■HONG KONG
Police to go green
Hong Kong is set to become the second place in the world after Japan to use electric police patrol cars when the first batch enters service later this year, a media report said yesterday. Mitsubishi will initially supply 10 of its iMiEV cars to the territory’s government with three earmarked for police use, the South China Morning Post newspaper said. The others will be used by government departments and agencies. The car, which has zero emissions by using a lithium-ion battery and an electric motor, has a top speed of 130kph and can travel 160km after an eight-hour charge using a household plug.
■AUSTRALIA
Wheel falls off airliner
A nose wheel fell off a Boeing 737 belonging to budget airline Virgin Blue while it was taxiing for takeoff at Melbourne Airport, news reports said yesterday. Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association secretary Steve Purvinas said that Saturday’s incident showed the need for safety checks before all flights. A ground engineer noticed the lost wheel and alerted the pilot. Virgin Blue said it had checked all 737s.
■AUSTRALIA
Man loses it over late lunch
A court has jailed a man who set fire to his own house in a fit of anger after his wife failed to make him lunch, a report said yesterday. Rajah Theivendradas, 54, was jailed for four years over the incident in which he poured petrol on a staircase and set it alight, AAP news agency reported. His wife and daughters, aged 21 and 16, suffered superficial burns as they escaped through the flames, the report said. The court heard Theivendradas had been drinking heavily the day before the incident in May last year and had also had a heated row with one of his daughters.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Lifeguards rescue 40 people
Lifeguards say a dramatic rescue operation saved dozens of children after a sandbank collapsed and plunged 40 people into freezing waters in Wales on Saturday. Three lifeguards led efforts to rescue 36 children and four adults who fell into the sea when the banking was washed away in Tenby. Coast guard officials said on Sunday that the volunteer lifeguards had undoubtedly saved lives. The group had been on a walk, but became stranded on a sandbank that is often swept away as the tide comes in. An air ambulance and two ambulance crews treated several of the group for minor injuries.
■UNITED STATES
Famous name a hindrance
Sharing a name with someone who lives in your area isn’t usually a big deal — unless your name is Neil Armstrong. Thirty-eight-year-old Neil Allen Armstrong, a financial services professional from Symmes Township in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, says he constantly gets calls and packages from autograph seekers, school children and reporters. He tries to explain he’s not the 78-year-old Neil Armstrong who was the first man to walk on the moon and lives in nearby Indian Hills. But people don’t always believe him. Armstrong, the non-astronaut, says he has never met his namesake but would welcome the opportunity.
■RUSSIA
Drunk driver kills four
Four people were killed when a drunk driver plowed into a store in Perm, the Interfax news agency reported yesterday, citing local traffic police. “On Sunday evening the driver of a Mitsubishi car, in a state of alcoholic intoxication, lost control and collided with a store in Perm,” a traffic police spokesman was quoted as saying. The car hit three women and two six-month-old babies, he said. One of the babies, one of the women and two passengers from the vehicle died, while the other victims as well as the driver were admitted to hospital with injuries, Interfax reported.
■ITALY
Five hurt in vigilante clash
At least five people were injured and two arrested after clashes between left and right-wing citizens’ patrols, reviving a controversy over government plans to use the patrols to back up security forces. The fighting occurred late on Saturday in the town of Massa, in Tuscany, when a group of youths called the “Antifascist Proletariat Patrol” took to the streets against the right-wing “SSS,” which has begun patrols. A scuffle broke out between the rival groups and police officers who intervened, leaving at least five people injured, police said. Following the arrest of two of their leaders, members of the left-wing group blocked Massa station for two hours on Sunday and held a demonstration outside police headquarters.
■UNITED STATES
Bird song watchers watched
For years, an unusual event has been held at a Queens park in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of New York City on Sunday afternoons with scant attention from outsiders. Birds whistle songs at each other, as people watch — and keep count. The first bird to tweet a certain number of songs is considered the winner. The bird singing races at the park have drawn increased scrutiny recently from law enforcement, as federal officials target illegal smuggling of finches from Guyana. Authorities also suspect the men bet on the races, which would be illegal. The people who flock to the races, mostly Guyanese immigrants, argue that it is simply a harmless cultural past time.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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