■SINGAPORE
Court sentences teacher
A court on Friday sentenced a teacher to six weeks in jail for maid abuse, media reports said. Mat Nooh Sajari, 38, was found guilty of abusing her 33-year-old maid, identified as Ms Sulastri, on several occasions in February 2007, but he appealed the verdict and was released on bail of S$10,000 (US$6,845). Mat Nooh, a father of two, was found guilty of kicking the maid in the belly, slapping her for not preparing curry puffs properly and throwing a chair, pot lid and cup at her, the online edition of the Straits Times newspaper reported. The maid, who suffered injuries to her right arm and toes, eventually fled the apartment and reported the abuse to the police.
■VIETNAM
Fetuses’ sex a secret
Doctors who reveal the sex of a fetus to parents could lose their licenses, state media reported yesterday. The proposal by the Ministry of Health is designed to address an imbalance in the number of boys to girls, said Duong Quoc Trong, deputy head of the General Department of Population and Family Planning. He was quoted by Vietnam News. In May the UN Population Fund noted a steadily increasing sex ratio at birth in the country. The ratio is now 112 boys born for every 100 girls, compared with a usual ratio of 105 or 106 boys without sex selection, it said. Trong said it would not be easy to detect and punish doctors who reveal the sex of a fetus after an ultrasound, because they may just give the parents a verbal report and not make a written record.
■INDONESIA
Police find Afghan migrants
Authorities have found 15 of the 74 Afghan migrants who went missing in treacherous waters en route to Australia, police said yesterday. The asylum seekers, who have been missing since Wednesday, are being held by police on Sumbawa island, Bima city police chief Tjatur Abrianto said. He said that the migrants’ boat had been damaged and they had reached the coast through the help of local fishermen. The Indonesian navy had been searching for the boat after being told it had gone missing by Australian police.
■THAILAND
Swine flu likely to kill 1,200
Up to 1,200 people are likely to die from swine flu over the next three years, when the virus is expected to infect almost half the population, media reports said yesterday. Prasert Thingcharoen, chairman of the Public Health Ministry’s subcommittee overseeing the outbreak of the A(H1N1) strain of the flu, said the virus was likely to infect up to 30 million of the country’s 65 million people as it runs its course over the next one to three years, of whom 30,000 to 130,000 would show symptoms and 1,200 might die, the Bangkok Post reported.
■MALAYSIA
Alleged smugglers charged
Two men were charged with the trafficking of two Myanmar refugees, it was reported yesterday, the first such case in the country of people smuggling for the purposes of “forced labor.” Second-hand goods trader Azhar Yusof, 32, and self-employed Mohamad Nazeri Mat Hussein, 50, appeared separately in court on Friday, the New Straits Times reported. The two Malaysians, who allegedy made 1,500 ringgit (US$419) in each deal, face up to 20 years in jail and a fine of 500,000 ringgit if convicted. Both denied the charges. Prosecutor Mohamad Dusuki Mokhtar said they were believed to be part of a human trafficking syndicate.
■BULGARIA
Liquid cocaine seized
Customs officers seized a shipment of liquid cocaine disguised as wine. The Customs Agency said 714 liters of liquid cocaine concentrate was hidden in 1,020 wine bottles found during a search of a ship at Varna port. The seizure was made on Friday after a six-month joint operation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The illegal shipment was loaded in Bolivia and later moved onto a Europe-bound ship at the Chilean port city of Arica, the agency said in a statement.
■SLOVENIA
Court backs gay couples
The country’s highest court has ruled that a law allowing gay couples to register their partnerships is discriminatory because it keeps partners from inheriting each other’s property. The Constitutional Court agreed in a ruling published on Friday with a gay couple who argued that the law’s provisions on inheritance differ from those applied to heterosexual partners. The law allows same-sex partners to inherit only part of their joint assets and the surviving partner is not automatically considered an heir. The parliament has six months to change the law. Until then, gay couples will enjoy the same inheritance rights as married couples.
■RUSSIA
No Putin in ‘South Park’
A TV channel has reportedly cut a segment of the ribald US cartoon comedy South Park that appeared to mock Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The channel “2X2” reportedly cut material from the show that aired on Tuesday, portraying Putin as a greedy and desperate leader — a decision that prompted furious discussion on blogs. It was unclear whether the decision, involving an episode that originally aired in the US in 2005, was made by channel executives or regulators. Channel executives could not be reached for comment on Friday. The channel has been threatened with closure at least twice before for broadcasting what material regulators deem extremist.
■IRAN
US calls for releases
A US government agency is demanding that Tehran free seven Baha’i prisoners rather than submit them to trials on charges of spying for Israel and religious charges. The Commission on International Religious Freedom is responding to a plea from Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who spent almost four months in an Iranian jail and was convicted of spying for the US, then expelled. Saberi said two of the Baha’is were her cellmates. In her letter to the commission, released on Thursday, Saberi said intercession on behalf of the Baha’is would show Tehran that “the Iranian people’s human rights are a matter of international concern.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Patient dies of swine flu
A patient at a hospital in southern England has become the first person in Britain without underlying health problems to die from swine flu, officials said on Friday. The patient died at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospital in Essex, health authorities said, adding the individual’s family had requested that no further details be released. Fourteen other people have died in Britain after contracting swine flu, but they all had underlying health problems. Although the nature of these conditions has not been revealed, Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson has said people who suffer breathing problems or are clinically obese are at high risk.
■CANADA
‘United Breaks Guitars’
An irked musician who accused United Airlines of breaking his prized guitar has taken his revenge, writing a song that has become an Internet hit and a public relations disaster for the airline. Dave Carroll composed United Breaks Guitars and posted it on YouTube after he said the airline damaged his treasured Taylor acoustic at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last year. After months of trying to get the airline to pay compensation and help repair the instrument, worth C$3,500 (US$3000), Carroll changed tack. “I had this sort of epiphany,” he told CBC, “I’m going to write ... songs about your airlines and I’m going to put them on YouTube and talk about my experience.” On Thursday, United Breaks Guitars had nearly half a million views on YouTube and had been covered by major news networks in Canada and the US.
■UNITED STATES
Bronze eagles returned
Two bronze eagles stolen from Central Park more than 30 years ago by a drug dealer who used them to store his stash are finally back at home. Prosecutors say the statues were stolen from the City Employees War Memorial at the Mall in the mid-1970s. They say a drug dealer hid narcotics and money in the statues and later sold the bronze eagles to a client for US$200.
■UNITED STATES
Man indicted for murders
A Kansas City, Missouri, man has been indicted in the March killing of his ex-girlfriend, her boyfriend and her two young nephews. Their bodies were found in an apartment with the woman’s toddler wandering among the corpses. Gevante Anderson, 24, is charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond. Anderson’s home had been searched and he spoke with police shortly after the killings, but he wasn’t charged until Friday.
■UNITED STATES
Contempt costs 14 years
A Pennsylvania lawyer whose 14 years in jail are apparently a record in a US civil contempt case was ordered released from prison on Friday. Beatty Chadwick has been jailed in suburban Philadelphia since 1995 for a charge stemming from a contentious divorce. “He’ll be home in time for the Phillies game,” said Chadwick’s attorney, Michael Malloy. The septuagenarian Chadwick was jailed in November 2004, accused of hiding US$2.5 million from his ex-wife during divorce proceedings. Chadwick maintained he lost the money in bad investments. In 2006, before the economic downturn, experts estimated the money would be worth more than US$8 million. After repeated attempts to have himself freed, Chadwick’s request was granted by Delaware County Judge Joseph Cronin, who determined his continued incarceration had lost its coercive effect and would not result in him turning over the money. The first thing Chadwick wanted to do upon his release was to get a burger and a beer, Malloy said.
■UNITED STATES
Cemetery resells plots
Authorities are closing the grounds of a historic black cemetery near Chicago where four employees are accused of digging up bodies to resell plots after more bones were found on the property. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said on Friday that families can no longer wander through Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip to check loved ones’ graves because more of its 60.7 hectares are now considered a crime scene. Dart says law enforcement and families alike have found more bones while walking around the cemetery.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
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