■ PAPUA NEW GUINEA
13-year-old tips off police
Two bank robbers were shot dead after the manager’s quick-thinking 13-year-old daughter raised the alarm by sending a mobile phone text message, police said yesterday. An armed gang of six men in security guard uniforms took the bank manager’s family hostage at their home in West New Britain Province, a central island region in the Pacific nation, on Sunday night. On Monday morning, half the gang took the manager with them and ordered him at gunpoint to unlock the safe, police said. While guarded by other members of the gang at home, the daughter managed to send an SOS text message to local police, West New Britain police commander Richard Mulou told the Post-Courier newspaper.
■AFGHANISTAN
UN: 350 women in jail
The country has some 12,500 prisoners, including 350 women, many of whom are being detained for “moral crimes” such as running away from home, the UN said on Monday. “In 2001 in this country, there were around 600 prisoners and today they are around 12,500 — 350 of them are women,” Christine Oguz, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul.
■INDIA
Bomb explodes on train
A bomb exploded in a train coach in the insurgency-hit northeast yesterday, killing at least two people and injuring another 30, a state government official said. The explosion occurred shortly after the train arrived at Diphu railroad station, about 300km south of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, said District Magistrate M.C. Sahu. The train was heading from Lumding in central Assam to the eastern commercial hub of Tinsukhia, Sahu said. All the 30 wounded have been hospitalized, three of them in critical condition, he said.
■AUSTRALIA
Bad backs may stop toads
It seems a bad back might be the only thing that can stop the relentless spread of the nation’s poisonous cane toads, which are killing native animals as they hop across the nation, researchers say. Now an Australian scientist says evolution has seen the biggest and fastest cane toads interbreed, resulting in arthritis and bad backs, which could slow them down.
■HONG KONG
Astronaut tickets go fast
All 21,000 tickets to see three Chinese astronauts who performed the country’s first spacewalk were snapped up in a matter of hours yesterday. Thousands of people queued up at 21 distribution outlets to get the free tickets for the appearance by the astronauts at the Hong Kong Stadium on Sunday. The astronauts are due to fly into the city on Friday for a four-day visit, after which they will go to the gambling resort of Macau. The spacewalk by Zhai Zhigang (翟志剛), Liu Boming (劉伯明) and Jing Haipeng (景海鵬) in September generated patriotic fervor that Beijing appears keen to capitalize on.
■SINGAPORE
Reporter gets jail for drugs
A court sentenced Australian TV reporter Peter Lloyd yesterday to 10 months in jail for consumption and possession of methamphetamine. Judge Hamidah Ibrahim sentenced Lloyd to eight-month terms for convictions on consumption and possession, which Lloyd may serve concurrently. Ibrahim also added a two-month term for possession of a drug utensil. Lloyd, 41, pleaded guilty to the three charges after the government dropped drug trafficking counts.
■NETHERLANDS
Organ donors get discounts
Health care insurers are to give a discount to clients who are registered as organ donors, reports said on Monday. Four major health insurers said they would give a 120 euro discount (US$152) on the annual fee for basic health insurance, which will be 1,200 euros for adults next year. In November, Dutch broadcaster BNN won a US Emmy award for its television program The Great Donor Show, aired in May last year. In the hoax show, kidney patients tried to win a transplant to put the problem of organ shortages on the agenda.
■NETHERLANDS
Ex-UN employee to be tried
A former spokeswoman for the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes court will stand trial before her former employer in February for allegedly divulging confidential information in the trial of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the court said on Monday. Florence Hartmann, a French national, stands accused of contempt before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Hartmann, the spokeswoman of former ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte, stands accused of disclosing information about confidential appeal chamber decisions in a book.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Six sacked in toddler death
A local authority responsible for a toddler who died of abuse suspended six members of staff on Monday after a damning report into the case. The 17-month-old boy, known only as Baby P, died last year, despite being on the child protection register and being seen by social workers 60 times. The boy’s mother pleaded guilty and her boyfriend and a lodger have been convicted of charges relating to the death. Councilor Lorna Reith, deputy leader of Haringey Council, confirmed a director, a deputy director, a senior team manager and three social workers had been suspended on full pay.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bond car sold at auction
The classic white Lotus sports car driven by Roger Moore in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was sold at auction in London on Monday for US$165,900. Bonhams auctioneers said the 1976 Lotus Esprit, which was driven on land and under water in the 1977 film, was bought by a private US collector who was bidding by telephone.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Mother loses libel case
A woman lost a libel case on Monday against her daughter, a lawyer who wrote a book accusing her mother of childhood abuse that drove her to attempt suicide. In Ugly, 51-year-old Constance Briscoe accused her mother of cutting her deliberately and beating her for wetting the bed. Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, disputed the claims. The court action was rejected by London’s High Court.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sex tops list of hobbies
People may be tightening their belts amid the credit crunch, but their favorite free leisure activity involves whipping off their clothes, a poll showed on Monday. In the YouGov Web poll, 37 percent of respondents ranked sex at the top of their list of free activities. That was more than gossiping with friends (18 percent), window shopping (9 percent) and going to a museum (6 percent). “During the credit crunch our famed British upper lip might not be as stiff as before but other parts still are,” said Lisa Power, head of policy at the Terrence Higgins Trust, which commissioned the poll.
■ VENEZUELA
Lawyer jailed over suitcase
A lawyer dispatched by President Hugo Chavez’s government to help cover up a cash suitcase scandal was handed a two-year prison sentence on Monday by a US judge who commended his prompt guilty plea and testimony against others. US District Judge Joan Lenard imposed the sentence on Moises Maionica in Miami, Florida, after prosecutors recommended prison time even as they lauded his willingness to cooperate. The case involved the Miami cover-up of a suitcase stuffed with nearly US$800,000 in Venezuelan oil money intercepted at an Argentine airport in August last year.
■MEXICO
Prize for women launched
Three Nobel laureates on Monday threw their support behind a prize to be awarded to Spanish-language women writers 35 or younger living in the US or Mexico. Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Colombia, Toni Morrison from the US and Seamus Heaney from Ireland offered their support for the Aura Estrada Prize in memory of a Mexican writer who died last year at age 30. The first Aura Estrada Prize will be awarded at the Guadalajara Book Fair next year. The award targets “women 35 years old or younger who are beginning their literary career and live in Mexico or in the United States, writing a fiction or non-fiction essay, short story or novel in Spanish,” Mexican writer Gabriela Jauregui said.
■MEXICO
Soldier replaces police chief
Tijuana’s anti-corruption police chief was fired and replaced with an army officer on Monday, following three days of violence that left 37 people dead in this border city plagued by warring drug gangs. Mayor Jorge Ramos’ office said in a statement that putting army officers in charge would help “regain security” in Tijuana, where weekend attacks included nine beheadings and the death of four children caught in shootouts.
■UNITED STATES
Prostitute raffle probed
An Ohio State University academic adviser and a real estate agent held a US$10-a-ticket raffle that offered an evening with a prostitute who is also a child sex-abuse caseworker, police said. Christopher Johnson, 33, an academic adviser at the School of Nursing in Columbus, organized the raffle through a Craigslist chat board, police said. Real estate agent Rusty Blades, 42, held the invitation-only raffle at his house in October. Both Johnson and Blades were charged with promoting prostitution. A university spokesman said Johnson was placed on unpaid leave and that the school would investigate whether he improperly used his computer.
■PERU
Riots follow soccer match
Soccer fans angered by their team’s elimination from Peru’s second-division playoff stormed the pitch and clashed with police in riots that reportedly injured at least 100 people. Businesses were also vandalized and three police cars were destroyed late on Sunday in Huamanga, capital of southern Ayacucho Province, officials said on Monday. Fans at the Cumana Stadium started the riots after visiting Sport Huancayo eliminated Sport Huamanga from the Copa Peru tournament 5-4 on aggregate. Police tried to control the crowd by launching tear gas into the stands, but the fans then stormed the field and tried to attack the Huancayo players and referee Alejandro Villanueva. Villanueva and the players took refuge in the locker rooms for the duration of the riots, and were then escorted by police out of the stadium.
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS