■CHINA
Police chief suspended
A police chief has been suspended after saying that a subordinate who died after binge drinking at an official banquet was killed in the line of duty — a designation that would have made the man’s family eligible for greater compensation. Xie Feiyong, director of the traffic bureau in Shenzhen, took Chen Lusheng and other off-duty officers to a banquet with local officials where Chen vomited after rounds of toasts, passed out and suffocated, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. Xie was suspended indefinitely this week after he called for Chen to be designated a martyr — someone who died in the line of duty — so that his relatives would be eligible for more compensation, Xinhua said. Chen’s family would be eligible for up to 650,000 yuan (US$95,000) in compensation under that designation, though the family is reportedly pressuring the government for at least 4.8 million yuan, the China Daily reported on Monday.
■SOUTH KOREA
Rape victim sues Seoul
A child rape victim and her family have sued the government, alleging negligence by state prosecutors aggravated her mental trauma. The case of the eight-year-old girl, who suffered permanent injuries in the attack, has already sparked a national outcry over the 12-year sentence given her attacker. The Korean Bar Association said rapist Cho Du-sun, 57, was recorded on video shortly after his arrest and this should have been used as crucial identification evidence, but prosecutors presented it to the court only on the eve of an appeal sentencing. As a result, the girl was forced to undergo a detailed cross-examination and had to repeat her testimony four times because prosecutors had trouble handling a video recorder.
■NAURU
Ties forged with Abkhazia
The tiny, destitute Pacific island nation of Nauru on Tuesday became the fourth country to formally establish diplomatic relations with Abkhazia, effectively recognizing its sovereignty. The announcement comes 15 months after Russia began lobbying its allies to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two separatist territories at the center of its war with Georgia last year. In talks with Russian officials, Nauru requested US$50 million for “urgent social and economic projects,” Russia’s Kommersant daily said, citing unnamed Russian diplomats.
■BANGLADESH
Packed ferry hits bridge
At least 1,000 people were rescued in southern Bangladesh after a packed ferry hit a bridge in dense fog late on Tuesday and started taking on water, an official said. The boat’s hull developed a crack and took in water after hitting a column of a bridge on the Sandhya river at Shikarpur in southern Barisal district.
■AUSTRALIA
Activists flee whaling fleet
Militant anti-whaling activists said they were dodging a Japanese surveillance ship in icebergs near Antarctica yesterday following their first skirmish with whalers for the season. Paul Watson, who is leading a campaign to harass the whaling hunt, said a heavily armed ship loaded with security guards had been tailing them since they left Western Australia on Dec. 7. When they attempted to approach the ship, Shonan Maru No. 2, from behind an iceberg on Monday, Watson said the Japanese opened fire with two water cannons and tailed them in a two-hour high-speed pursuit. Watson said the ship was still tailing them yesterday.
■EUROPEAN UNION
Court protects press sources
Five media companies won a ruling at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday recognizing the right of journalists to protect anonymous sources. Four British daily newspapers — the Financial Times, the Independent, the Guardian and the Times — and Reuters news agency appealed to Strasbourg after British courts ordered them to hand over documents to Belgian firm Interbrew. The documents would have allowed Interbrew to identify the source of a leak to the press about a planned takeover bid for South African Breweries. In its judgment, the court stressed the “chilling effect” of journalists being seen to help in the identification of anonymous sources.
■GERMANY
Dope-dealing granny jailed
A 81-year-old woman was jailed for five years on Tuesday after admitting dealing heroin. Christa Koehler, who is confined to a wheelchair, admitted selling eight bags of around 50g each. She began dealing in the Nuremberg area after her son was arrested and caught by police with heroin and 16,400 euros (US$24,000) in cash.
■NEW ZEALAND
Teen flasher hit by car
A teenager who was flashing her breasts at passing cars has been found guilty of disorderly behavior for the prank, which ended with her in a hospital after a distracted driver ran into her. Cherelle May Dudfield, 18, pleaded guilty to the charge when she appeared in Invercargill District Court, the Southland Times newspaper reported yesterday. Dudfield, egged on by her friends, was flashing passing motorists from a traffic island in the middle of a four-lane road in Invercargill on Sept. 27. The alcohol-fueled prank went awry when one of the vehicles crashed into her, police said.
■MEXICO
Cartel violence rages on
Ongoing violence between drug cartels has killed at least 50 people in the north in recent days, as the governor’s house and a police station came under bomb attack on Tuesday in central Michoacan state, officials said. The attack with fragmentary bombs on the police station in Michoacan capital Morelia left a pregnant mother and her three-year-old daughter gravely injured, while nobody was hurt in the attack on the governor’s mansion, police said.
■GERMANY
Transport truck attacked
The authorities said thieves posing as police officers made off with 1 million euros (US$1.45 million) in gold and jewelry. News agency DAPD reported that four thieves in a dark BMW with a police light and a red VW van with Nuremberg plates pulled the transport truck over on Tuesday morning near the southern city of Ludwigsburg. The thieves wore black pants and jackets with “police” on them and told the driver and his passenger they were customs officials confiscating the shipment. Police say the men didn’t know they were being scammed until after they were all on the highway again and the thieves stopped, tied them up and left them behind on the side of the road.
■EGYPT
Ancient paintings returned
An airport official said the wall paintings that caused a feud between his country and the Louvre Museum have returned home. Ahmed al-Rawi of the customs authority said that the ancient artwork arrived to Cairo on a flight from Paris on Tuesday evening and were handed over to antiquities authorities. Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass cut ties with the Louvre in October, saying the museum had refused to return the fragments, which he said had been illegally chipped from a 3,200-year-old tomb’s walls.
■UNITED STATES
Book 99 years overdue
The book returned to the New Bedford Public Library in Massachusetts this week wasn’t overdue by a week, a month or even a year. It was nearly a century overdue and the fine came to US$361.35. Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country was supposed to have been returned by May 10, 1910. Stanley Dudek told the Standard Times newspaper he came across the book while going through things that had belonged to his mother, who died about 10 years ago. He decided that returning the book to the city was the right thing to do. The overdue book fine was a penny a day in 1910. Dudek wasn’t asked to pay it.
■UNITED STATES
Preacher dies at 91
Oral Roberts, who helped pioneer TV evangelism in the 1950s and used the power of the new medium — and his message of God’s healing power — to build a multimillion-dollar ministry and a university that bears his name, died on Tuesday. He was 91. Roberts died of complications from pneumonia in Newport Beach, California. The evangelist was hospitalized after a fall on Saturday.
■UNITED STATES
Same-sex marriage mulled
The Washington City Council voted on Tuesday to approve same-sex marriage, putting the capital on course to become the sixth state or region to allow gay marriage. The legislation, which passed by an 11-2 vote, will go to the desk of Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has promised to sign the bill. All local legislation in the capital, home to 590,000 people and formally known as the District of Columbia, must undergo a mandatory 30-day review period by Congress before it can become law.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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