■ CAMBODIA
Restaurant changes name
A restaurant in Phnom Penh has changed its name in the wake of a bitter border dispute with Thailand, local media reported yesterday. The Olympic Khmer-Thai, a joint venture between local and Thai businessmen, has added an “l” to its title — becoming Olympic Khmer-Thlai. Thlai” translates as “expensive” or “noble.” The restaurant, based near Phnom Penh’s Olympic market, changed its name before deadly border clashes on Wednesday between Thai and Cambodian troops. But the decades-long dispute, over ownership of an area close to the ancient Preah Vihear Temple, has been escalating over the past few months amid mounting nationalist tensions.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Car bomb explodes in Herat
A suicide car bomb exploded outside a base of the NATO-led military force in the western city of Herat yesterday, wounding several troops, the alliance said. The car bomb exploded at the gates of a base that is run by Italian troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with some Spanish soldiers also stationed there. There were several wounded, an ISAF media official at the force’s headquarters in Kabul said, without being able to give more details. ISAF does not release the nationalities of its casualties. A reporter at the scene said the bomb appeared to have struck a military vehicle which had overturned. The area was sealed off and Afghan officials could not immediately say if any civilians had been struck by the explosion.
■ HONG KONG
Australian pilot fined
An Australian pilot with Cathay Pacific was facing disciplinary action yesterday after being convicted of stealing at McDonald’s on a drunken night out. Nicholas Reymond, 31, was fined at a court hearing on Friday for taking a card-reading machine out of a local branch of McDonald’s in February. The theft was captured on closed-circuit television cameras. Reymond, who is training to be a first officer with the airline, was with two friends at the time and told the court he took the machine after drinking heavily. He pleaded guilty to theft and was fined HK$3,000 (US$386) and ordered to pay McDonald’s HK$3,000 in compensation for the machine.
■ MALAYSIA
Police arrest rights activist
Authorities have used a draconian security law to arrest a human rights activist who accused police of abusing their power, an opposition party said yesterday. Cheng Lee-whee, a volunteer for the rights group Suaram, was detained late on Friday when she went to a police headquarters in southern Johor state to explain a complaint she had recently filed, the People’s Justice Party said on its Malay-language Web site. Police informed Cheng’s companions that she was being held under the Internal Security Act, which is invoked against people regarded as threats to national security, the report said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Soldier gets life in jail
A soldier was jailed for life on Friday for the racist murder of a Bangladeshi waiter in Scotland, in a case that triggered high emotions and that has dragged on for 14 years. Michael Ross, who went on to serve in Iraq with the elite Scottish Black Watch regiment, was 15 when he killed Shamsuddin Mahmood in a restaurant on the Scottish island of Orkney in 1994. During a six-week trial the court heard how a masked Ross burst into the Mumutaz restaurant on the evening of June 2, 1994, and shot dead the 26-year-old waiter at point blank range in front of shocked diners.
■ FRANCE
IMF head investigated
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French head of the IMF, faces an investigation into whether he abused his power by engaging in a sexual relationship with a subordinate, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The newspaper said the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP had been retained by the IMF to conduct the probe, which is expected to be completed by the end of the month. The report said the investigation focuses on Strauss-Kahn’s relationship with Hungarian-born Piroska Nagy, a former senior official in the IMF’s Africa department, who is married. The two are said to have exchanged e-mails about a possible intimate relationship. The e-mails were discovered by Nagy’s husband, prominent Argentine economist Mario Blejer, who has worked at the IMF, the paper said.
■ DENMARK
King David statue vanishes
With a background that includes slaying Goliath, King David was capable of seeing off most threats. But not, it seems, a Danish criminal with a crane. A 2.5 tonne bronze statue of the Old Testament ruler was stolen from a stonemasonry in the Danish capital where it had been taken for repairs, the dean of Copenhagen’s cathedral said on Friday. “At first we thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. This is not something you can have standing in your window,” Dean Anders Gadegaard said. “Someone must have used a big truck and crane to get away with it.” The 3.2m statue, which has stood outside Our Lady’s Church since 1860, was moved to the stonemasonry three months ago for repairs, but disappeared last Sunday night. Selling the statue would be very difficult, Gadegaard said, but he feared the bronze could be melted.
■ IRAN
Amnesty lauds Tehran move
Amnesty International on Friday welcomed Iran’s decision to stop executions of child offenders and expressed the hope that Tehran would ban capital punishment altogether. Iran’s assistant attorney general, Hossein Zebhi, said on Wednesday that all courts in the Islamic republic were ordered to stop executing offenders under the age of 18, state news agency IRNA reported. In a statement, the London-based human rights group urged Iran’s parliament to pass legislation to enshrine the directive into law quickly.
■ UNITED STATES
‘Living books’ available
Fourteen “living books” will be on hand in trendy, liberal Santa Monica, California, representing an encyclopedia of knowledge on such subjects as nudism, Buddhism and foodism. That’s because one of them is a real, live nudist, two are Buddhists and another is a vegan. Visitors to the “Living Library” will be allowed to check out any of the 14 people for up to 30 minutes. The hope is that library patrons will learn something about the culture and beliefs of other people, erasing stereotypes in the process. “A personal conversation breaks down barriers and connects two strangers who might not otherwise have the opportunity to speak to each other,” said Rachel Foyt, an administrative analyst at the Santa Monica Public Library. Want to know what it’s like to be homeless? There will be a couple of folks who can speak volumes about it. What are celebrities really like? Ask the celebrity publicist. This being a library, the talking books will have to do their talking outside in the courtyard, or in study rooms, so they won’t disturb readers. Patrons who return their living book late won’t be fined, but Foyt said the library may revoke the souvenir T-shirt.
■ UNITED STATES
Hacker admits church attack
A teenager hacker has admitted carrying out a cyber attack that crashed Church of Scientology Web sites as part of a campaign by a mysterious underground group, US justice officials said on Friday. Dmitriy Guzner, 18, of New Jersey will plead guilty to computer hacking for his role in launching a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against Scientology Web sites in January this year, the Justice Department said. DDOS attacks occur when Web sites are overwhelmed by a large volume of malicious Internet traffic, making the sites unavailable to legitimate users. According to information filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Guzner described himself as a member of a shadowy Internet-based group known as “Anonymous” that has carried out a series of protests against Scientology. A statement released by the Justice Department in Los Angeles said Guzner would formally plead guilty in “coming weeks” at a court in New Jersey. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison.
■ UNITED STATES
New problems afflict Hubble
New technical problems on the Hubble Space Telescope, which is undergoing repairs, will further delay the resumption of the telescope’s regular duties, NASA officials said on Friday. The Hubble’s operations team encountered anomalies with the telescope’s “side A” this week and “is working diligently to understand the cause and options for proceeding,” NASA Astrophysics director Jon Morse said. Art Whipple, director of the Hubble program, predicted the program will be back to full capacity “sometime late next week.” The Hubble’s scientific instruments were suspended automatically on Sept. 27 because of a major technical fault.
■ UNITED STATES
Mom pleads insanity
A 33-year-old woman accused of stealing her daughter’s identity to attend high school and join the cheerleading squad has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Wendy Brown faces a felony identity theft charge after enrolling in a Green Bay, Wisconsin, high school as her 15-year-old daughter, who lives in Nevada with Brown’s mother, the Green Bay Press-Gazette said. According to a federal complaint, Brown attended one day of classes, practiced with the cheerleading squad and went to a party at the coach’s house. Brown also faces theft and forgery charges from an unrelated case, where she is accused of collecting money for an apartment she didn’t have authority to rent. She could face up to nearly 13 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
■ UNITED STATES
City builds musical road
Workers on Wednesday began carving grooves on the first “musical road” in the US, which will produce notes of the William Tell Overture when cars drive over them. The high desert city of Lancaster, California, placed the grooves on another road, Avenue K, last month for a Honda commercial. The 400m strip was engineered to play the notes — better known as the theme for The Lone Ranger — when motorists in Honda Civics hit them at 88kph. It was believed to be the first such musical road in the US, although there are others in Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands. The city paved over that first stretch after neighbors said the noise was annoying and kept them awake. However, the city received hundreds of calls praising the road and decided to retain the concept. “It will be a tourist attraction. It will pull people off the freeway,” Mayor Rex Parris said. The city decided to recreate the road in an industrial area away from homes.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
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