■AUSTRALIA
Novel may have plagiarized
Bestselling crime writer Lynda La Plante’s 1993 novel Entwined contains passages lifted from Auschwitz survivor Olga Lengyel’s 1947 memoir Five Chimneys, news reports said yesterday. The multimillionaire British author denied plagiarism but admitted to the Sydney Morning Herald that a research assistant may have been the culprit. La Plante, who shot to fame with the television series Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren, was taken to task by an eagle-eyed Australian reader who recognized several almost identical passages about the workings of the Auschwitz death chambers. Where Lengyel had written that the ovens could dispose of “three hundred and sixty corpses every half hour, which was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes,” La Plante wrote “three hundred and sixty corpses every half hour — all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes.”
■SRI LANKA
Monks anger judge
Chief Justice Sarath Silva on Friday refused bail for a Buddhist monk and slammed fellow clergymen for not showing respect to the judiciary. The chief justice pulled up dozens of monks for not showing respect to judges as they entered the court house to hear a bail application by Pannala Panyaloka, a monk accused of sound pollution. The monks refused a request from the chief justice to leave the court and re-enter after showing due respect by bowing their heads, a court official said. The monk was earlier this week remanded until Sept. 15 when he will answer charges of using loud hailers after 10pm in violation of new sound pollution regulations.
■INDIA
Dalai Lama’s brother dies
Taktser Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother who advocated independence for Tibet, has died in the US at the age of 86, a spokesman for the Tibetan spiritual leader said yesterday. Rinpoche — whose given name was Thupten Jigme Norbu — died late on Friday at his Indiana home after being unwell for several years, R. Chhoekyapa, secretary to the Dalai Lama, said. News of Rinpoche’s death came less than a week after the 73-year-old Dalai Lama was released from a Mumbai hospital, where he was treated for a brief abdominal illness that stirred alarm about his health among his followers. The Dalai Lama champions a “middle path” policy that espouses “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet, rather than the full independence that some other activists are seeking. Rinpoche wanted nothing but full independence for Tibet.
■CHINA
US envoy meets Wu Dawei
The top US nuclear envoy met with his Beijing counterpart yesterday as part of the latest round of talks aimed at breaking a deadlock over verification of North Korea’s nuclear programs. US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met Wu Dawei (武大偉), who represents Beijing in six-nation negotiations that also involve both Koreas, Japan and Russia. The efforts come as Pyongyang is taking steps that indicate it may be reversing its promised disarmament. Hill, who met with South Korean and Japanese envoys on Friday, said the US was willing to sit down again with representatives from the five other countries. He was scheduled to speak with the Russian ambassador in Beijing later yesterday. The North began moving disassembled parts of its main nuclear reactor back to the plutonium-producing facility this week, putting into action its threat to restore atomic facilities that had been partially disabled under a disarmament pact.
■UAE
‘Pot’ DJ returns home
A BBC Radio 1 DJ who was jailed for possessing cannabis in the gulf emirate has flown back to the UK after being released in an amnesty to mark the start of Ramadan. Raymond Bingham, who hosted a music show under the moniker Grooverider and is often credited as a godfather of the drum and bass movement, was jailed for four years after being arrested at Dubai airport in November on his way to playing a club set. He was found to be in possession of 2.16g of cannabis, worth about US$18, which he said he forgot was in his trouser pocket and had not intended to take into the country. Bingham served 10 months of his sentence before his release on Thursday.
■AUSTRIA
Dancing horses get riders
Two women have made history at the Spanish Riding School by becoming the first female riders to pass the entrance exam in 436 years. An 18-year-old Briton and a 21-year-old Austrian must now pass a one-month trial to train at the school, set up in 1572. The school will not name the pair until they pass the trial. If they pass, the new recruits will train for five years before they can take to the saddle in public on the white Lipizzaner dancing horses which are trained to perform tricky moves such as springing from their hind legs.
■SPAIN
Bullfighter’s tomb attacked
Anti-bullfighting campaigners desecrated the tomb of legendary toreador Julio Robles in a cemetery in Salamanca, a newspaper reported. The Tribuna de Salamanca daily reported on Friday that part of Robles’ tomb was destroyed and covered in red paint in the early hours of Friday. The slogan “toreros assassins” were written across the tomb in black letters. Tribuna de Salamanca said on its Web site that it had received a message from a group claiming responsibility for the action and protesting against the “massacre of hundreds of brave bulls” who had been “humiliated and murdered” by Robles who died in 2001 at the age of 50. Robles was a leading bullfighter of the 1970s and 1980s. He was paralyzed after being mauled by a bull in France in 1990.
■SPAIN
Top drug trafficker nabbed
Police said on Friday they had detained a top Colombian drug trafficker who had been indicted in the US for being a major supplier of cocaine during the 1990s. Edgar Guillermo Vallejo Guarin, 47, was arrested at a luxury hotel in an operation carried out with the US Drug Enforcement Agency, police said in a statement. The US State Department had offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information leading to his arrest. “Vallejo Guarin has an extensive history of violence, money laundering and the corruption of high-level government officials,” the statement said. He was responsible for shipping tonnes of cocaine to the US — especially to the Gulf coast of Florida — and to Europe and is also a suspect in several drug-related murders, it said.
■NIGERIA
French workers released
Gunmen on Friday released two French oil workers seized one month ago in the country’s main oil producing region, a diplomat said. “The French embassy confirms that those two men were released at around 8pm and they will be going back to France very soon,” a French embassy official said. Gunmen seized the two from a bar in Onne near the oil hub of Port Harcourt on Aug. 2. Police said the two were crew from the offshore oil services tug, Bourbon Apsara.
■UNITED STATES
Bear raids illegal farm
Investigators say a large black bear raided a clandestine marijuana growing operation so often that it chased the grower away. Deputies found food containers ripped apart and strewn everywhere, cans with bear teeth marks, claw marks and bear prints across the camp in Garfield County, Utah, on Tuesday. “This bear is definitely law-enforcement minded,” said Garfield County Sheriff Danny Perkins. “If I can find this bear I’m going to deputize him.” Perkins said the operation on Boulder Mountain included 4,000 “starter” sacks of pot and 888 young plants. “This particular bear apparently was not going to give up and basically chased these marijuana farmers away,” Perkins said.
■GUATEMALA
Look-alike jail plan foiled
Police discovered a breakout plan in which a look-alike was due to replace the suspected deputy leader of a Mexican drug gang in jail, local media reported on Friday. The look-alike was due to swap places with Daniel Perez Rojas, the suspected deputy leader of the Mexican Zeta drug gang, during a prison visit, reports said. Rojas was imprisoned on March 25 after a shootout that killed more than 10 people. The Zetas, the armed wing of the powerful Mexican Gulf cartel, had planned to replace Rojas with Manuel Pachelo Ramirez, who has similar features to the prisoner and was thought to have entered the country on Aug. 20, police told the Prensa Libre daily.
■UNITED STATES
Talking bird calls for help
Cries for help inside a house in New Jersey turned out to be nothing but a talkative cockatoo. Neighbors called police on Wednesday morning after hearing what they believed was a woman’s persistent cry of “Help me! Help me!” coming from a house. Officers arrived and when no one answered the door, they kicked it in to make a rescue, the Times newspaper reported. Officers found a caged bird with a convincing call. It was not the first time the 10-year-old bird named Luna said something that brought authorities to the home of owner Evelyn DeLeon. Seven years ago, Luna cried like a baby for hours, leading to reports of an abandoned baby and a visit by welfare workers.
■UNITED STATES
Colorado crash kills three
Three people were killed, including a toddler, after an SUV crashed into a pickup and shoved it into an ice cream shop outside Denver. Witnesses said the SUV broadsided the truck on Thursday night as the smaller vehicle was turning left. Aurora, Colorado, police said debris injured a two-year-old boy inside the ice cream shop. He later died at a hospital. Two women in the pickup were also killed. Police said the driver ran away, but a 23-year-old suspect was arrested a short time later.
■CANADA
Fumes at farm kill three
Three people died and three were in a hospital after being overcome by toxic fumes at a mushroom farm in Langley, British Columbia, police said on Friday. Constable Holly Marks of the Langley Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the incident happened on Friday afternoon when a group of workers entered a utility shed at Farmers Fresh Mushrooms. Other workers who came to the men’s aid also were overcome. Two of those hospitalized are in critical condition, the third is stable. Police were not sure what the fumes were. Dozens of firefighters, emergency workers and a hazardous materials team were on the scene on Friday evening.
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
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS