■JAPAN
Home, but not alone
A man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his fridge got a shock when he found out a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police in Fukuoka said yesterday. The 57-year-old man installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out. “We searched the house ... We found the woman in the closet,” a police spokesman said. The woman, named as 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, was found in a flat storage space only just big enough for a person to squeeze into lying down. She had sneaked a mattress and several plastic bottles into the cubby hole. “She told police that she had nowhere to live … She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time,” the spokesman said. Police suspect she might have been moving from house to house, closet-hopping. She was arrested.
■CHINA
Rights lawyers targeted
The government has refused to renew the licenses of two outspoken human rights lawyers, the lawyers and the New York-based Human Rights Watch said yesterday, claiming the refusal was retaliation for speaking out about Tibet. Teng Biao (滕彪) and Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) belong to a loose network of lawyers who often defend dissidents and protesters, and last month they signed a letter urging full legal protections for Tibetans accused of protests and deadly rioting in March. They said the Beijing Judicial Bureau has refused to renew their annual professional licenses, apparently as a warning to rights advocates who speak up about cases deemed politically sensitive. “The bureau officials didn’t directly say why my license wasn’t approved,” Teng said by telephone. “But I know from what’s been said before that it was because of the Tibet issue.”
■CHINA
Olympic fakes abounding
Tricksters are setting up fake Olympic ticket Web sites, selling Olympic bonds that do not exist and running fraudulent Olympic-linked competitions, the Xinhua news agency warned on Thursday. There were eight common frauds, the agency said. In one, text massages are sent out claiming the recipient has won a prize from the Beijing Games organizers, but has to pay tax up front to get the prize. Another tells people that a warehouse containing Olympic medals caught fire and several medals are missing, but that rewards were being offered for their return.
■JAPAN
Small bowl of noodles made
Scientists used cutting-edge technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can be seen only through a microscope. Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said on Thursday he and his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-based material to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1/25,000 of an inch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology. The holds a string of “noodles” that measured one-12,500th of an inch in length, with a thickness of one-1.25 millionth of an inch.
■NEW ZEALAND
Kenya urged to probe death
Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday urged Kenyan police to make a thorough investigation into the murder of photojournalist New Zealand-born Trent Keegan, 33, whose body was found in a trench in Nairobi. A friend, Tim Gallagher said Keegan e-mailed him on May 16 to say he had been questioned by police and security guards from a safari park while investigating a story.
■ICELAND
Powerful quake rocks nation
A powerful earthquake shook the country on Thursday, rocking buildings in the capital, slightly injuring up to 30 people and forcing residents in outlying towns to evacuate. The US Geological Survey said the 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit at 3:46pm, with its epicenter near the town of Selfoss, 50km east-southeast of the capital, Reykjavik. Residents in the capital felt buildings shake when the tremors struck and the road between Reykjavik and Selfoss was closed by quake damage, Iceland’s national broadcaster RUV reported.
■GERMANY
Proposal triggers UFO alert
Police say a young man’s creative marriage proposal triggered reports of unidentified flying objects from worried Bavarian residents. Bavarian police say several people called late on Wednesday evening to alert them to what they thought were UFOs and unusual lights drifting across the sky above the sleepy town of Plattling. They say a police patrol set off but was soon disappointed in its quest for unusual visitors. A police statement on Thursday says officers found a 29-year-old man who had just proposed to his 27-year-old girlfriend. He had accompanied his proposal by sending up 50 paper lanterns that glowed in the night. Police say his girlfriend said “Yes.”
■SPAIN
Twins sue for millions
Twins who were separated at birth are suing for millions in damages, a lawyer said on Tuesday. Sebastian Socorro Perdomo, a lawyer for one of the twins, would not release the names of the women, who are 35. Socorro Perdomo said in an interview that his client is seeking 3 million euros (US$4.7 million) from the government of the Canary Islands, where the error occurred in 1973 in a state-run hospital in the city of Las Palmas. He said his client was taken out of her crib as her twin sister lay in one right next to her, mistakenly replaced by another baby girl, and ultimately raised by the family of that child. The other two girls were brought up in the mistaken belief they were twin sisters. Both of those two, including the one who was not actually a twin, are suing — making three lawsuits in all. The error emerged a generation later, through a chance encounter at a store in Las Palmas. A friend of Socorro Perdomo’s client worked in the shop. When a woman who was the spitting image of that client came in and failed to recognize the employee, the clerk was dumbfounded. When the dead ringer came by the store a second time, the clerk began to put two and two together and arranged for the women to meet.
■ISRAEL
National bird not kosher
It may not be kosher, but the Hoopoe was chosen on Thursday as Israel’s national bird. The Hoopoe is listed in the Old Testament as unclean and forbidden food for Jews. President Shimon Peres declared the pink, black and white-crested bird the winner of a competition timed to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary. The Book of Leviticus groups the Hoopoe with birds such as the eagle, vulture and pelican that are “abhorrent, not to be eaten.”
■RUSSIA
Miners trapped after cave-in
Six miners were trapped underground yesterday after a cave-in at their pit in the Siberian region of Kemerovo, Russian news agencies reported. Regional administration officials said that when the incident occurred, 17 people were working underground in the Lenin mine, but 11 of them escaped to safety, the news agencies reported. A rescue operation was under way.
■UNITED STATES
Town lifts clothesline ban
A town has lifted a ban on clotheslines. The ban was imposed in Southampton, New York, in 2002 after homeowners complained the laundry was making the town look shabby. But no one objected when the town board voted on Tuesday night to repeal the ban. Town Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst said being able to hang her children’s clothes on a line outside instead of drying them in a machine would keep her electricity use down. Other residents said they had ignored the ban despite a possible US$1,000 fine or six-month jail term. No one had been sanctioned for hanging out a clothesline.
■UNITED STATES
Lawyer sues over vacation
A New York lawyer is suing Delta Air Lines for US$1 million, saying his family vacation turned into a nightmare after they were stranded in an airport for days and treated disdainfully by airline employees. Richard Roth, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and his mother, said he planned a Christmas trip last year to Buenos Aires. But Roth, his two teenage children, his wife and mother spent three days in airports, went days without their luggage, were treated rudely by airline employees and were forced to spend US$21,000 on unused hotel rooms, replacement clothes and other costs.
■UNITED STATES
Jury convicts sex tourist
A retired Marine captain was convicted on Thursday of having sex with preteen girls while working as a teacher in Cambodia. A federal jury found Michael Pepe guilty of seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. The federal law targets people who go overseas for child sex tourism. Six girls who were between nine and 12 at the time of the abuse testified that Pepe drugged, bound, beat and raped them. Pepe was arrested in Phnom Penh in 2006 by Cambodian police. Pepe, 54, faces up to 210 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.
■VENEZUELA
Police arrest US drug agent
Authorities arrested a man on Thursday who identified himself as a US anti-drugs agent, which if confirmed could inflame tensions between the US and one of its biggest oil suppliers. President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, saying the agency was spying on him. The US denied the charge. General Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card. “The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” Oviedo told state television.
■CANADA
Appeal threatens drug site
The government said on Thursday it would appeal a ruling that keeps open North America’s only site where drug addicts can take drugs legally. The Insite project in Vancouver operates as a place where people can inject illegal drugs using clean needles under a nurse’s supervision. The project twice received a temporary exemption from the country’s drug laws allowing it to stay open, but the latest one expires June 30. British Columbia court Judge Ian Pitfield ruled this week that the country could not deny addicts health care services. He gave Ottawa until June 30 next year to redraft the county’s drug laws to accommodate Insite’s operations. Pitfield said in his decision that it is unconstitutional to not allow addicts to inject drugs in a safe, medically supervised environment.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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