■INDIA
Bridge death toll rises
The number of people presumed killed when a bridge collapsed in the western part of the country rose to at least 45 yesterday, an official said, as rescue divers struggled to recover bodies pinned under water. “At least 45 people are presumed to have died in the bridge collapse,” senior police official Rajeev Dasot said, raising the estimated death toll from 17. Dozens of laborers plunged into the water late on Thursday when the bridge on which they were working gave way over the Chambal river on the outskirts of the city of Kota in Rajasthan state. The bridge was being jointly built by South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Gammon India. Two senior project managers, including a South Korean national, have been arrested on accusations of culpable homicide, Dasot said.
■THAILAND
Police trick suspects
Police nabbed 14 suspected criminals after telling them they were winners of a lucky draw and arresting them when they showed up to collect their prizes. The wanted men came out of hiding to pick up televisions and cash checks they were told they had won when their phone or national identification numbers were picked out in a draw, said Police Lieutenant-General Krisada Pankongchoen, who masterminded the scam. “We’re happy with the result. We didn’t expect anyone to fall for this,” he said. Police sent hundreds of congratulatory letters to the registered addresses of suspected criminals around Bangkok then pounced when 14 showed up to receive their prizes.
■JAPAN
Cherry forecast canceled
The weather agency said on Friday it would stop giving forecasts for the start of the cherry blossom season, an annual rite that sees millions of people flock to picnic under the delicate pink petals. The start of the spring cherry blossom season is an excuse for drunken revelry across the country, but an annual headache for the Meteorological Agency, which has been trying since 1955 to predict when the trees will bloom. Weather forecasters have been left red-faced in the past for miscalculating the start of the blossom season. In 2007, the chief weatherman was forced to bow in apology after a computer glitch resulted in the wrong forecasts.
■VIETNAM
Five Chinese sentenced
A court has sentenced five Chinese men to death for trafficking nearly 8 tonnes of hashish destined for Canada, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said yesterday. The agency said the drugs came from Pakistan and were to be shipped to North America through Mong Cai. The defendants, aged between 42 and 57, were arrested in May last year and were also charged with smuggling nearly US$180,000 in cash.
■SOUTH KOREA
Dust warning issued
The weather service on Friday issued a warning against airborne pollution known as “yellow dust,” advising residents in western areas to avoid outdoor activities. “Yellow dust which originated in Mongolia reached South Korea, blanketing most of the western parts of the country,” the National Meteorological Administration said in a statement. “As the effect of the dust storm can spread to the nation, it is desirable to refrain from outdoor activities.” The warning covered the capital Seoul and adjacent areas as well as South Chungcheong and Jeolla provinces. Weather officials said it was the first time yellow dust had been spotted on Christmas Day in the country.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Slain Iranian ‘person of year’
A newspaper yesterday named an Iranian woman shot dead during protests against her country’s disputed June elections as its “person of the year.” The Times said Neda Agha-Soltan became a “global symbol of opposition to tyranny” after images of her bleeding to death during the protests in Tehran were shown around the world. “Ms Soltan, 26, joined the protest because she was outraged at the way that the regime stole the presidential election,” the newspaper said on its front page that included a photograph of protesters holding pictures of her. “She wanted to make a difference, she said. She had no idea quite what an impact she would have,” the paper said. “Mobile phone footage of her bleeding to death on a pavement flashed around the world … It tore the last shreds of legitimacy from the regime, made her a global symbol of opposition to tyranny, and inspired the Green Movement in a region where populations are all too easily cowed.”
■YEMEN
Cleric ‘alive and well’
Friends and relatives of a US-born Yemeni radical cleric say he is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected al-Qaeda hideouts. The government said at least 30 militants, possibly including Anwar al-Awlaki, were killed in the airstrike in the remote Shabwa region. But on Friday, a friend of the cleric, Abu Bakr al-Awlaki, said he was not among those killed. He refused to say if the cleric was attending the meeting targeted by Yemeni airplanes on Thursday. The strikes were carried out with US and Saudi intelligence help. The cleric’s brother, who only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said he also received assurances that his older sibling is still alive.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Hundreds in festive dip
The traditional Christmas: a cozy fire, turkey, mince pies and sherry. Or, for some brave souls, stripping off in the bitter winter chill and charging headlong into the sea. In Brighton and at Porthcawl on the south Wales shore, hundreds of people, some in fancy dress, joined in the annual festive dips to the bemusement of onlookers. Inland in London, swimmers in more traditional bathing costumes and caps made do by plunging into The Serpentine lake in Hyde Park. The Brighton Swimming Club’s traditional dip — bracing might best describe it — was first recorded in 1885. “Spectators-wise, I’ve never seen so many people here. There must have been around 1,500 to 2,000,” club chairman John Ottaway said. “Some people went in and got out straight away, our water polo team had a ball and were throwing that about, and the rest of us swam for around 10 minutes.” The water temperature in the English Channel was 6.5°C at Brighton.
■CYPRUS
Larnaca Airport reopens
The main airport reopened on Friday after shutting down overnight because of malfunctioning runway lights. The lights have been fixed and the airport is operating normally, Larnaca Airport operator Hermes spokesman Adamos Aspris said. He said 22 flights from countries including the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece were affected on Thursday night. Two flights were canceled while the rest were diverted to the island’s secondary Paphos airport about 110km west. One flight had to be diverted to Beirut, 210km southeast of Larnaca. Aspris said unusually heavy rainfall in recent days caused the lights to short circuit. The new Larnaca terminal opened last month and uses the same runway as the now defunct terminal about 1km away.
■UNITED STATES
Cannabis granny kills self
A Denver grandmother who recently took her own life was under investigation for giving her three-year-old grandson a marijuana cookie. Family members say 44-year-old Erin Marcove gave the toddler at least one peanut butter cookie made with cannabis butter on Dec. 4. The next day, she had trouble rousing the boy and called an ambulance. A week later, relatives told KMGH-TV, the grandmother took her own life. Marcove was an advocate for medical marijuana and had used the drug for chronic back pain most of her life. Police seized a jar of cannabis butter at her home, and a police report showed the little boy had the drug in his system when he was taken to the hospital. The toddler has fully recovered.
■UNITED STATES
Sheen spends holiday in jail
Charlie Sheen spent the better part of Christmas Day in a Colorado jail cell after being arrested on domestic violence allegations. The 44-year-old actor was taken into custody on Friday morning by officers responding to an emergency call from a house in Aspen, a ski resort town in Colorado. An ambulance went to the house, but the accuser was not taken to the hospital. Sheen, the star of CBS’ Two and a Half Men, was taken to the Pitkin County jail and booked for investigation of second-degree assault and menacing, both felonies, along with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor, Aspen police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro said. He was released in the late afternoon after posting US$8,500 bond and being advised by a county judge on the conditions of his release, she said. A court date was set for Feb. 8. Dasaro declined to name Sheen’s accuser, citing a department policy prohibiting the identification of potential victims in domestic violence cases.
■UNITED STATES
Police looking for killers
Police are looking for two men who shot and killed a Salvation Army major in front of his three young children outside the organization’s community center in Arkansas. County Coroner Garland Camper said two men accosted Philip Wise and his children — ages four, six and eight — on Christmas Eve. He said one man pulled a gun, demanded money and then shot Wise. Wise’s wife, Cindy, also a major in the Salvation Army, was inside the center and called 911. Police Sergeant Terry Kuykendall called the shooting a tragedy for the community. Wise had worked in the neighborhood for three years, helping run youth programs, a food pantry and church services.
■IRAQ
Pregnancy rules canceled
The US army has canceled controversial rules that punish soldiers in the north who fall pregnant or who impregnate a female soldier, a military spokeswoman said yesterday. The decision follows concern that the provisions put in place by Major General Anthony Cucolo, commander of US forces in the north, could lead to some soldiers being court-martialed. US troops currently operate under the command of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, but this will be changed effective next Friday to reflect the fact that no other countries have troops stationed in the country. As a result, the command will be called USF-I. Under Cucolo’s rules, which unleashed a fiery debate, violators were threatened with criminal charges or even a court-martial. They applied both to women who fall pregnant and men who impregnate female soldiers, even if the couple is married.
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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