■AUSTRALIA
Teen asks that probe end
A teenager whose shock on-air revelation she had been raped prompted the suspension of a hit radio show has asked police to drop their investigation into the crime, officials said yesterday. Top DJ Kyle Sandilands was also sacked as a judge on the Australian Idol reality TV show after the 14-year-old girl, who was strapped to a lie detector and being questioned by her mother, said she was raped at the age of 12. Police said they had interviewed the teenager following her claim and she gave a statement about the alleged crime, but asked them not to pursue the case.
■AUSTRALIA
Sam the koala dies
Sam the koala, who gained worldwide fame and sympathy when she was rescued during devastating wildfires this year, died yesterday during an operation meant to save her from a life-threatening disease. The four-year-old koala had developed cysts associated with urogenital chlamydiosis, which affects up to 50 percent of the country’s koala population.
■MALAYSIA
Man jailed for raping wife
A man who forced his wife to have sex with him has been sentenced to the maximum five years in jail, in the country’s first successful prosecution under a new law against marital rape. Prosecutor Law Chin How said the man was sentenced in a sessions court in eastern Pahang state on Wednesday. He said the case was the first in the country under a 2007 law that makes it illegal for a husband to cause “fear of death or hurt to his wife ... to have sexual intercourse … We asked for a heavy sentence. First of all to protect women ... and to give others encouragement to stand up,” he said yesterday.
■SOUTH KOREA
Hypnotist fails on first date
A hypnotist has been fined for stealing a kiss on a blind date with a woman he thought he had successfully put in a trance, news reports said yesterday. The 32-year-old man suggested hypnotizing his 27-year-old date during their first meeting arranged by a matchmaking agency in August last year, the Dong-a Ilbo said. The woman was eventually persuaded and the hypnotist chanted: “Black hole! You will plunge deeper into a trance. You will feel thrilled all over your body and if my hand touches your body, you will feel intense pleasure.” When the man thought his technique had worked, he went to kiss her. But the woman was fully alert and filed accusations that he had sexually harassed her, the reports said.
■PAKISTAN
Bus plunges into river
Up to 35 people, mainly soldiers, were killed when a bus skidded off a road and plunged into a river near a popular tourist spot, police and a bus company official said yesterday. The bus, which started its journey late Tuesday from Rawalpindi, a garrison city adjoining Islamabad, to the northern town of Skardu fell into the Indus river early yesterday, bus company manager Mohammad Hasan said.
■CHINA
Dogs may have to walk
Shanghai’s pampered pooches may soon be forced to walk under a new set of proposed laws, which include banning dogs from riding on the bus or subway, state media reported yesterday. As Shanghai’s middle class grows, the number of pet dogs is also swelling, with police issuing 164,000 new dog licenses last year, and the number of unregistered dogs believed to be greater, the Shanghai Daily reported. Some Shanghai dogs’ paws barely touch the ground.
■GERMANY
War child given citizenship
More than six decades after his birth, retiree Daniel Rouxel, the son of a French mother and a German Wehrmacht officer, was on Wednesday granted German citizenship and a measure of dignity. After a lifetime of humiliation at the hands of a population ashamed of France’s wartime occupation, the 66-year-old said that by becoming a dual French-German national he finally had a legitimate identity. Rouxel was born in Paris in 1943 during the World War II occupation, when his mother was working in the canteen of the German airbase in the Brittany town of Pleurtuit where his father, Lieutenant Otto Ammon, was stationed. Ammon was killed during the Allied liberation of France and after the war, when his mother could no longer cope with raising him, Rouxel was taken on by his grandmother and moved to a small and unwelcoming Breton village.
■SWITZERLAND
Cheese riddle solved
Swiss cheese is supposed to have holes in it, not bits of metal. But what to do when you’ve lost a spring and you’re pretty sure it’s in one of the expensive cheeses you planned to sell? Why, trundle them over to airport security. The Bern-Belp Airport near the capital says it allowed a local cheesemaker to run seven cheese wheels through an X-ray machine normally reserved for spotting bombs in luggage. Failure to find the spring would have forced the cheesemaker to forgo selling the hweels, each worth hundreds of dollars. The airport said the machine spotted the spring, allowing it to be extracted and saving Tuesday’s work for the farm.
■ISRAEL
Horse tramples car
A horse took to the highway and trampled an oncoming car in an encounter captured on video by a group of tourists in the north. The tourists began filming when three horses ran onto the highway and began to canter alongside their car, but the scene took a bizarre turn when an oncoming car came along. The first two horses weaved out of the sedan’s path, but the third took it head-on, smashing through its windshield with its hooves before leaping over it and continuing on its way. The video captured the impact as well as the passengers calling “Oh God” and “Whoa.” Israel’s Channel 2 TV showed the video on Tuesday and said the driver suffered minor cuts from smashed glass and the horse was lightly injured.
■FRANCE
Sarkozy sent bullet letter
Authorities intercepted a threatening letter containing a large-caliber hunting bullet addressed to President Nicolas Sarkozy, officials said on Wednesday. Police have opened an investigation after the letter was discovered on Tuesday in a mail sorting station in Montpellier. The threat appears to be the latest in a series of warnings sent to right-wing personalities in recent years, apparently by a lone left-wing extremist or a group, investigators said. In the letter, the author warns the “old guard” in Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party that an “accident” might befall them.
■GERMANY
Sunny holidays guaranteed
German flag carrier Lufthansa is offering holidaymakers compensation if their hoped-for sun-drenched summer holiday is washed out, the company said on Wednesday. Sun worshippers can claim 20 euros (US$29) for every rainy day, up to a maximum of 200 euros, the firm said. Lufthansa defines a rainy day as one during which at least 5mm of rain per square meter falls. The offer applies to 36 European and worldwide destinations.
■BRAZIL
Rubbish returns to Britain
A ship loaded with 1,600 tonnes of rubbish set sail on Wednesday to return the rotting cargo to Britain from Brazil, where it had been shipped falsely declared as plastic for recycling. Eighty-nine containers packed with trash were hoisted onto the freighter MSC Oriane. The incident sparked public anger and prompted President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to criticize Britain and developed nations for urging higher environmental standards while using developing nations as garbage dumps. Criminal investigations are under way in Britain and Brazil to discover how the waste came to be shipped. Brazil has fined firms that imported or handled the waste.
■UNITED STATES
Woman tried to free pit bull
A woman was sentenced to 45 days in jail for trying to spring her pit bull from a Wyoming animal shelter. Jessica Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to commit misdemeanor property destruction and criminal entry, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. Johnson told a judge her dog had been unfairly classified as a vicious animal and she was afraid it would be killed.
■CANADA
Penis enlarger made of gold
A Saudi businessman has purchased a solid 18-carat gold penis enlarger worth nearly US$50,000. X4 Labs, a manufacturer of medical devices, received the request and recruited a Montreal jeweler to help with its design. The penis enlarger is being encrusted with diamonds and rubies and is to be delivered by armored car in October, said Rick Oh, X4 Labs co-owner. Saudi law bans the import of sex toys, but the company says the product is a medical device. “It’s an unusual request,” Oh said. “We didn’t take it seriously at first [until] he sent us a deposit.” “Obviously, there were giggles initially when we presented our project to a jeweler.”
■UNITED STATES
Passenger operates train
A Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train carrying nearly 400 riders to New York during the morning rush on July 2, and both men now face criminal charges, authorities said on Wednesday. The engineer, Ronald Cabrera, 40, and the passenger, William Kutsch, 47, surrendered to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police Department on Wednesday and have been charged with reckless endangerment in the second degree, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Cabrera, a 16-year veteran of the railroad, has also been charged with official misconduct, also a misdemeanor. Kutsch does not have a train engineer’s license.
■MEXICO
Attacks leave 17 dead
Attacks left 17 dead, including five youths in Ciudad Juarez, police said on Wednesday. The bodies of the youths were found in a van early on Wednesday, the local security ministry said. Police said they found three other bodies overnight on Tuesday in another van, also in Ciudad Juarez. Nine others died in separate attacks in the city and three other towns in Chihuahua state.
■IRAQ
Girl jailed for bomb plan
A judge has sentenced a teenage girl to seven-and-a-half years in prison for attempting to blow herself up at a police checkpoint northeast of Baghdad. Provincial Judge Zaid Khalaf said he handed down the sentence to Rania Ibrahim on Sunday. Ibrahim was 15 when she was caught wearing a suicide vest as she approached a checkpoint in Diyala last year.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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
RSS