■CHINA
Supplies rushed to Xinjiang
Authorities were rushing tents and other relief supplies to Xinjiang region after heavy snow killed one person and forced the evacuation of nearly 5,500 others, state media said yesterday. Snowstorms which raged until Friday also “flattened” 799 houses and damaged 4,897 others, the report by Xinhua news agency said. The snow, part of a fierce cold snap that has gripped much of the nation since the New Year, also caused power blackouts and transport chaos in parts of the region. The Ministry of Civil Affairs was sending 5,000 tents, 10,000 coats, and 10,000 quilts to the region to aid those affected, Xinhua said. It added that the region’s government had allocated 15 million yuan (US$2.2 million) for disaster relief in the affected areas. China has endured an unusually early and cold winter, reaching its height since Jan. 1 with heavy snow across northern regions of the country, rare snowfalls further south, and persistent sub-freezing temperatures. The situation has caused several provinces and regions to ration electricity or take other power-saving moves to reduce strain on electric grids as residents turn up the heat to stay warm.
■PHILIPPINES
Cathedral suffers attack
A grenade went off yesterday outside a Catholic cathedral on a southern island which has seen bloody Muslim extremist attacks in recent years, the military said. Unidentified men hurled the grenade before dawn in Jolo island’s capital town of Jolos, said Brigadier General Rustico Guerrero, head of an anti-terrorism task force. The blast shattered some cathedral windows but no one was injured. Previous grenade explosions in the area have been blamed on the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group linked by intelligence agencies to the al-Qaeda network. However, Guerrero said there were no immediate suspects in the latest blast. Jolo, a Muslim-dominated island with a Christian minority, has long been a haunt of the Abu Sayyaf.
■CHINA
Poison gas kills two
Two people died and six others were sickened by poisonous gas at a lithium battery plant yesterday, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the local government. The accident took place at Nikeguorun New Materials Co in Pengshan, Sichuan Province, when workers accidently generated toxic hydrogen sulfide, the report said, citing an initial investigation.
■HONG KONG
Acid attack hits Kowloon
An attacker dropped a bottle of acid into a crowd and injured at least 15 people on Saturday. Xinhua news agency said some of the victims burned in the acid attack included tourists. It said a bottle of acid was dropped from above on the crowd in the busy Kowloon area of the city at about 9:30pm. Xinhua quoted Hong Kong Cable TV as saying the injured were rushed to hospital and police cordoned off the area. A series of acid attacks have hit Hong Kong since December 2008, injuring more than 100 people.
■CHINA
Boats collide, one dead
A freighter collided with a fishing boat in waters off eastern China, killing one and leaving 11 others missing. The Xinhua news agency said the fishing vessel sank in the waters off Fujian Province after Saturday’s collision. Of the boat’s 14 crew members, two had been rescued and another had died. Eight rescue vessels and 135 workers were dispatched yesterday to search for the missing, the agency said. The cause of the accident was under investigation.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cops charge man for hoax
Police charged a man on Saturday over a bomb hoax that prevented a Dubai-bound Emirates airliner from taking off from London’s Heathrow airport. Police arrested three men over the incident on Friday night. Robert Fowles, 58, was charged with making a bomb hoax and being drunk on an aircraft. Alexander McGinn, 48, was also charged with being drunk. The third man was released.
■SPAIN
Police seize explosives
Police seized a van loaded with explosives believed to belong the Basque separatist group ETA, the daily El Mundo reported yesterday. The van, with French license plates, was stopped by police near the northwestern town of Zamora on Saturday for a routine check, but its driver overpowered the officers and fled with their patrol car, the newspaper said. The driver and an alleged accomplice traveling in another vehicle were later detained in Portugal. Their identities and nationalities were not immediately known, but were suspected of being ETA members, El Mundo reported.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown says gas sufficient
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Saturday that gas supplies would not run out during the current cold snap and that everything was being done to keep major roads open. Gas demand has hit a series of all-time highs as Arctic conditions have swept the nation, pushing temperatures to below minus 21ºC. Almost 100 firms were forced to stop using gas this week to ensure supplies to households were maintained. “I can assure you: supplies are not running out,” Brown said in a podcast. “We’ve got plenty of gas, of course, in our own backyard — the North Sea — and we also have access to the large reserves in Norway and Netherlands via pipelines.” The National Grid has issued two alerts to warn of a potential shortfall in supply, although both have since been lifted.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Leader’s wife steps down
The wife of Northern Ireland’s leader will step down as a lawmaker within days, British media reported on Saturday, as pressure mounted on First Minister Peter Robinson and the province’s shaky coalition government. The BBC and Britain’s Press Association cited unidentified sources within the Robinsons’ Democratic Unionist Party as saying that his wife Iris, 60, would relinquish her dual position as parliamentarian in London and representative to Northern Ireland’s regional assembly in Belfast within days. The reported move follows the revelation that she had an adulterous relationship with a man nearly 40 years her junior — and allegations that she solicited tens of thousands of pounds from businessmen to help the teenager launch a cafe. Iris Robinson was 58 at the time, and the man was 19. News of the affair has played poorly with the Robinsons’ socially conservative political base. Protestant minister Reverend David McIlveen, a friend of former Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley, who preceded Robinson as Northern Ireland’s first minister, said Robinson needed to step down — at least for a while. “I do believe that his position is becoming increasingly untenable,” he said. “He has a major problem with regard to solving his own family difficulties, and I personally cannot take the view that a person’s private life does not affect their public life.”
■UNITED STATES
Detained immigrants abused
Government officials used their role as overseers of immigrant detention centers to cover up evidence of mistreatment and deflect scrutiny by the media, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The paper said that investigators had concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the 2007 suicide of a 22-year-old immigrant detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey who had a broken leg. The investigation found that medical personnel at the jail had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. But the fake entry was easy to detect because Romero was already dead when the drug was supposedly administered. In February 2007, in the case of a dying African man, the immigration agency’s spokesman for the Northeast, Michael Gilhooly, rebuffed a reporter’s questions about the detainee, who had suffered a skull fracture at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, the paper said. But records show he had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter’s interest and sharing information about the injured man, a Guinean tailor named Boubacar Bah. Bah, 52, had been left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was called, the Times said. While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of media exposure, the report said. Bah later died in hospital.
■CANADA
Death sentence revoked
The government says Saudi Arabia’s highest court has revoked the death sentence against a Canadian man convicted of murder. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Catherine Loubier says Mohamed Kohail’s death sentence was commuted on Saturday but that he will remain in a Saudi jail, pending a Supreme Court ordered retrial. Kohail, 24, and a Jordanian friend were sentenced to death after being convicted of killing nine-year-old Munzer Al-Hiraki during an after-school brawl in Jidda in 2007.
■UNITED STATES
Roeder trial starts today
The man who gunned down one of the country’s best-known abortion doctors goes on trial in Kansas today. Scott Roeder, 51, is charged with first-degree murder in the May 31 death of George Tiller, 67, who was gunned down in his church. His slaying was an act of “domestic terrorism” designed to intimidate other abortion providers, said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. “Scott Roeder’s murder was aimed at other doctors, not just Dr Tiller … That’s the essence of terrorism.” Roeder has admitted in jailhouse interviews that he shot Tiller but has pleaded not guilty, saying the act was necessary to protect the lives of unborn children.
■UNITED STATES
Lawmaker a surrogate mom
Utah state Representative Christine Johnson says she is carrying a baby for two gay men. The lesbian lawmaker said she decided to become artificially impregnated with sperm from one of the men after the two close friends expressed frustration over the difficulty of adopting a child. Utah law prohibits unmarried couples from adopting and does not recognize gay marriage. Johnson, 41, who has a 17-year-old daughter from a two-year marriage, is four months pregnant and expecting on June 21.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
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