■PHILIPPINES
Crash search continues
Rescuers combed waters of Manila Bay yesterday for at least 23 people missing after a ferry smashed into a trawler in an accident that called the crew’s competence into question. The coast guard said it planned to spend 10 days searching for survivors and would also look into the fitness and discipline of the crew involved in the crash, which topped off a year of deadly disasters for the struggling nation. The 79-tonne Catalyn B, a wooden vessel taking holidaymakers to their home village on a small island off the mouth of Manila Bay, smashed into 369-tonne Anathalia, a metal-hulled fishing boat, killing at least four people. Officials are hoping that at least some of the other passengers and crew may have survived and are afloat in tropical waters, in what is usually the calmest period of the year. “Usually people can survive afloat for two to three days in Philippine waters,” said Ensign Jhoe Barbasa, a coast guard spokeswoman. “But other factors also play a big role. Hunger, injuries or ailments, like hypertension, and the weather, can affect that window.”
■CHINA
Student dies from cold
A student in the eastern part of the country died after allegedly being told to stand in the freezing cold as punishment by a teacher who then apparently went out drinking and forgot him, state media reported on Thursday. Zhang Jixin, 14, left his dormitory in Shandong Province last Thursday to buy things, but was caught out by the duty teacher who hit him for violating the rules and told him to stand outside, the Beijing News said. Students at Wujing school say the teacher then went out drinking and forgot Zhang. The temperature that night was minus 10°C and Zhang’s body was discovered lying in the gutter the next morning, the report said. The duty teacher, Hu Daofa, denied all of the allegations, it added. Two school principals and a teacher have been temporarily suspended following the incident, it said.
■INDIA
Bridge collapse kills 17
At least 17 people were killed and 30 others were feared trapped or drowned after a bridge collapsed in the western part of the country, officials said yesterday. The accident happened late on Thursday when the bridge under construction over the Chambal river in the state of Rajasthan collapsed. The site of the accident was around 350km from the city of Jodhpur. Many laborers are feared to have drowned, state home minister Shanti Dhariwal said. Twelve injured laborers had been hospitalized yesterday. Local authorities said the bridge was being jointly constructed by South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Gammon India. Two engineers working on the project have been detained by the police.
■CAMBODIA
Briton jailed over abuse
A court yesterday sentenced a British man to one year in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl. Judge Ke Sakhan of Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted 51-year-old Gareth Ashley Corbett, arrested in the popular seaside town of Sihanoukville in July, of committing indecent acts. He handed Corbett the one-year jail term and ordered him to pay a US$1,000 fine. Corbett was arrested after the underage girl, who was also allegedly abused by a US man, told authorities that the Briton had sex with her. A trial date for the US man, Scott Alan Hecker, 44, has not yet been set, court officials said. Hecker was arrested for allegedly abusing the 12-year-old girl and another 14-year-old girl.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sign before you eat
A London restaurant has asked diners to sign away their right to sue before eating Christmas pudding, which sometimes contains coins or charms. Neleen Strauss, the owner of High Timber in east London, acknowledged that the idea was a bit silly, but she said she would rather be safe than sorry. “It has created a bit of a stir in the restaurant and people looked at it disbelieving at first,” she said on Thursday. “I thought it was going to be a pain but decided to do it to cover my backside.” Recipes for Christmas pudding — sometimes known as a plum pudding — generally involve a rich boiled or steamed mixture larded with fruits and spices. Traditionally silver coins are hidden in the mix so that some portions have them and others don’t. Finding one in your pudding is supposed to attract luck, but Strauss said she was told it could also bring chipped teeth — and lawsuits. “A lot of my customers are lawyers and they suggested it,” she said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown joins appeal
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has joined the appeals for clemency for a British man scheduled to be executed in China for heroin smuggling. The man’s family and human rights organizations say Chinese courts failed to give adequate weight to the man’s history of mental disturbance or to his claim that he was duped into carrying the heroin by a drug gang. Chinese officials said the execution of Akmal Shaikh, 53, will go ahead on Tuesday. Western human rights groups say the last European to have been executed in China was an Italian, Antonio Riva, who was shot by firing squad in 1951, along with Japanese Ruichi Yamaguchi, after being convicted of involvement in a plot to assassinate high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials. Family members have said Shaikh has a long history of unstable behavior linked to bipolar disorder, which they say has manifested itself in recurrent episodes in which he has become a fantasist.
■RUSSIA
Drink-driving ban sought
President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday he would ban drinking and driving in his vodka-loving country amid concern over road safety ahead of the holiday celebrations. “One who drinks, loses his head. And we know people drink here! First one shot — that’s allowed. Then two, three and, ‘okay, let’s go.’ I think we should ban drinking behind the wheel,” Medvedev said in a live end-of-year interview with state TV. He said Russians could not be trusted to stop at a one drink limit. “I don’t know if everyone will be happy about this, but I think we have to do it,” he laughed. The nation has one of the world’s worst road safety records, with 33,000 people dying in traffic accidents, some 15,000 of which were caused by drunk driving in 2007, government figures show.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Church seeks youngsters
The Church of England has drawn up plans to bring toddlers and young children and their parents into the church by starting sports clubs and reaching out to local play groups. The church has always engaged with children and that the plans “seek to respond to the changing nature of childhood,” spokesman Ben Wilson said. It has traditionally run Sunday school classes and choirs to attract children but is looking for new ways to boost falling congregation numbers. The new proposals suggest that the church also sets up breakfast and homework clubs where children can eat and study together
■UNITED STATES
Donkeys flee nativity scene
A living nativity scene near Vail, Colorado, almost had to go without two crucial actors when they escaped. The nativity scene is an annual tradition for Eagle River Presbyterian Church. Pastor Rob Wilson said two donkeys were being held in a fenced-in pen for the event on Wednesday night, but they pushed their way through it, the Vail Daily reported. A church member noticed the donkeys were gone on Wednesday morning. He and a sheriff’s deputy followed footprints in the snow and eventually caught up with them.
■UNITED STATES
No marijuana for Christmas
Some people won’t be getting the Christmas presents they hoped for. Police seized about 9kg of marijuana from a car this week — some in boxes wrapped as Christmas gifts. The Missouri Highway Patrol said troopers found the marijuana in a car they stopped for speeding near Joplin. Two California women in the car gave troopers permission to search the vehicle. Both were charged on Tuesday with one marijuana-related count and released on US$1,000 bond.
■UNITED STATES
St. Nick defies authority
A suburban Philadelphia teen was suspended for a day for wearing a Santa Claus suit to school. Michael Hance said he told his principal that he planned to wear the suit to Strath Haven High School in Wallingford and hand out candy canes. The 18-year-old senior said the principal told him it would be a distraction. But he wore the suit anyway, with regular clothes underneath. Hance got nabbed a few minutes after he walked into his first class on Tuesday. The school district said in a statement that Hance was suspended for the day for “defiance of authority.”
■UNITED STATES
Friends pull holiday prank
A Chicago man could be unwrapping the hundreds of Christmas gifts spread around his apartment for days, even weeks. Trouble is, they aren’t really presents — they’re his own belongings meticulously wrapped by friends as a prank while he was out of town. Louie Saunders’ packages contain everything from couch cushions to the beer in his refrigerator. His friend Adal Rifai masterminded the scheme after Saunders gave him a spare key. It took 16 people, 35 rolls of wrapping paper and eight hours to finish the job. Saunders told the Chicago Sun-Times he had only been able to unwrap about 10 percent of the packages. He joked that the upside is that, with each package he unwraps, he finds something inside that’s just what he needs. Saunders’ reaction to the prank was filmed and uploaded on YouTube.
■UNITED STATES
Reindeer droppings sell big
Necklaces and Christmas ornaments made from coin-sized pieces of reindeer droppings have earned a Bloomington, Illinois, zoo nearly US$21,000 this holiday season. The Miller Park Zoological Society made about US$5,000 selling reindeer-dropping ornaments last year. It added necklaces this year when customers asked if jewelry was available. The reindeer droppings are dehydrated, sterilized and spray-painted with glitter. They’re called “Magical Reindeer Gems.” The ornaments cost US$7.50 at the zoo’s gift shop or US$10 by mail. The necklaces sold for US$15 at the gift shop, or US$20 by mail. The zoological society said the ornaments and necklaces sold nationwide. Requests also came in from other countries, but federal regulations don’t allow reindeer droppings to be exported.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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