■CHINA
Elephant can’t return to wild
An elephant who spent three years in rehab after animal smugglers got him addicted to heroin is not able to return to the wild despite being cured, state press reported yesterday. Xiguang and three other elephants who the smugglers also captured had been taken to an animal protection center on Hainan to recover. While they are all fit again, they are no longer able to live in the wild, Xinhua news agency said. “Three years of domestic life and a huge amount of rehabilitation medication has changed the physical situations, odors and habits” of the animals, wildlife official Pan Hua said. “They may become the target of attacks by other beasts if they are sent back to the wild.” Xiguang became hooked on heroin after the smugglers laced bananas with the drug to tame him.
■MYANMAR
Bomb explodes prematurely
A bomb that probably exploded prematurely killed its carrier in a town north of Yangon, in the second of two blasts in or near the capital over the weekend, police said yesterday. The person behind Sunday’s 5:30pm blast in a residential area of Shwe Pyi Thar township, 19km north of Yangon, was not identified by police. A similar device exploded on Saturday evening near a sports ground in the capital, without injuring anyone. A second bomb was also apparently defused on Saturday.
■CHINA
Court rejects man’s appeal
A Shanghai court on Monday rejected an appeal from a man who became an unlikely cult hero after killing six policemen in what he said was revenge for a wrongful arrest. The judge upheld last month’s guilty verdict and would seek approval from the Supreme People’s Court for 28-year-old Yang Jia to be executed, lawyer Zhai Jian said. Yang was convicted of going on a stabbing frenzy in a police station on July 1 in revenge for being detained on suspicion of stealing a bicycle.
■AUSTRALIA
Dads rarely with children
Fathers spend only six minutes alone with their children on weekdays, according to research that found that dads Down Under leave child-raising chores to their female partners. In a study that also looked at Denmark, France, Italy and the US, researcher Lyn Craig found that Australian fathers were among the most traditional. “In terms of the total amount of child care that’s done ... in Australia, 10 percent of it will be done alone by the father and 90 percent of it will be done alone by the mother,” Craig said.
■INDONESIA
Papuan protesters arrested
Eighteen Papuans were arrested as they held a peaceful rally yesterday to demand a referendum on independence, activists said. About 300 people gathered in front of parliament in the Papuan provincial capital Jayapura to denounce the 1969 referendum that handed sovereignty of the former Dutch colony to Indonesia.
■SOUTH KOREA
Man kills six people
At least six people were killed and seven injured yesterday after an angry tenant apparently set fire to a building in Seoul and attacked escaping tenants with a knife, police said. Police arrested the 31-year-old, identified only as Jeong, after the blaze at the five-story building. Some 100 residents fled the morning fire. Cable news channel YTN said Jeong told investigators: “I committed the crime because I no longer wanted to live.”
■SPAIN
Police raid Russian’s home
Police have raided the villa of a senior Russian politician on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca to investigate possible mafia links, a police spokesman said. Civil Guard police searched the home of Russian Parliamentary Deputy Vladislav Reznik on Saturday and took away documents and artwork, the spokesman said. “This is part of operation Troika,” a Civil Guard spokesman in Mallorca said of the raid, in reference to Spain’s ongoing investigation into Russian mafia operations. He said the raid on the seafront villa was ordered by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, a high-profile figure who tried to jail former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
■FRANCE
Education cuts protested
More than 30,000 demonstrators marched across Paris on Sunday to denounce the conservative government’s budget restrictions, job cuts and other controversial reforms in the public education system. Teachers, students, parents and school administrators took to the streets in the march behind a banner that read, “Education is our future,” and vowed to press on with their effort in the coming weeks. Organizers said around 80,000 people turned up, while police put the figure at 32,000.
■FRANCE
Two dozens cars collide
Two dozen vehicles collided in a massive highway pileup on Sunday in an eastern part of the country, killing one person and injuring 39 others, officials said. A tourist bus carrying 36 retired UK citizens was among those vehicles involved in the crash, but no one onboard was injured, police spokesman Jean-Francois Cortot said. Heavy fog mixed with smoke from a fire in a barn near the highway appeared to have reduced visibility for drivers before the collision, Cortot said.
■SOUTH AFRICA
ANC speeds up land reform
The African National Congress (ANC), under pressure over the amount of land still in white hands, called on Sunday for the scrapping of laws allowing farmers to set a price for land to be redistributed to blacks. ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe said the current situation where 87 percent of the country’s land still resides in the hands of 50,000 white farmers, 14 years on from the end of apartheid rule, was “untenable.” Land reform has become an increasingly contentious issue throughout southern Africa since Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe embarked on a program that has seen some 4,000 white farmers lose their land since the turn of the decade. While Mugabe’s policy has been blamed for much of Zimbabwe’s economic turmoil, many Africans applaud his self-styled drive to correct imbalances stemming back to the colonial era.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Artists give away free art
A month after Damien Hirst entered the record books by selling a new batch of his work for US$193 million, some of his fellow UK artists offered their creations for free on Sunday. More than 50, including Gavin Turk, Chantal Joffe, Bob and Roberta Smith and Bruce McLean showed their work at a central London gallery last week and at the end of Sunday, visitors were to be allowed to take away a piece for nothing. Founder of the Free Art Fair Jasper Joffe said the idea was to provide an antidote to the hype that surrounded last month’s auction of Hirst’s work at Sotheby’s. One of the exhibitors at the Free Art Fair, Paul Harris, offered a piece of paper said to have been touched by the multi-millionaire Hirst.
■UNITED STATES
Lawyer disputes ‘suicide’
The lawyer for a Japanese businessman whose jail cell death was declared suicide said on Sunday that a pathologist concluded that Kazuyoshi Miura was killed. Mark Geragos, Miura’s lawyer, said the pathologist found tissue injuries on his back that indicated a beating. He also said a hematoma on Miura’s larynx could have come from a forced choking. The pathologist concluded the injury could not have been caused by a self-inflicted hanging. Asked who may have killed Miura, Geragos said “whoever had him in custody.” Miura, 61, was found dead Oct. 10 in a Los Angeles Police Department jail cell. Police said Miura hanged himself less than 24 hours after he was returned to the US to stand trial for the murder of his wife 27 years ago.
■UNITED STATES
Acerbic critic dies at 86
Mr. Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died. He was 86. He died on Sunday of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said. Blackwell, born Richard Sylvan Selzer, was a little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek criticism of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960. For Blackwell Madonna was “The Bare-Bottomed Bore of Babylon” and Barbra Streisand “looks like a masculine Bride of Frankenstein.” He recounted in his autobiography, From Rags to Bitches, a troubled, poverty-ridden childhood in which he was variously a truant, thief and prostitute.
■COLOMBIA
Warlord’s son murdered
Police say the son of a warlord extradited to the US on drug charges has been murdered. Authorities say assailants shot and killed 32-year-old Vladimir Vanoy on Sunday at the gate to his condominium outside Bogota. Ramiro “Cuco” Vanoy is Validmir’s father. He was extradited to the US in May with 13 other far-right warlords. A Miami judge earlier this month sentenced him to 24 years in prison on drug-trafficking charges. The newspaper El Tiempo quoted a top prosecutor as saying “Cuco” Vanoy would cooperate with investigations into crimes associated with far-right militias.
■CUBA
Raul Castro opens cathedral
President Raul Castro personally opened a new Russian-Orthodox cathedral on Sunday in Havana, underscoring new importance attached to Cuban-Russian relations. Russian Ambassador Mikhail Kamynin said the cathedral was “a symbol of relations between the two nations and showed how much the two countries had changed.” There are only a few thousand followers of the Russian-Orthodox faith who live in Havana, most of them Russian nationals who married Cubans during the Cold War era when the two countries were close allies.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Pilot may have been drunk
An airline pilot has been arrested on a passenger plane at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of being above the legal alcohol limit, police said yesterday. Officers boarded a United Airlines plane at Terminal One on Sunday and arrested the 44-year-old under transport safety laws. The pilot, who has not been named, was given police bail to Jan. 16 next year, pending further inquiries. A United Airlines spokeswoman said he has been suspended from duties. The Sun newspaper said it happened on flight 955, a Boeing 777 bound for San Francisco with hundreds of passengers.
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
‘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
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
RSS