■ AUSTRALIA
Robbers take a beating
Two would-be robbers got more than they expected in their attempt to rob a Sydney fruit and vegetable shop — a beating. The men, one armed with a knife, confronted the owner of the store just before closing time and forced their way into his office, where they seized money from the safe and several cash registers, police said in a statement yesterday. But staff members chased the thieves after the robbery on Sunday and began beating them, retrieving the bag of money. “These guys just used their fists,” the owner of Casula Fruit World told the Sydney Morning Herald about the heroics of his staff. One of the robbers ended up carrying his accomplice to their getaway car, the store owner said.
■VANUATU
Quake strikes off island
A magnitude 7.0 undersea earthquake struck in the South Pacific ocean off Vanuatu yesterday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said the temblor struck 229km north of the town of Luganville on the island of Espirito Santo. It did not trigger a tsunami alert. The US Geological Survey said the quake was centered 130km below the sea floor and struck at 5:52am local time.
■THAILAND
Web sites to be shut down
A court has ordered hundreds of Web sites to be shut down for carrying content disrespectful to the kingdom’s revered royal family, a media watchdog reported yesterday. The government’s communications ministry asked the court to close some 400 Web sites, including 344 deemed offensive to the royal family, the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance said. Media reported the sites included two with religious content, one containing a video sex game and five with obscene material.
■AUSTRALIA
Residents deny racism
Residents of a Sydney suburb yesterday denied they were racist for objecting to a Muslim school but supporting plans for a Catholic school nearby. The Camden/Macarthur Residents’ Group, set up earlier this year to fight a proposed Koranic Society Muslim school, said the yet to be approved Catholic school “ticked all the boxes.” “Catholics are part of our community so we should be supporting it on this basis alone,” group president Emil Sremchevich told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Why is it discriminatory? It’s very simple: people like some things but don’t like other things. Some of us like blondes, some of us like brunettes.”
■GREECE
Pair charged with murder
A retired Japanese diplomat and his Greek wife have been charged with killing their 36-year-old daughter in their home. Masami Tanida, 77, and his wife Maria, 67, appeared before an examining magistrate on Monday. They were given 24 hours to prepare their defense, their lawyer Athanassios Tartis said. “My clients’ position is that their daughter committed suicide, slashing her wrist,” Tartis said. Police said authorities became suspicious after the woman’s mother approached doctors at a hospital on the island of Evia to request a death certificate for her daughter, Amphithea Tanida, claiming she had suffered fatal head injuries falling down a flight of stairs. Investigators said a deep cut to her left wrist was made after her death and the direction of the cut was not consistent with a self-inflicted wound.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Cartoon angers ANC
The governing party has been angered by a cartoon depicting its leader preparing to rape justice. The cartoonist and his newspaper aren’t apologizing. Johannesburg’s the Times said in an editorial yesterday the ANC’s interpretation of the cartoon was “shallow.” The image appeared on Sunday. In a statement on Monday, the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the ANC Youth League called the cartoon “disgusting.” ANC leader Jacob Zuma was acquitted of rape in 2006. The Times says the cartoon was a comment on accusations Zuma was undermining justice with a campaign to have corruption charges against him dropped.
■ FRANCE
Court sentences quack
A court sentenced a doctor on Monday to three years in jail for posing as a plastic surgeon and endangering patients by operating on them illegally in a derelict Marseille clinic. Michel Maure went on trial in June accused of luring hundreds of patients to the dirty premises under false pretences between 2002 and 2004 and carrying out painful, unhygienic operations on them. Maure was also sentenced to pay a 75,000 euro (US$107,600) fine and to compensate his victims, about 100 of whom had complained of disfigurement and permanent damage to their health. He went on the run while the court prepared its ruling and was arrested in Spain on Aug. 19 after being spotted on a yacht. Spain is expected to hand him over to France within days.
■ FRANCE
59-year-old has triplets
A 59-year-old woman has given birth by Cesarian section to two boys and a girl, who are in good health, the Paris hospital treating her said on Monday. “Everything went smoothly,” said a spokesman at Cochin hospital where the triplets were born overnight on Saturday. The woman, of Vietnamese origin, is thought to have resorted to a private Vietnamese clinic willing to overlook the age limit for egg donation and in vitro fertilization, set at 45 in Vietnam. Most French fertility clinics set a maximum age limit of 42 for would-be mothers. The birth of triplets by a mother in her late 50s was possibly a world first.
■RUSSIA
Bid to ban ‘South Park’
Prosecutors want to ban the award-winning satirical US cartoon South Park, calling the series “extremist” after receiving viewer complaints, a spokeswoman said on Monday. Basmanny regional prosecutors office spokeswoman Valentina Titova said investigators filed a motion after deciding an episode “bore signs of extremist activity” after it was broadcast on Moscow television station 2x2 in January.
■ KENYA
Warrior cum hairdresser
Maasai warrior Lempuris Lalasho went to the tourist haven Mombasa to find a white woman to marry, but ended up working as a hairdresser, a profession that is taboo in his culture. His story opens a window on the strains faced by this tribe as it adjusts to modern life in east Africa’s largest economy, whose beaches lure thousands of tourists, including women seeking sex. Maasai warriors, or moran, are a familiar sight on beaches and in safari parks, often acting as guides. But sometimes, the young men who flock to the coast hoping to make their fortunes — some with dreams of marrying a white tourist — go against their traditions. Lalasho’s status as a moran means he is charged with protecting and providing for his people, making his transgression all the more serious.
■ UNITED STATES
Microwave mother gets life
A 28-year-old mother who burnt her baby in a microwave oven after a quarrel with her boyfriend was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without parole by a court in Dayton, Ohio, a newspaper said. “No adjectives exist to describe this heinous atrocity,” Montgomery County court judge Mary Wiseman was quoted as saying by the Dayton Daily News. “The crime was beyond all human and moral comprehension,” she said. A jury found China Arnold guilty of aggravated murder, sticking her 28-day-old daughter in a microwave in August 2005 and killing the baby after a quarrel with her partner. Arnold was spared the death penalty as the jury was deadlocked over recommending a sentence. Her lawyer had asked for the chance of parole after 25 years, saying Arnold regretted the events, but maintained her innocence, saying she had been too drunk to protect her baby.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Chimps know value of TLC
After a stressful day or a heated argument there’s often nothing better than a hug and some TLC from a good friend. Now it seems that chimps use the same comforting techniques to make each other feel better after a fight. Chimpanzees will often kiss, cuddle and groom the victim of aggression within a group, something behavioral scientists call “consolation behavior.” But researchers have now shown that this touchy-feely side to our closest animal relative has the same effect as it does for us: It reduces stress. Orlaith Fraser at Liverpool John Moores University observed 22 adult chimps at Chester zoo over an 18-month period, recording 256 aggressive incidents ranging from shrieking displays to physical fights. In half of the cases, once the fight was over, another animal would come over to console the victim. When this happened the researchers found the victim exhibited fewer self-directed behaviors such as self-grooming, which is taken to be an indicator of stress.
■ UNITED STATES
Abramoff aide arrested
A former Republican congressional aide who worked with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was arrested on Monday on charges of public corruption and obstructing justice, the Department of Justice said. It said Kevin Ring, 37, a former lobbyist who worked with Abramoff, was charged with 10 counts that accuse him of conspiring to corrupt congressional and Bush administration officials by giving them items of value for official action to benefit his clients. Among those listed as conspirators were convicted former representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, employees of two other unidentified congressional representatives and unidentified officials of the departments of justice and the interior.
■ UNITED NATIONS
Headquarters gets hot
Hot air at the UN has been so successful that more is on the way. That’s good news for an organization campaigning to curb global warning, but not necessarily for staff sometimes known for spouting hot air but not working in it. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided to raise the temperature in offices at headquarters last month and announced he would be wearing lighter suits. Many male staff members doffed their jackets and ties as thermostats went up from 22˚C to 25˚C in offices and from 22˚C to 24˚C in conference rooms. Female staffers chose sleeveless attire. Spokeswoman Michele Montas announced on Monday that the experiment — dubbed “Cool UN” — had saved the equivalent of 710 round-trip trans-Atlantic flights.
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
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘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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