■ HONG KONG
Hotels targeted in attacks
Anti-triad police are investigating a series of attacks on buildings, including a Marriott hotel, linked to one of the territory's biggest property developers. Attackers rammed a car into the front entrance of the JW Marriott hotel in the city center early on Thursday morning, shattering the door and scattering glass over the lobby, the Standard newspaper reported. Minutes later, a car crashed into the headquarters of the New World Group, which is run by billionaire Cheng Yu-tung (鄭裕彤) and has links to Marriott International. Earlier in the week, more than a dozen mobile phone shops run by a New World subsidiary were daubed with paint and attackers drove a car into a Renaissance hotel.
■ CHINA
Nightclub blast investigated
An illegal stash of mining explosives was probably to blame for a nightclub blast that killed at least 25 people, media reports said yesterday. The explosion ripped through the Liaoning Province club, killing at least 25 and injuring 41. "The explosion was so powerful that there must have been about one tonne of explosives," the Beijing News quoted an investigator as saying. The owner of the club, who was killed in the blast, had stored the explosives in a vault, the newspaper quoted local residents as saying. "The boss of the club was quite rich and ran a coal mine as well," a resident surnamed Liu said.
■ CHINA
No clouds allowed
The weather forecast for Beijing's Olympics Games in August next year will be fine and sunny. Next month, the city plans to fine-tune "rain prevention" techniques to ensure good weather prevails during the Games, state media reported yesterday. The project is still in the experimental stage according to an official from the capital's artificial rain prevention program, the China Daily reported. China's Olympic hosts fear the capital's stormy August weather could put a damper on the Games, and worry that an untimely deluge could ruin the opening ceremony at the uncovered National Stadium.
■ MALAYSIA
Woman refuses to revert
Revathi Masoosai, 29, an ethnic Indian, was released from an Islamic rehabilitation center on Thursday after being detained for six months. The Islamic Religious Department detained Revathi in January and sent her for religious counseling after officials discovered she had married a Hindu man despite being born to a Muslim family. Malaysians who are born as Muslims are legally barred from changing religion. Revathi appeared in a High Court yesterday in an attempt to have her detention declared illegal. Revathi claimed officials at the center tried to make her pray as a Muslim, wear a head scarf and eat beef, but she refused.
■ SWIZERLAND
Seven wonders poll closes
The Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome and Peru's Machu Picchu are leading contenders to be among the new seven wonders of the world, as a massive poll draws to a close with votes already cast by more than 90 million people, organizers said. As yesterday's midnight voting deadline approached, also in the top 10 were Greece's Acropolis, Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer, the Taj Mahal and Jordan's Petra. The winners will be announced today in Lisbon. The Great Pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders, are assured of staying on the list.
■ GERMANY
Woman drives through cash
A motorist surprised by euro notes swirling in the air around her car hit the brakes and collected a "substantial amount of money" before turning it over to police, authorities in Worms said on Thursday. A police spokesman in the small western town said the 24-year-old woman saw the money flying through the air in her rear-view mirror late on Wednesday. She pulled over and tried to collect all the notes, but was unsuccessful. A spokesman at Worms city hall said police were withholding details on the exact sum and location of the find before learning more about the money's origin.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Postman delivers baby
A postman turned midwife while out on his daily rounds, helping to deliver a baby girl as he was about to hand over the mail to a heavily pregnant woman. Ryan Davenport, 27, was called into action as he reached the home of Melanie Newman, 33, in the Welsh capital Cardiff, taking advice from medical staff over his mobile phone and delivering the girl, Sophie, in her mother's hallway. The baby girl, who weighed in 4.1kg, was born three weeks premature. "It all happened so quickly -- one minute I was delivering mail, the next minute I was delivering a baby," Davenport said. "I thought I was OK, but when I got to the end of the street, I realized I hadn't given Melanie her mail. So I had to go back and hand it over."
■ BELGIUM
EU defends risque video
Talk of monetary union and wine quotas gave way to controversy over orgasms and innuendo at the European Commission on Wednesday as it defended a risque Internet video clip highlighting its backing for European cinema. The EU executive's usually dry daily news briefing sprung to life with questions over whether a 44-second clip of 18 couples achieving ecstasy in a variety of positions and venues was the best way to show how Brussels uses taxpayers' money. The raunchy clip is made up of snippets from various general release films that have been funded by the EU, including Amelie and Good Bye Lenin!
■ FRANCE
Cecilia Sarkozy returns card
Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has handed back her presidential credit card following questions over her right to tap state funds, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. Cecilia received the credit card in May to pay for official expenses shortly after her husband won power. Government spokesman Laurent Wauquiez said Cecilia Sarkozy had only used the card twice -- for two dinners in restaurants costing 410 euros (US$559) -- but had decided to return it "to avoid any controversy."
■ MEXICO
Earthquake rocks Chiapas
A strong earthquake hit Chiapas state at 8:09pm on Thursday night, sending thousands of residents fleeing from buildings into the streets. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage. The magnitude 6.1 earthquake was centered near Tuxtla Gutierreze, the US Geological Survey said. Electricity for much of the city was also cut off for several minutes. The tremor also rattled buildings in Villahermosa in neighboring Tabasco state and was felt as far away as Mexico City and northwestern Guatemala.
■ UNITED STATES
Sisters kidnap toddler
Oklahoma detectives arrested a 12-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister for allegedly abducting their neighbor's one-year-old son and demanding US$200,000 for his return. Brandon Wells was safe back at home in Enid on Thursday night, hours after he was taken while his mother, Sheila Wells, slept, police said. Police said the girls left a ransom note: "If you want to see your son again then you won't call police and report him missing and you will leave $200,000 on the sofa tonight and we will return your son back safe." The plan began to unravel when the girls' mother saw them with the child, police said. Sheila Wells said she knew the girls and had banned the 10-year-old girl from her home a few weeks earlier.
■ South Africa
Parcel sparks anthrax scare
Eleven people were sent to hospital yesterday after coming into contact with a suspicious powder at a post office that raised fears of anthrax, police said. Police were called to the post office at a mall in Alberton, south of Johannesburg, after staff discovered the powder in a torn envelope, police spokeswoman Juanita Kilian said. "The envelope was torn on the side and they could see the white powder, which prompted the first officers on the scene to call the bomb disposal unit," Kilian said. "We cannot confirm that the powder was actually anthrax, but the action that we took was just to be cautious." It was not clear where the envelope had come from or to whom it had been sent. The 11 people who came into contact with the powder were hosed down in decontamination booths and taken to hospital for observation and treatment. They were later released.
■ UNITED STATES
Cat survives 18-day voyage
A cat spent nearly three weeks crossing the Pacific Ocean in a shipping container with no food or water -- and appears to be fine. Pamela Escamilla lost sight of her three-year-old calico, Spice, while packing a shipping container with household goods in Hawaii. The container was shipped on June 15 to California. The cat spent 18 days in the container before arriving at the San Bernardino home of Escamilla's parents on Tuesday. When Escamilla opened the container, she noticed fluffs of cat hair on the floor. "I saw [Spice] poke her head out from behind some bicycles, and I started to scream," she said. A veterinarian said Spice's kidneys had shrunk and its bowels were backed up, but the prognosis was good.
■ UNITED STATES
Fossil sorry for being a fossil
Watch-maker and clothier Fossil Inc agreed to pay US$3,600 to a woman who was barred from breast-feeding her infant while visiting a showroom, the New York Civil Liberties Union said on Tuesday. Lass King, 37, said she received a letter of apology and the payment from Fossil after threatening the company with a lawsuit.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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