■BANGLADESH
Ferry capsizes, 15 die
A ferry packed with people going home for an Islamic festival capsized as they disembarked at a terminal in the south, leaving at least 15 dead and scores missing, authorities said yesterday. Some of the missing were feared trapped inside the ferry, local police officer Saiful Islam said. The triple-deck ferry, M.V. Coco, was traveling late on Friday from Dhaka to the coastal town of Bhola and was crowded with people heading home to celebrate the Eid-ul-Azha festival, he said. It tipped and its rear portion sank in the Tetulia River as many passengers scrambled to disembark at a terminal near Bhola, 104km south of Dhaka, witnesses said. It was unclear how many people were on board when the boat capsized.
■JAPAN
Spy satellite launched
The government yesterday launched a next-generation spy satellite as part of efforts to beef up its surveillance system against the threat of North Korea’s missiles, officials said. An H-2A rocket carrying the nation’s No. 3 Information Gathering Satellite was launched yesterday morning from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima island in the southwest, the officials said. The government-run satellite will replace the first model, with an advanced optical device to distinguish objects on the ground with a resolution of 60cm, the officials and local media said. The new satellite will undergo a performance trial for about three months before starting fully fledged operations, Kyodo News reported.
■CHINA
Zimbabwean plane crashes
Three people died and four others were injured after a Zimbabwean cargo plane caught fire at Shanghai Pudong international airport yesterday morning, local media reported. The plane was preparing for takeoff when it veered off the runway and caught fire, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The deceased and injured were foreign staff members, the report said. There were reports that the plane had traveled 1km along the runway before crashing into a food warehouse, the Shanghai Daily said. The airport was closed after the accident, the newspaper said.
■INDONESIA
Strong quake recorded
A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 was recorded in the sea off the southeast of the archipelago yesterday, the United States Geological Survey said. The quake was recorded 260km south of Raba, capital of Sumbawa island, the USGS said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injury.
■HONG KONG
Groping professor faces jail
A Chinese University associate professor was yesterday facing a jail sentence after being found guilty of groping a woman on a bus. Biomedical sciences academic Kwok Tim-tak (郭添德), 52, was convicted on Friday of one count of indecent assault on a 24-year-old bank worker after he fondled her thigh on a bus in August. Kwok was sentenced to 14 weeks in jail, but the sentence was deferred to allow him to lodge an appeal. The South China Morning Post reported that he told the court: “I have been falsely accused.” Kwok had been accused of groping the same woman five times while traveling on the same bus route, but was cleared of four of the five charges because of lack of evidence. He was arrested after the woman’s boyfriend took a photograph showing Kwok placing his hand on the woman’s thigh as he stood next to her on the bus, the Eastern Magistrates Court heard.
■SPAIN
MPs denied communion
The Catholic Church will deny communion to members of parliament (MPs) who have voted in favor of a bill to make abortion more readily available, the spokesman of the Bishops’ Conference said on Friday. “This is a warning to Catholics, that they can’t vote in favor of this and that they won’t be able to receive communion unless they ask forgiveness,” Juan Antonion Martinez Camino told a news conference. “They are in an objective state of sin,” he said. The government-sponsored bill, which passed the first of a series of votes in parliament on Thursday, will allow abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy and, in cases of extreme fetal deformity, at any time in the pregnancy. The bill will also allow girls to obtain abortions from the age of 16 without parental consent, a clause that has generated dissent even within the governing Socialist Party.
■UKRAINE
Lenin statue vandalized
Nationalists hurled red paint at a restored monument to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin moments after it was unveiled on Friday, sparking a street brawl and revealing the bitter divisions over the legacy of communism. The nationalist group, Freedom, said the protest was inspired by persistent debate over the Ukrainian famine of 1932 to 1933, a major irritant in Kiev’s relationship with its former Soviet overlord, Moscow. It was the second time this year that vandals have targeted the 3.5m granite statue. In July, it was taken down for restoration after nationalists smashed its face with a hammer and tore off an arm.
■FRANCE
Auction charts evolution
From entire dinosaur skeletons and fossilized bugs that lived more than 400 million years ago to modern space paraphernalia, there is something for every pocket in an evolution-themed auction next month. The hundreds of pieces charting life on earth culminate in curiosities from the space age, such as a pair of bright green cloth diapers made for Russian astronauts. Other eye-catchers include an 8m-long Spinosaurus skeleton, complete with its distinctive long spines and sharp-toothed open jaws. Hand-sized trilobites, marine bugs dating back some 470 million years, are priced at around 2,000 euros (US$2,985) each and fossilized dinosaur teeth and small insects can be snatched up for a few hundred euros. But the dinosaur skeleton is estimated as several hundreds of thousands of euros.
■POLAND
Communist symbols banned
The president has approved legislation that allows for people to be fined or even imprisoned for possessing or buying communist symbols, two decades after communist rule ended. The new law says that people who posses, purchase or spread items or recordings containing communist symbols could be fined or be imprisoned for up two years. The new law has drawn criticism from left-wing lawmakers and other observers who say it is ill-defined and will be hard to implement. The law does not list the banned symbols and it also exempts from punishment their use for artistic, educational or collectors’ purposes. The legislation was initiated by Law and Justice, a right-wing opposition party that President Lech Kaczynski helped found and which has sought to purge Poland of the legacy of four decades of communist rule. The law was also supported by the governing Civic Platform party. The law expands on legislation that already made it a crime to promote Nazism or other totalitarian systems. Communist symbols, however, were not specifically named in the earlier legislation.
■UNITED STATES
Jesus ‘appears’ on iron
A woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work says an image of Jesus Christ she sees on her iron has reassured her that “life is going to be good.” Mary Jo Coady first noticed the image last Sunday when she walked into her daughter’s room. The brownish residue on the bottom of the iron looks like the face of a man with long hair. The 44-year-old Coady was raised Catholic. She and her two college-age daughters agree that the image looks like Jesus and is proof that “he’s listening.” Coady told the Eagle-Tribune newspaper she hopes her story will inspire others during the holidays. She says she plans to keep the iron in a closet and buy a new one.
■VENEZUELA
K-8 Jets close to delivery
Caracas will take delivery next year of the first six of 18 K-8 Karakorum trainer or light attack planes it bought from China, the Air Force’s top commander said on Friday. “A total of 18 K-8 aircraft will be delivered, in addition to radar equipment that will help ensure national security,” General Jorge Arevalo told ABC news agency. He said China would make three deliveries of the warplanes next year, the first of which will consist of six units. The two-seater K-8 fighters will be test flown by Venezuelan pilots in China before they are taken apart and shipped, officials said.
■UNITED STATES
Adams photo at auction
An early print of an iconic Ansel Adams photograph is going up for auction in New York City for between US$350,000 and US$450,000. The Dec. 8 sale of 1948’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, is at Swann Auction Galleries. The print is signed and inscribed to Valentino Sarra, a friend of Adams and a poster designer for the old Works Progress Administration. It shows a nighttime moon over a cloud-fringed mountain range with a graveyard in the foreground. It was made in a range of subtle grays and the auction house said it was one of only 10 believed to carry such a delicate tonal quality. Three are in museum collections.
■MEXICO
Bison return to Chihuahua
Bison have returned for the first time since the 1800s, with authorities releasing 23 donated US animals in northern Chihuahua state. Parts of the north once constituted the southern range for huge herds of the roaming bison before they were killed off. Environment Secretary Juan Elvira Quesada says the movement and grazing of the bison can help regenerate natural grasses and grassland species in Chihuahua’s El Uno nature reserve. He said on Friday the goal was to have at least 100 bison within three years.
■UNITED STATES
Swayze scholarship created
The Arabian Horse Foundation (AHA) has established a scholarship in honor of the late actor Patrick Swayze and his wife. Swayze and wife Lisa Neimi owned Arabian horses and competed in shows for several years. The foundation is the charitable arm of the Arabian Horse Association. Foundation president Larry Kinneer of Dayton, Ohio, said on Friday that the scholarship honors Swayze for his career and the couple’s “love of the Arabian breed and contributions over the years to AHA youth programs.” The scholarship will be awarded each spring to a youth involved with Arabian horses who seeks a performing arts career. It was launched with a pledge from Iron Horse Farms in Canton, Georgia.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other