■CHINA
Tomb may be Cao Cao’s
Archeologists have unearthed a large third-century tomb, which they say could be that of Cao Cao (曹操), the legendary politician and general famous throughout East Asia for his Machiavellian tactics. The tomb, discovered in Xigaoxue village near the ancient city of Anyang, Henan Province, has an epitaph and inscription that appear to refer to Cao Cao, Central China Television said yesterday. Cao Cao was the final chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty, and went on to form his own state during the political turmoil of the Three Kingdoms period. He died in 220 in Luoyang and was posthumously named Emporor of the Wei state that he founded. The tomb contains the body of a man in his 60s, corresponding to Cao Cao’s age at his death, and two women.
■CHINA
Cops nab alleged killer
Police have arrested a man suspected of hacking a father and his four children to death, the latest in a string of grisly killings to occur in the nation, state press said yesterday. Deng Xueyun (鄧學雲) was captured by police in Guizhou Province on Saturday, about 17 hours after allegedly murdering his neighbor Deng Zhaoxiang (鄧招祥), 40, and his four young children, the Beijing News reported. The elder Deng was hacked to death outside the door of his home in Lushan village late on Friday, while the two boys and two girls were killed while asleep in bed, it said. The children were aged between six and 11 years of age, it said.
■HONG KONG
No subtitles for ‘Avatar’
It may boast ground-breaking 3D effects, but English-speaking viewers of Avatar have been left in the dark by the film’s alien dialogue after cinemas offered only a Chinese translation. Despite its box-office success, Western movie-goers have complained Na’vi dialogue is utterly impenetrable — unless they can read Chinese. “While we both thoroughly enjoyed the film, we were somewhat disturbed and frustrated that the alien Na’vi dialogue only had Chinese subtitles,” cinema-goer Nic Tinworth told the Sunday Morning Post. Olivier De Molina told the Post that although the dialogue was not integral, it “would have been nice to get everything. I just assumed that everything in Hong Kong is in both English and Chinese.”
■INDONESIA
Naked corpse found
The body of a Japanese woman has been found naked and bound on Bali, police said yesterday. Hiromi Shimada, 41, had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. Her body was discovered in a rented house near the beach of Kuta on Saturday evening, provincial police spokesman I Gede Sugianyar told reporters. “The victim was found with several stab wounds on her stomach. Her legs were tied with cloth and she was naked,” he said. “The motive for the crime is still being investigated.”
■INDIA
Governor resigns
The 86-year-old governor of Andhra Pradesh resigned, a day after a TV news channel broadcast a tape allegedly showing him in bed with three women. Governor Narain Dutt Tiwari’s office denounced the tape as fabricated. Tiwari sent his resignation letter to the President Pratibha Patil on Saturday, citing health reasons. The women were brought to Hyderabad by another woman who was allegedly promised a mining lease in return for sexual favors, ABN Andhra Jyoti News reported. The woman said she decided to expose Tiwari after he did not keep his promise.
■NEW ZEALAND
Pilot whales beached
Twenty pilot whales died on a beach after stranding, but holiday-makers and conservation workers yesterday managed to coax 43 others back out to sea. Rescuers monitored the survivors as night fell as they swam away from Colville Beach on North Island’s Coromandel peninsula, hoping they would not turn back to the beach. Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers helped refloat the 43 whales at high tide. The volunteers covered the stranded mammals in sheets and kept them wet through the day. “Some 63 pilot whales stranded ... but it looks pretty good, we’ve got 43 live ones,” Department of Conservation ranger Steve Bolten said as the pod swam out to sea. Bolten said one of the whales may have been sick, or their sonar may have led them into the shallow harbor and they couldn’t find their way out again. Camper Deanna Paddy and her family spent hours in the sea helping the whales.
■ICELAND
Bomb scare grounds plane
A Lufthansa flight en route from Frankfurt to Detroit made an unscheduled landing at Keflavik International Airport near Reykjavik on Saturday after it was found to be carrying luggage whose owner had not boarded the plane. A bomb squad searched the Airbus while the passengers remained on board, removing the luggage, an airport spokesman said. “There was nothing suspicious in his luggage,” Keflavik spokesman Fridthor Eydal said. The scare followed an incident on a plane approaching Detroit on Friday in which a man was arrested after trying to ignite an explosive device, US authorities said. A Lufthansa spokesman in Germany said of the two-hour stopover: “The US authorities have been informed about this.”
■YEMEN
Rebel leader rumored killed
The leader of the Shiite rebels may have died after being severely wounded by government forces in the north of the country, a government Web site and media said yesterday. The rebels could not immediately be reached and their Web site did not comment on the reports. Government troops in the country, the poorest Arab state, have been battling Shiite rebels, known as Houthis after the family name of their leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, who complain of social, religious and economic discrimination. The defense ministry said on its Web site that Houthi was wounded in an attack by government forces and might have died from his wounds.
■IRAN
Four protesters killed
Security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters in the capital yesterday, killing at least four people in the fiercest clashes in months, opposition Web sites and witnesses said. Thousands of opposition supporters chanting “Death to the dictator,” a reference to hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defied official warnings of a harsh crackdown on any protests coinciding with a religious observance yesterday. Shiites were marking Ashoura, commemorating the seventh-century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam’s most beloved saints. Security forces tried but failed to disperse protesters on a central Tehran street with tear gas, charges by baton-wielding officers and warning shots fired into the air. They then opened fire directly at protesters, killing at least three people, witnesses and the pro-reform Web site Rah-e-Sabz said. Witnesses said one of the victims was an elderly man who had a gunshot wound to the forehead.
■UNITED STATES
Ivana Trump taken off plane
Police in Florida say Ivana Trump has been escorted off a plane at Palm Beach International Airport after she became belligerent when children were running and screaming in the aisles. Authorities say the former wife of billionaire Donald Trump cussed at the children on Saturday, and when flight attendants on the New York-bound plane tried to calm her, she became even more aggravated. Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies asked Trump to voluntarily exit the plane, but they said she refused. She was then escorted off. She has not been charged.
■MEXICO
Six bodies found
Prosecutors in Chihuahua say they found the bullet-riddled bodies of six members of the same family late on Friday in a mountainous area. No motive was given for the killing, but drug trafficking, illegal logging and drug cultivation are all common in the northern region. State prosecutors’ spokesman Eduardo Esparza says the victims were men between the ages of 45 and 55, and all from the same family.
■UNITED STATES
Kidnap suspect identified
Phoenix police have identified a suspect accused of kidnapping and molesting a five-year-old girl before a patrol officer spotted his car and helped rescue the child. Forty-five-year-old Larry Jon Ladwig was booked into jail early on Saturday on charges of kidnapping, sexual molestation of a child, aggravated assault of a police officer and felony flight. The girl was rescued on Friday evening, more than seven hours after police believe she was kidnapped while playing outside a Phoenix apartment building with her two sisters. Police say the girl is doing well.
■MEXICO
Women’s rights activist dies
Esther Chavez, a women’s rights activist who first drew attention to the brutal slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez, has died, her nephew said on Saturday. She was 73. Hector Chavez Arbizu said his aunt died of cancer on Friday and will be buried in Ciudad Juarez, where more than 100 women were strangled and their bodies dumped in the desert or vacant lots in a string of killings that began in the 1990s. Chavez founded Casa Amiga, a shelter for female victims of violence in the city. She worked tirelessly to denounce the decade-long string of killings and to demand that the deaths be properly investigated. Most of the victims were young factory workers. Authorities initially downplayed the problem, and many of the crimes remain unresolved. To the end of her life, Chavez remained highly critical of police efforts and said the total death toll from the wave of violence against women in the city was in the hundreds. “The death of activist Esther Chavez represents a loss for the fight for human rights and the rule of law in this country,” La Jornada wrote in an editorial on Saturday. “She made the problems in Chihuahua visible on the international stage.” Chavez won the nation’s National Human Rights Award last year.
■UNITED STATES
Money seizures up at border
Seizures of money bound mostly for Mexico’s violent drug cartels more than quadrupled this year on the Arizona border, and government officials are crediting beefed-up screening at checkpoints. Inspectors intercepted US$1.1 million heading into Mexico last year. This year, they netted US$4.9 million. Brian Levin, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said the seizures reflect a new clampdown.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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