■NEW ZEALAND
Kiddie disco gets too loud
A group of children rocking out to kiddie tracks at a kindergarten disco party were told to turn down the tunes or face a shut down of their party by noise control officials who raided the soiree. The noise abatement raid — called “absurd” by one teacher — happened on Friday night at One Tree Hill Kindergarten in Auckland. As parents and the gaggle of children blasted the theme song to Bob the Builder and the Chicken Dance, an irate neighbor spoiled the fun by calling noise control.
■CAMBODIA
Man arrested for child pics
A Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly taking nude photographs of at least six boys in the country’s popular seaside town of Sihanoukville, police said yesterday. Shunichi Nakagawa, 32, was seized on Sunday, accused of taking pornographic pictures of boys aged between 13 and 15, said Suon Sophan, deputy police chief for the town’s anti-trafficking and child protection unit.
■HONG KONG
Cabbie bites off finger
A Hong Kong cabbie bit off the fingertip of a drunken passenger who refused to clean up vomit from the taxi, a court report said yesterday. The fingertip was later recovered by police from the vomit and sewn back on, according to the report in the South China Morning Post. Taxi driver Hui Man-yu appeared on Monday in court after admitting inflicting grievous bodily harm on the passenger, Australian Caleb Chau. The 54-year-old was sentenced to 160 hours of community service. However, the court accepted that the trouble in the taxi ride in November last year was initiated by the passenger, rather than the driver. Hui claimed that he had only wanted Chau to clean up the mess that the passenger had made by vomiting in the taxi.
■VIETNAM
Glitter heads for Britain
Gary Glitter, the former British glam rock star who spent the past two years and nine months in a Vietnamese prison for sexually abusing minors, was released early yesterday morning and escorted to Ho Chi Minh City to board a flight for Britain. Glitter had been expected to be released at noon, but was let out early to avoid media waiting for him at the prison gates. He was scheduled to take a 4pm flight to London, his lawyer said on Monday.
■JAPAN
Wrong breast removed
A hospital said yesterday that doctors mistakenly removed a healthy woman’s left breast because of a mix-up in samples from tests for breast cancer. The woman, in her 40s, last year went for a mammogram at a hospital in the western city of Okayama and was told there was a possibility she had breast cancer. Doctors removed her breast. But a detailed examination of the tissue showed that she had a mastopathy, which includes symptoms similar to those of cancer but does not require surgery.
■JAPAN
Plane crashes on city street
A small plane crashed into a city street in the western part of the country yesterday, scattering debris across a neighborhood crowded with factories and restaurants. The two men aboard escaped with light injuries, and no one else was hurt. The Cessna slammed into a sidestreet beside a thoroughfare in Yao city, tearing off a wing and buckling its body nearly in half. The two men inside escaped the wreck and were taken to a hospital.
■GERMANY
Undertakers in murder suit
Two undertakers have been arrested in Bavaria on suspicion of killing a funeral home owner, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Erlangen said on Monday. Andreas Quentin said authorities believed the two suspects, detained on Aug. 6 and Aug. 13, burned the body in a crematorium under a false name after a dispute over a business deal. The mass-market daily Bild reported that the victim, identified as 43-year-old Erich W., sold his funeral home to Michael S., 52, a rival in 2005. A dispute over the sale price arose when Michael S. was unable to come up with the sum.
■ISRAEL
Turtle on wheels gets going
Arava the disabled turtle is using her new set of wheels to get around in more ways than one. Officials at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo said that the 10-year-old spurred tortoise has begun mating since being fitted with a custom skateboard to overcome paralysis of her hind legs. The 25kg turtle is unable to move herself forward with her front legs alone. So the zoo’s staff built her a metal board with two wheels that can be strapped to her stomach.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Filesharing woman fined
A British woman has been ordered to pay more than £16,000 (US$29,700) to a US computer games company after illegally sharing its files online. The woman, who is not being named, is one of the first to be successfully targeted in the UK as part of the media industry’s battle with digital pirates. TopWare Interactive, claimed the woman made its game Dream Pinball 3D available to other Internet users in breach of the law. After a hearing at the patents county court in London, a judge ruled that she should pay TopWare more than £6,000 in damages and £10,000 in costs.
■SPAIN
Plant may be fined for leak
The Nuclear Safety Council has proposed a fine of up to 22.5 million euros (US$33 million) over a leak at a power plant, accusing operators on Monday of waiting three weeks to report it and downplaying the amount of contamination released. The Asco plant, located on the Ebro River, 28km upstream from the Mediterranean, had a leak in November, but plant operators did not detect it until March and then waited to notify regulators on April 4, the council said.
■ZAMBIA
President Mwanawasa dies
President Levy Mwanawasa died in a French hospital yesterday at 59, nearly two months after he was hospitalized for a stroke, the country’s vice president said. “It is with deep sorrow that I have to tell the people of Zambia that our president ... has passed away this morning,” Vice President Rupiah Banda said. He announced a weeklong period of national mourning. Mwanawasa had taken a turn for the worse on Monday. The president was evacuated to Paris after he collapsed on June 30 on the eve of an African Union summit in Egypt.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Child abuser sentenced
A pedophile who acted as a “librarian” for a global Internet child abuse ring was handed an indefinite jail term on Monday after one of the biggest undercover police investigations into online child abuse. Philip Thompson, 27, collected almost 250,000 indecent pictures of children as part of a global ring that reached 33 countries, Teesside crown court heard in northern England. More than 3,000 of the images found on Thompson’s computers were in the worst category of child abuse images.
■MEXICO
Dozens killed in gang war
At least 43 people died in violent attacks in the last three days in the northern state of Chihuahua, the scene of ongoing drug gang turf wars, police said on Monday. Thirteen males, aged between 18 and 41, died in separate attacks on Monday, mostly in the flashpoint city of Ciudad Juarez on the US border, local police said. Assassins killed nine people overnight on Sunday in the city, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night, including 14 in a massacre at a family gathering in the western Chihuahua town of Creel. A baby was one of the 14 murdered in Saturday’s shooting in Creel, believed to be part of a drug gang feud.
■ANTIGUA
Newlyweds’ killers arrested
A man and a teenager were charged on Monday in the killing of a British couple on their honeymoon, officials in the Caribbean island said. Kaniel Martin, 20, and Avie Howell, 17, appeared before a judge in the capital, St. John’s, on charges of murder, robbery and receiving stolen property. They were ordered held without bond. Neither suspect entered a plea to the charges, though the lawyer for Martin later said he would plead innocent. Benjamin and Catherine Mullany, both 31 and from Wales, were married on July 12 and went to Antigua for a two-week honeymoon. They were shot before dawn the day before they were meant to leave.
■CANADA
Rider hammers bus driver
Police say three people were injured when a woman attacked the driver of a Toronto public transit bus with a hammer. Police say Chelsea Simon, 23, boarded the bus on Monday morning and accused the driver of not stopping for her earlier on the route. They say she then began swinging the hammer and injured the bus driver. Police say passengers tackled the woman to the floor until police arrived. Police say two other people suffered minor injuries. Simon is charged with assault with a weapon.
■ARGENTINA
Gays can claim pensions
The government on Monday announced its first nationwide gay-rights measure: granting same-sex couples the right to claim their deceased partners’ pensions. Couples must prove they have been living together for at least five years to receive the benefit, Amado Boudo, executive director of the national social security administration, told local television reporters. Gay activists welcomed Monday’s announcement as the fruition of years of campaigning for the government to grant them the same rights as heterosexual married couples. Gay civil unions already are legal in five cities, including Buenos Aires. The Argentine capital has become one of the hotspots on the international gay-friendly tourist circuit, going head-to-head with Rio de Janeiro.
■ALGERIA
Islamists hit police school
More than 40 people were killed in a suicide attack yesterday morning on a police school at Issers in the Kabylie region, 60km east of Algiers, witnesses said. The attacker drove a car packed with explosives at the main entrance to the school as candidates for an entry exam were waiting outside, witnesses said. Civilians as well as police officers were among the victims they said. Authorities had not yet issued an announcement about the attack, but witnesses at the scene said that a major security operation was under way there. Yesterday’s attack comes as newspapers reported an attack on Sunday in which Islamist extremists killed 11 members of the security forces and a civilian.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
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