■ United States
Quake hits Tonga
A strong 6.2 magnitude quake struck approximately 10km beneath the ocean south of Tonga, the US Geological Survey said on Sunday, but no threat of a tsunami was seen. The quake, which occurred at 1:50am, was approximately 270km south of Nuku'Alofa, the capital of the South Pacific island nation. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue a tsunami warning, saying the quake was "small and deep." A magnitude 6 quake is capable of causing severe damage.
■ New Zealand
Player saved by doctor mates
A cricket team comprised entirely of doctors dashed to the aid of a colleague when he collapsed after bowling an over in a social match in Christchurch. Mike Pearcy, president of the Sydenham Cricket Club, said the doctors "really got stuck in" resuscitating Richard Sainsbury, who had stopped breathing, and providing medical care until an ambulance arrived on Saturday."[They] were working on him and telling him to hang in there. I have never seen anything like it," Pearcy said yesterday. "It was a horrible thing ... but a tremendous outcome."
■ Bangladesh
Shooter in fracas
A Bangladeshi court has ordered a judicial inquiry into an alleged police assault on the country's champion shooter which ruled him out of December's Asian Games in Qatar, police said yesterday. Asif Hossain Khan, 22, was allegedly beaten up by police last week during a fracas about a car that had been parked illegally by a senior police officer's wife. Police said they acted in self defense after Asif and other shooters assaulted officers. Dhaka's chief metropolitan magistrate ordered a judicial inquiry on Sunday into the incident after the shooting federation filed a case accusing 40 police officers for allegedly taking part in the assault.
■ Australia
Firefighters asked to spy
As Australia braces for a scorching summer wildfire season, firefighters are being forced to spy on their own ranks amid suspicions one-in-five bushfires are lit by firefighters. Firebug suspects have been listed by police in New South Wales state, where wildfires have already destroyed homes during an unexpectedly hot early spring in which temperatures are already touching 30oC. The size of the state's 70,000-strong, mostly-volunteer, bushfire fighting service made checking the criminal records of all personnel almost impossible, police said. But state bushfire chief Phil Koperberg said commanders were watching up to 30 suspects for certain telltale signs.
■ Samoa
Karaoke sex-trafficking
Two Chinese have been indicted by a US federal court on sex-trafficking charges following allegations they had held two young compatriots as virtual sex slaves in their American Samoan karaoke bar. Wang Shengji, 35, and her business partner Kuo Fu Sheng, 39, appeared in the US Federal Court in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday after allegedly enticing two 24-year-old women from China in late March with the promise of shop work. The indictment against the Chinese pair said they threatened the young women with starvation during their five-month ordeal, with Wang telling them "No sex, no food." The victims were allegedly forced to have sex with customers at the Bai Lai Karaoke Bar in Pago Pago.
■ Saudi Arabia
Clerics slam horoscopes
Powerful clerics have warned media against publishing "forbidden" horoscopes, which are hugely popular despite a clerical ban. "This is astrology, which is forbidden and is considered as a form of magic," a committee of senior clerics said in a statement published on state news agency SPA on Saturday. "The committee reminds Muslims and journalists in particular that it is their obligation to take advice from God, His Prophet and the clergy," it said, adding that all schools of Islamic law forbid such practices. "Believing that a certain star can be the cause of happiness or misfortune is a superstition from the pre-Islamic age," the clerics said.
■ Iran
Tehran reiterates warning
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed to impose retaliatory sanctions on world powers if Iran is penalized by the UN Security Council over its nuclear program, state media reported. "We will also impose sanctions on them," Ahmadinejad told reporters late on Sunday in response to a question about a decision by the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany to discuss the prospect of sanctions. He did not specify what kind of retaliatory action this would involve. "In the past 27 years they have always threatened us with sanctions and during this time they did everything they could," he said. "They do their thing and in return we will do ours."
■ Latvia
Government wins election
The ruling coalition narrowly managed to win enough seats to form a majority government in the Baltic state's general elections. Led by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, the three-party coalition won 51 seats in the Saeima (parliament), six more seats than it currently has, the Central Election Commission said on Sunday. The center-right three-party coalition gathered 44.8 percent, according to results posted on the commission's Web site. It is the first time in Latvia that a sitting government has maintained its grip on power since the country broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991. The opposition took the remaining 49 seats, with the right-wing New Era party mustering 18 seats, and the Harmony Center, a left-wing force that represents the ethnic Russian minority, received 17 seats.
■ Brazil
More troops join search
The government on Sunday sent an extra 80 troops to join a search in the Amazon rain forest for victims of the nation's worst airplane disaster, which killed 154 people. The troops reinforced 37 soldiers who have been combing the remote area in the north of Mato Grosso state where a Boeing 737-800 of low-cost airline Gol crashed on Sept. 29. Soldiers have recovered 129 bodies, the air force said in a statement on Sunday. A total of 61 bodies have been identified, including three of the five children who died in the crash.
■ United States
Pumpkin record smashed
Despite heavy rains that stunted pumpkin growth, a Rhode Island farmer has set what could be a new record for the largest pumpkin in the world. Ron Wallace's pumpkin weighed 676kg at Saturday's weigh-off competition, heavier than the Guinness World Record-holding 661kg pumpkin grown last year by Larry Checkon in Pennsylvania. "Pumpkin growing is a lot of work," Wallace said.
■ United States
Internment chair for UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles, celebrated the arrival of the nation's first scholar to hold an academic chair dedicated to studying the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. A large group of prominent scholars, artists, business and political leaders gathered on Saturday at a university reception for Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, whose family was detained in the wartime camps. Hirabayashi will hold the Aratani chair, funded by a donation of US$500,000 from George and Sakaye Aratani, at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Professors holding the chair must teach at least one course on issues related to the internment program that relocated 120,000 people, and organize or assist public education programs on the subject.
■ United Kingdom
Reid to address prison crisis
Home Secretary John Reid was considering urgent action yesterday to address an overcrowding crisis in Britain's prisons. The prison population has almost hit its capacity of around 80,000 inmates and Reid is now looking at what measures can be taken to deal with the problem. Using police cells is one option to free up space; others include transferring foreign inmates to their home country to serve their sentence or moving prisoners to open jails. Longer sentences, high reconviction levels and more short jail terms have pushed prison population numbers to record highs.
■ Cuba
Raul denies Fidel is dying
President Fidel Castro is far from dying, interim leader Raul Castro said on Sunday after reports that his brother suffered from terminal cancer. "He is not dying as some media in Miami are saying, but is getting better all the time," said Castro, interim leader since his brother underwent intestinal surgery on July 31. "He has a telephone by his side and uses it more each day, which says that he is working," Raul Castro said. "He is resting, but works each day a little more."
■ United Kingdom
Watchdog probes police
Police and prosecutors are facing allegations of exaggerating evidence against the only person to be arrested in the UK in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, the Times said yesterday. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, a police watchdog, has opened an inquiry into the conduct of the Anti-Terrorism Branch of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service over the arrest of Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian man who was arrested in the days following the 9/11 attacks. He was held for five months before magistrates rejected all accusations held against him. Raissi will go to the High Court today to seek an apology and compensation from the Home Office.
■ Gaza Strip
Haniyeh slams peace plan
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says his Hamas-led government will not recognize Israel and has problems with a widely touted Arab peace plan because it does. Haniyeh, addressing an Iftar feast at the end of a day of Ramadan fasting, said Hamas and the government "will not recognize or normalize" relations with Israel. He also said the main problem with the Arab peace plan, presented in 2002 by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by an Arab summit, is that it recognizes Israel in exchange for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Haniyeh said he still hopes for a unity government with Fatah.
‘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
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
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS