■ United Kingdom
Fifth `bomber' pulled out
A friend of one of the suicide bombers who struck London a year ago claims that a fifth man was to have joined the deadly mission, but pulled out at the last minute, the Sunday Times reported. The newspaper said it has been told the name of the man, who is in his 30s, by a friend of Shazhad Tanweer, one of the four British Muslims who carried out the attacks on July 7 last year. The man, who is of Pakistani heritage, still lives in Beeston, Leeds, in northern England, where most of the suicide bombers came from.
■ Haiti
Kidnappings on the rise
A new rash of kidnappings has destroyed the relative calm that Haitians enjoyed since President Rene Preval took power in May, raising fears that street gangs are seeking to destabilize the new government. The problem reached a boiling point this week with people -- including three Americans -- being snatched by gunmen in bold, daylight attacks in the capital, Port-au-Prince. At least 30 people have been kidnapped so far this month, about the same number for all of last month, said Leslie Dallemand, chief of the UN's anti-kidnapping unit in Haiti.
■ United States
Persuader convicted
A jury in Grand Junction, Colorado, convicted a man of trying to persuade his girlfriend to kill his ex-wife, and then trying to hire a hit man from behind bars to kill both. Stuart Shader, 35, was found guilty on Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder. He faces up to 24 years in prison on each of the five counts when sentenced Sept. 15. Last year, Shader wanted his then-girlfriend Shawna Nelson, who practiced witchcraft, to sneak into his ex-wife's house and put pits of the poisonous belladonna plant into a can of ground coffee, according to court records. He told Nelson he'd "understand" if she chose to kill herself afterward.
■ Mexico
Lopez Obrador won't give in
A spokesman for the leftist candidate who barely lost the July 2 presidential election threatened on Saturday to step up civil resistance unless the conservative winner agrees to a complete recount. Former Indian rights worker Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says the vote was rigged against him and has called for peaceful civil disobedience to pressure the country's top electoral court into ordering a vote-by-vote recount. Felipe Calderon, the ruling National Action Party candidate who won by less than 1 percentage point, insists the law only allows for recounts at individual polling stations that show specific signs of irregularities.
■ United States
Teens hit by lightning
Four teenagers playing soccer were struck by lightning while seeking shelter from a storm in Montvale, New Jersey, police said. Two were killed and two were injured. The teens, ages 16 to 19, were playing soccer outside Montvale Memorial School around 6pm on Saturday when they saw lightning strike nearby, police said. Two ran for shelter while two started walking off the field. One of the teens who was running heard thunder and turned around to see lightning strike Lee Weisbrod, 19, and Steven Fagan, 18, knocking them to the ground, police said. The other teen called emergency services on his cell phone. Police officers from Montvale and neighboring Park Ridge arrived and tried to help the teens, performing CPR and using a defibrillator on the more seriously injured ones.
■ United States
Starved girls rescued
Two emaciated girls who told police they ate only when their father was not traveling on business, were hos-pitalized on Friday after Wichita, Kansas, police found them in an advanced state of starvation. "It's the worst case of malnutrition I've ever seen," said Lieutenant E.J. Bastian, adding that the 6- and 7-year-old girls were so thin when police found them in the home's basement that "they looked like concen-tration camp survivors." The girls' stepmother, whose own biological children were found healthy upstairs, was taken in for questioning.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
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
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
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS