■HONG KONG
Disneyland plans revealed
Disney’s plans to expand its Disneyland park include the construction of three new themed areas, including one with rides based on the animated Toy Story films, a newspaper reported yesterday. Work on the four-year, HK$3.63 billion (US$465.4 million) expansion was set to start in December once detailed approval to the plans has been given by the Hong Kong government, the South China Morning Post said. The three new areas — the two others are called Grizzly Trail and Mystic Point — are to increase the size of the park by 23 percent.
■AUSTRALIA
Court in landmark ruling
A court ruled yesterday that a quadriplegic man who has begged to be allowed to die has the right to order his carers to stop feeding him. In a landmark decision, Western Australia’s chief judge Wayne Martin said the Brightwater Care Group would not be criminally responsible if it stopped feeding and hydrating severely paralyzed Christian Rossiter, 49. Martin said Rossiter had the right to direct his own treatment, and that food and water “should not be administered against his wishes.” The ruling sets a legal precedent in the nation, where assisting someone to take their own life is a crime punishable by life in prison in some states.
■AUSTRALIA
US doctor’s court date set
A trial date has been set for a US doctor charged with manslaughter in the deaths of three patients at a rural hospital. The Queensland State Supreme Court yesterday scheduled Jayant Patel’s trial for March 22 next year. Patel is charged with three counts of manslaughter and two counts of grievous bodily harm. The charges relate to his job as director of surgery between 2003 and 2005 at a state-run hospital in Bundaberg, 370km north of Brisbane. Prosecutors say Patel showed a pattern of negligence by performing surgeries he’d been banned from undertaking in the US, misdiagnosing patients and using sloppy surgical techniques.
■HONG KONG
Party lists ‘black spots’
The territory’s largest political party has compiled a list of escalators across the city where women are vulnerable to unwittingly exposing themselves to Peeping Toms, a report said yesterday. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong released the study in response to the sharp increase in people taking indecent photos of women using mobile phones, the South China Morning Post reported. The list of mainly shopping centers was compiled by party members who went to the locations to confirm that women were vulnerable. The researchers took “wide-angle” pictures of the “black spots,” the Post said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Exorcism family escape jail
Five siblings escaped jail yesterday after being found guilty of the manslaughter of their niece during a Maori exorcism ceremony. Janet Moses, a 22-year-old mother of two, died from drowning in October 2007 after members of her extended family forced water down her throat during a ceremony to lift a curse known as a makutu. The High Court in Wellington imposed a curfew order and work sentences on the five, ranging in age from 36 to 52, although prosecutors had sought prison sentences. Justice Simon France said Moses’ death did not occur because of “fanatical beliefs.” “Makutu did not kill her. She drowned,” he said. “It is undoubted that, at some stage, hysteria entered the room.”
■SPAIN
‘Dead’ man returns
The only trace police divers found of businessman Jenaro Jimenez Hernandez was a single size 11 flipper. For more than a year, his family were convinced he had died in an accident while spearfishing off Spain’s Atlantic coast. But rumors in the Andalucian city of Cadiz persisted that Jimenez had faked his own death and fled abroad to escape heavy debts. Early on Wednesday morning, 16 months after he disappeared, the gossip was proved correct: Jimenez, 42, was arrested in Madrid on suspicion of fraud after stepping off a plane from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Much to the shock of his wife, Anabel, who was eight months pregnant when her husband went missing, police believe he had been hiding in Paraguay all the time. Although the idea he was dead was never officially rejected, an international arrest warrant was issued after he disappeared on April 13 last year. A month ago Jimenez contacted a close friend in Spain to say he planned to return home and hand himself in. Police were waiting for him when he arrived, looking tired, at Madrid’s Barajas airport.
■ETHIOPIA
Singer released from jail
The country’s most popular singer, Teddy Afro, was freed early from prison on Thursday after serving 18 months of a two-year sentence for hit-and-run manslaughter. The performer, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun, was found guilty of killing an 18-year-old homeless man passed out on a road while driving his BMW in the capital Addis Ababa in 2007. Lawyers said he was freed early because of good behavior. “I would like to express my respect and gratitude to all the people of our country,” Afro told state TV after his release. “I was able to meet many good people in prison, from the lowest-ranking policemen to the highest administrator. I had a nice time. My relations with other prisoners were also good.”
■GERMANY
Merkel poster fuels debate
Debate is raging over whether a campaign poster using a now infamous photograph of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a deep-cut evening gown is cleverly ironic or downright tacky. However you see it, the poster is adding some spice to what is shaping up to be an otherwise dull campaign leading up to Sept. 27 German parliamentary elections. The poster shows a picture of Christian Democrat candidate Vera Lengsfeld, 57, in a low-cut evening gown alongside last year’s well-known photo of Merkel, the party leader, taken at her appearance at the gala opening of Oslo’s opera house. “We have more to offer,” reads the slogan under the revealing photos of the two women’s chests — a twist on the Christian Democrats official slogan, “We have the power.”
■GERMANY
Signed ‘Mein Kampf’ sold
More than 80 years after it was first published — and later outlawed — in Germany, a signed copy of Adolf Hitler’s infamous manifesto Mein Kampf was sold on Thursday for US$34,900. The semi-autobiographical work outlining Hitler’s anti-Semitic ideology was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder at an auction in the town of Ludlow in western England. Written in 1924 while Hitler was serving a four-year prison term in Bavaria, the book was first published in 1926. A spokesman from Mullock’s Auctioneers said he believed the second-edition book to be a prepublication copy given by Hitler to a fellow inmate in 1925, making it a “highly prized article.” The value of the book lies in its inscription because signed copies of Mein Kampf are unusual, he said.
■MEXICO
Bishop held in traffic fatality
One person is dead and five injured after a Roman Catholic bishop apparently lost control of his vehicle and ran them over. Police in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz say Bishop Eduardo Patino Leal has been detained in the town of Huatusco. They say he was driving a sport utility vehicle at a high rate of speed on Thursday when he lost control. The vehicle hit a parked car and a light pole before going up on a sidewalk. The victims were all Indian street vendors who were on the sidewalk.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted over ‘fight club’
A jury in Corpus Christi, Texas, has found a former employee of a state-run living center for the developmentally disabled guilty of causing injury to a disabled person in a high-profile “fight club” case. Jesse Salazar, 26, was charged with involvement with the orchestration of late-night fights among residents of the state facility for the developmentally disabled. Salazar was the first of six former employees charged in the case to stand trial. He could face two to 10 years in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Prison denies relationship
Arkansas prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler says allegations that a death-row guard had a romantic relationship with an inmate were determined to be “unfounded.” The guard, Danita Williams, on Thursday denied claims that the inmate committed a sexual act in her presence and passed her love letters. Tyler said investigators found no love letters or any evidence proving a romantic relationship between the two. Prison officials fired Williams on July 7 for passing goods between the death-row inmate and another inmate. An internal report also raised anonymous allegations of a sexual relationship between Williams and the inmate.
■MEXICO
Convictions overturned
Twenty men were released from prison on Thursday after their sentences in the 1997 massacre of 45 Indian villagers in southern Chiapas state were overturned by the Supreme Court. The men proclaimed their innocence, after the court ruled that prosecutors used illegally obtained evidence in their convictions. New trials were ordered for six other prisoners. “We were in prison for almost 12 years, for a crime that we didn’t commit,” said Antonio Ruiz Perez, one of the 20 Tzotzil Indians. “That is almost 12 years they robbed from our lives, and separated us from our families.” Chiapas Interior Secretary Noe Castanon said the men would be relocated away from their home village near the massacre site to avoid tensions with survivors and their families. The Acteal victims were supporters of the Zapatista rebels, and the men convicted in the slayings were from a neighboring pro-government hamlet that had political and territorial disputes with the victims.
■UNITED STATES
Drugs found in toothbrush
Authorities say actor Michael Douglas’ son has been jailed after his girlfriend allegedly tried to smuggle drugs to him inside an electric toothbrush while he was under house arrest in New York City. Cameron Douglas, 30, was arrested last month at a Manhattan hotel on charges he trafficked large quantities of methamphetamine. He was put under house arrest at his mother’s apartment. Federal investigators claim that on Monday, girlfriend Kelly Sott delivered an electric toothbrush to the apartment. They later discovered 19 containers of heroin inside of it. Sott has been arrested and it being held in a federal jail.
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS