■PHILIPPINES
Volcano draws tourists
Thousands of tourists are flocking to restive Mayon volcano with many even risking their lives to get close to the spectacular flowing lava, authorities said yesterday. Albay provincial Governor Joey Salceda said 2,400 tourists a day had been pouring into the area since the volcano started oozing lava on Dec. 14, compared with about 200 a day before. “All the hotels are fully booked, even the cheapest ones,” Salceda said. He said that tourists typically only stayed overnight to view the lava oozing from the volcano’s crater in the dark. But many were also slipping by security patrols to enter the 8km danger zone around Mayon to get a close-up experience, he said. “It’s a big problem. I think the first violation of the zero casualty [record] will be a dead tourist,” Salceda said. “At the moment of the eruption, the local guides will have better chance of getting out. The hapless tourist will be left behind.”
■NEW ZEALAND
Jackson becomes a knight
The king of Middle Earth is being made a knight. Writer and director Peter Jackson, whose widely acclaimed Lord of the Rings trilogy scooped 17 Oscars, has been made a knight in the New Year Honors’ list. He becomes Sir Peter Jackson for his “services to film.” The Lord of the Rings trio showcased the country’s unique natural scenery as J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy land, filled with sword-swinging warriors, elves, wizards and hairy-footed hobbits. The project broke box office records around the world, won Jackson international accolades, and prompted a spike in tourism.
■THAILAND
Bomb kills two soldiers
A roadside bomb killed two soldiers in the south yesterday, as authorities boosted security ahead of the New Year and the sixth anniversary of an insurgency in the region, police said. The blast ripped through a truck carrying five members of the rangers force as they patrolled a route used by teachers in Pattani Province. Two soldiers died at the scene and three others were seriously wounded. Police said the bomb contained around 15kg of explosives and was detonated remotely by cellphone.
■HONG KONG
Feces leads to jail term
A court has jailed a caregiver who forced a 65-year-old dementia sufferer to eat her own feces. Chan Sau-kuen force-fed the woman her own excrement on at least two occasions as punishment for soiling herself. Jailing Chan for six months on Tuesday and fining her HK$3,000 (US$390), Magistrate Symon Wong warned her that she would “be punished by heaven” for her behavior.
■SERBIA
Official resigns over Mladic
The head of a Serbian unit hunting indicted war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic resigned on Tuesday over his team’s failure to arrest the Bosnian Serb former military chief by the end of the year. “This is to inform you that for reasons well known to everybody ... I resign from my post” as chief of the unit, Rasim Ljajic said in a letter submitted to Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic. The unit was formed in 2006 to track down and arrest suspected war criminals from the Balkans conflicts sought by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). But Ljajic’s unit has failed to catch Mladic.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Prisoner taunts police
An escaped prisoner is taunting police and attracting a growing fan base on his Facebook page, mocking authorities for failing to find him and openly musing about moving across the Atlantic. Police have appealed to his more than 3,800 Facebook friends to help track him down. Craig “Lazie” Lynch, 28, escaped from the minimum-security Hollesley Bay Prison in southern England three months ago. He regularly updates his Facebook page with ungrammatical digs at police. Police said Lynch had been serving a seven-year sentence for committing a burglary with a weapon, but did not go into detail. Lynch’s updates typically center on what he’s eating — pizza was recently on the menu. His profile pictures show him shirtless while holding a well-roasted turkey.
■NIGERIA
Fighting kills 38 in Bauchi
Fighting between Islamic militants and security forces left at least 38 people dead as sect members armed with spears, knives, assault rifles and arrows ransacked a neighborhood and set homes ablaze, police officials said. Mohammed Barau, a police spokesman for Bauchi state, said members of the Kata Kalo sect began fighting among themselves on Monday night and accusing each other of causing their leader to fall seriously ill. The fighting spread into the streets of a poor neighborhood near the city of Bauchi and military forces attempted to stop the violence, Barau said.
■FRANCE
Carbon tax unconstitutional
A new carbon emission tax that was due to take effect on Friday has been ruled illegal by the constitutional court as it exempted too many polluters. The Conseil Constitutionnel struck down the tax on Tuesday as the exemptions violate “the principle of [tax] equality.” It estimated that 93 percent of industrial emissions outside of fuel use, including the emissions of more than 1,000 of the country’s most polluting industrial sites, would be exempt from the tax of US$24.40 per tonne of emissions.
■GERMANY
Checkpoint McDonald’s?
McDonald’s said on Tuesday it planned to open an outlet at Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, completing the landmark’s 20-year transformation from Cold War front line to a money-making tourist hotspot. The 120-seater restaurant will be opposite the Mauermuseum dedicated to the Berlin Wall and hopes to open next year. Checkpoint Charlie was the main crossing point for foreigners between East and West Berlin. After the East German authorities erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 as an “anti-capitalist protection barrier,” the crossing point expanded to include several traffic lanes.
■CANADA
Rare death in line of duty
An Ottawa police officer was stabbed to death on Tuesday, the first time a policeman in the city has been killed in the line of duty since 1983. The deceased officer was 51-year-old father of four Eric Czapnik, Ottawa police chief Vern White said. Police said Czapnik’s attacker took him by surprise as he was parked outside a hospital. The alleged assailant was identified as Kevin Gregson, 43, a former member of the Saskatchewan Royal Canadian Mounted Police, CBC television reported.
■UNITED STATES
Diner hurt by moose head
A woman says she was struck by the decor at a New York City restaurant — when it fell on her head. Raina Kumra says in a negligence lawsuit filed last week that a 68kg stuffed moose head plummeted off a wall at the White Slab Palace on Oct. 4 and hit her. She says she suffered a concussion and other injuries.
■MEXICO
Protest at film prison
About 300 relatives of inmates at a prison where Mel Gibson is reportedly scheduled to make a movie protested outside the facility on Tuesday, fearing their loved ones will be moved to make way for the production. The group of protesters said it would be harder to visit inmates if they are transferred out of the city of Veracruz. Earlier this month, Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera said part of the prison would be emptied next month “because a grand production will be filmed there with our friend, the actor and producer Mel Gibson.”
■UNITED STATES
Hacker pleads guilty
A Florida man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to hacking into corporate computer networks and carrying out what officials have described as the largest credit card theft in US history. Albert Gonzalez pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston to two counts of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to payment card networks, the Justice Department said. Gonzalez and two co-conspirators were accused of stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from firms supporting major retail and financial organizations. Gonzalez was accused of leasing servers to other hackers who used the platforms to store malicious software known as “malware” and launch attacks against corporate victims.
■UNITED STATES
Suspect draws on scandal
The TV producer accused of shaking down David Letterman to keep mum about his affairs is drawing on the Tiger Woods sex scandal to try to bolster his defense. In court papers filed on Tuesday, Robert Halderman’s lawyer cited published reports that Woods paid an alleged mistress millions of dollars to stay silent. Attorney Gerald Shargel suggested that since the woman hasn’t been charged with a crime, Halderman shouldn’t be, either.
■UNITED STATES
Anthrax vaccine offered to 80
Antibiotics and vaccines are being offered to about 80 people in New Hampshire as authorities investigate the US’ first known case of gastrointestinal anthrax. Officials don’t know how the woman contracted the disease but are focusing on a drum circle gathering she attended last month. They said that vaccines and antibiotics will be available to people who attended the event. An adviser to the state’s public health division, says one theory is that the spores became airborne through vigorous drum playing, and the woman swallowed them.
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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