■AFGHANISTAN
Search for bodies continues
The death toll in one of the country’s worst natural disasters could rise, officials said yesterday as rescue workers used everything from bare hands to bulldozers to dig for bodies buried in snow. The bodies of at least 166 people killed when avalanches hit a treacherous mountain highway in the north this week have been recovered, said interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary. Scores of vehicles remain buried beneath massive snow floes and could contain more bodies, he said. “The latest information we have is that 166 people were killed and 125 others have been rescued and taken to hospital,” he said. A heavy blizzard struck the busy northern Salang Pass, which connects Kabul with the north of the country through the Hindu Kush mountain range, on Monday.
■HONG KONG
Kissel conviction overturned
The territory’s highest court overturned Nancy Kissel’s murder conviction in a stunning reversal yesterday and ordered that the US expatriate be retried for allegedly drugging her husband with a laced milkshake and bludgeoning him to death. The Court of Final Appeal found in its 111-page decision that prosecutors had used illegal evidence in the trial, but ordered that the 45-year-old mother of three be kept in custody pending a bail application ahead of her second trial. Kissel, who had lost her first appeal against her conviction, smiled broadly when Chief Justice Andrew Li (李國能) announced the ruling. Kissel’s lawyers argued during the appeal hearing that prosecutors broke the law by using evidence during the murder trial that drew from her initial bail hearing after she was charged. The five judges from the Court of Final Appeal agreed. Kissel has been serving a life sentence since she was convicted in September 2005. Her trial made headlines worldwide with its allegations of drug abuse, kinky sex and adultery in the wealthy world of expatriates in Hong Kong.
■RUSSIA
Red Square photo ban eased
President Dmitry Medvedev will lift draconian restrictions on photographing and filming on Red Square, the security service responsible for the top tourist attraction said on Wednesday. Since 1993, people with professional camera equipment, including tourists, have only been allowed to photograph or film in the red-brick heart of Moscow with an official permit, which takes 10 days to receive. The Kremlin guard service in charge of the Russian president’s security said it would “lift all restrictions on amateur and professional photography” on Medvedev’s order. Restrictions will remain in place for “advertising” and “commercial” photography and filming, it added. Medvedev, himself an avid photographer who publishes his work on the Kremlin Web site, apparently ordered the change after a well-known Russian photographer complained of the red tape while snapping the president in January. “But that’s just plain stupid!” Medvedev sympathized in front of the cameras.
■KENYA
Wildebeest relocated
A senior Kenyan wildlife official says about 7,000 zebras and wildebeest are being moved to one of the country’s premier game parks to restore the balance of predators and prey disrupted by last year’s drought. A senior Kenya Wildlife Service scientist said the animals were being taken from areas where they are abundant to replenish Amboseli National Park’s population. Charles Musyoki said more than 60 percent of the park’s zebra and wildebeest population died during the drought.
■UNITED STATES
Gene link to stuttering found
Three genes linked to a rare metabolic disorder may also cause some cases of stuttering, researchers said on Wednesday in a finding that could lead to a new treatment for the speech condition. Two of the genes are used by brain cells as part of a waste recycling process, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. A third has no other known role. “This is the first study to pinpoint specific gene mutations as the potential cause of stuttering, a disorder that affects 3 million Americans,” James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, said in a statement. About 5 percent of preschoolers and 1 percent of adults stutter or stammer. Researchers at the institute studied 123 Pakistani people with and without stuttering, including 46 from a family heavily affected by the condition. Then they compared their DNA to more than 500 people from the US and Britain, half who stuttered and half who did not. None of the people who did not stutter had the genetic mutations.
■UNITED STATES
Charlie Wilson dies
A former US lawmaker and hero of the film Charlie Wilson’s War, who championed covert CIA support for Afghans fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s, died on Wednesday at the age of 76, the hospital said. Wilson, sometimes dubbed “Goodtime Charlie” because of his hard-partying ways, succumbed to a heart attack at 12:16pm, Memorial Health System of East Texas spokeswoman Yana Ogletree said. He was “an extraordinary patriot whose life showed, once more, that one brave and determined person can alter the course of history,” US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a statement. “As the world now knows, his efforts and exploits helped repel an invader, liberate a people, and bring the Cold War to a close,” Gates said. Texas Governor Rick Perry praised Wilson, saying: “Charlie Wilson led a life that was oversized even by Hollywood’s standards. Congressman Wilson was fiercely devoted to serving his country and his fellow Texans.”
■UNITED STATES
Man nabbed over kid tattoo
Police alleged that an Ohio man had tattooed the letter “A” on the rear end of a one-year-old girl visiting his home. Twenty-year-old Lee Deitrick was arraigned on Wednesday on a felony child endangering charge in Canton Municipal Court, the Repository newspaper reported on its Web site. Authorities said there was no evidence the toddler’s mother permitted the November tattooing. It’s not clear what the letter “A” signifies. Deitrick’s grandmother called the tattoo “a wee-little hairline” and said there was hardly anything left of it. Louisville police chief Andrew Turowski said the tattoo was smaller than a dime. Bond was set at US$250,000. If convicted, Deitrick could face up to five years in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Man smashed 29 TVs
A 23-year-old man allegedly grabbed a baseball bat inside a Walmart store on Wednesday and smashed 29 flat-screen televisions, police in Lilburn, near Atlanta, said. Westley Strellis was charged with 29 counts of criminal damage to property in the second degree, they said. Witnesses told police he grabbed a metal baseball bat from the sporting goods section, then walked to the electronics department and destroyed the TV sets on display, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. Police said the televisions were valued at more than US$22,000.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS