■AUSTRALIA
Surgeon’s killer deported
A man convicted of killing one of the nation’s top heart transplant surgeons was sent home to Malaysia yesterday after serving an 18-year prison term. Phillip Choon Tee Lim, 50, was one of two men jailed over the fatal shooting in 1991 of Victor Chang during a failed extortion attempt. Chang was gunned near his home on his way to work. Lim and accomplice Chew Seng Liew were sentenced to maximum terms of 24 and 26 years respectively, but Lim had served his non-parole period of 18 years by last November. He was released from prison into immigration custody on Monday.
■AUSTRALIA
Arrests made in tattoo case
A teenager was forcibly given a one-word tattoo on his forehead and beaten with a baseball bat over a number of hours last month, New South Wales police said yesterday. The 18-year-old was attacked in the suburb of Albion Park Rail, south of Sydney, on Feb. 23. “One of the men also allegedly assaulted the man with a tattoo gun, by forcefully tattooing a word on the man’s forehead,” the police said in a statement. A 34-year-old man was arrested and charged with wounding with intent to commit grievous bodily harm and drug offences on Tuesday. Four other people have been charged as accessories.
■AUSTRALIA
Fifty fake bombs found
Sydney police used explosives to blow up suspected bombs found throughout a dead man’s house but then discovered they were fake. More than 50 bomb-like devices were found in the house and in the man’s car, New South Wales state Detective Superintendent Gavin Dengate said yesterday. The 69-year-old man, who died last week in hospital, was known as a recluse.
■NEW ZEALAND
McNuggets put on diet list
Meals approved by Weight Watchers are going on sale at McDonald’s, the companies said yesterday, in a deal trumpeted as an enjoyable way to lose weight but that nutritionists criticize as a marketing ploy that doesn’t promote healthy eating. Several items on the fast food giant’s menu — the Filet-O-Fish, Chicken McNuggets and Sweet Chilli Seared Chicken Wrap — have been approved for the Weight Watchers program. Each meal is worth 6.5 points on the program, which assigns points to food items and allows dieters to consume 18 to 40 points each day to achieve their goal weight. Nutritionists and obesity experts said the menu items are merely a marketing ploy to lure customers into the restaurant. Australian Obesity Policy Coalition senior adviser Jane Martin said: “It implies this food is healthy ... when often it is high in fat and salt. Chicken McNuggets are Chicken McNuggets whether its got Weight Watchers on it or not.”
■NEW ZEALAND
Man jailed over geckos
A German man was jailed yesterday for 15 weeks after admitting trying to smuggle endangered reptiles worth US$132,000 out of the country. Thomas Benjamin Price, listed as both a Swiss-based stockbroker and unemployed, is the second German jailed in the past two months for being in possession of geckos. Hans Kurt Kubus, 58, received a 14-week sentence in January for trading in endangered species after he was found with 44 geckos and skinks hidden in a hand-sewn package concealed in his underwear. Price had 16 rare jeweled geckos, of which nine were pregnant, when he and two other men were arrested in Christchurch three weeks ago.
■PAKISTAN
Suicide-jacket supplier slain
The military said yesterday that a supplier of suicide jackets and explosives who operated a key inter-city network had been killed during a gun battle with soldiers on Monday. “Two important terrorist commanders named Muhammad Tufail alias Abdullah and Muhammad Iqbal were killed by security forces in an exchange of fire,” the military said. More than 3,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since July 2007.
■HONG KONG
New ‘milkshake’ trial set
Prosecutors on Wednesday issued a new murder indictment against Nancy Kissel, an American who successfully appealed an earlier conviction on charges of drugging her husband with a milkshake laced with sedatives and then bashing him to death in a luxury apartment complex. The Department of Justice submitted the fresh murder charges against Kissel to the High Court, which scheduled a 50-day trial starting on Nov. 1, her lawyer said. Kissel was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murder in September 2005. However, last month the Court of Final Appeal ordered a retrial.
■SOUTH KOREA
Air force grounds jets
The air force grounded most its fighter jets for safety checks yesterday, a day after two of them crashed into a mountain killing three pilots. Only those “essential for surveillance flights” were still operating yesterday, a spokesman said, adding: “When safety checks are completed the aircraft will return to flying one by another, starting Thursday [today].” Two aging F-5 jets crashed on Tuesday during a training mission near the east coast.
■UGANDA
Landslide claims 80 lives
At least 80 people died and 400 were missing after a landslide triggered by torrential rain swept away entire villages in the east, the Ugandan Red Cross said yesterday. “Eighty bodies have been recovered and the missing are more than 400 now, after 100 people were reported buried in a trading center where they had taken shelter,” spokeswoman Catherine Ntabadde said. The landslide on Monday evening followed days of heavy rains in the eastern district of Bududa. Tonnes of relief aid and a helicopter carrying rescuers had been dispatched to the region, an official said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Toddler’s killer jailed again
One of the two men convicted as children of killing toddler James Bulger in one of the nation’s most notorious murders is back in prison after breaking the rules governing his release, authorities said on Tuesday. Jon Venables, who was 10 when he and a friend took the two-year-old from a shopping mall before torturing him and beating him to death near a railway line, was jailed for a minimum of eight years in 1993. Venables, 27, was returned to custody following an undisclosed breach of the conditions surrounding his release in 2001 “on licence,” a system where offenders are allowed out of prison as long as they follow certain rules. Little official information has been released about Venables or his accomplice Robert Thompson. Strict court orders prevent the media from identifying the pair or saying where they live and what they do.
■GERMANY
Knut may be castrated
An animal rights group called on Tuesday for Knut the polar bear, who shot to global stardom as a cub in 2007, to be castrated to avert incest with his cousin. The three-year-old darling of Berlin Zoo was given a female companion, Giovanna, last year, but the German chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals warned against their mating. The group’s zoo expert, Frank Albrecht, said that Knut and Giovanna, known as Gianna for short, had the same grandfather. Any offspring would threaten the genetic diversity of the polar bear population.
■GERMANY
Man does drugs on police car
Police detained a nightclub reveler they caught trying to snort amphetamines off the top of their unmarked patrol car. The 26-year-old began lining up the powdered drugs on the roof of the car in a disco car park, when the two police officers surprised him, a Nuremberg police spokesman said on Tuesday. The man had no idea the normal looking vehicle belonged to the police, and it was coincidence that the officers — who were walking by their parked car — discovered him just as he was about to take the drugs. “He’s got horrible luck,” police spokesman Bert Rauenbusch said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ex-spy accused of leaks
A former member of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency was charged yesterday with revealing information about spying techniques, police said. Daniel Houghton, 25, a former member of spy agency MI6, was accused under the Official Secrets Act of disclosing electronic files about intelligence gathering at the Central Criminal Court, better known as London’s Old Bailey. He was arrested on Monday in London the same day he stands accused of revealing the files, London’s Metropolitan Police said.
■UNITED STATES
Quake may have shifted axis
The earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted the Earth’s axis and created shorter days, NASA scientists said. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the 8.8 magnitude quake could have moved the Earth’s axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8cm) — enough to shorten a day by about 1.26 microseconds. A large quake can shift huge amounts of rock and alter the distribution of mass on the planet. When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates, which determines the length of a day. Gross previously used the technique to estimate the shift caused by the 2004 Sumatran quake that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami. That 9.1 magnitude quake shifted the Earth’s axis by 2.3 milliarcseconds and shortened a day by 6.8 microseconds.
■UNITED STATES
Honeymoon spent in jail
A newlywed couple spent their wedding night in separate jail cells after police said the bride tried to run over an old flame of the groom. Police told the Cape Cod Times that 22-year-old Marissa Ann Putignano-Keene tried on Monday to run over the other woman and the woman’s son in a parking lot. Police say the couple married at Barnstable Town Hall and split a bottle of champagne afterward. The bride was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Her husband, 37-year-old Timothy Keene, was riding in the car with her and was charged with disorderly conduct. Both were released on Tuesday.
■UNITED STATES
Perry wins Texas primary
Governor Rick Perry easily defeated US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to win the Republican nomination for Texas governor on Tuesday in a heated primary that highlighted the growing anti-Washington mood among voters heading into November’s national elections. Hutchison was once seen as the candidate who could deliver Perry’s first election loss in a lifetime of public office, but the governor, a favorite of social conservatives, painted the senator as too entrenched in Washington politics. Perry, Texas’ longest-serving governor, will face Democrat former Houston mayor Bill White, who has the money to spend on a big race and a power base in Houston, the state’s largest city.
■UNITED STATES
Producer barred from Oscars
A producer of the war story The Hurt Locker will not be allowed to attend the Academy Awards because of e-mails he sent urging academy members to vote for his movie. But he will receive an Oscar if his film wins best picture. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the action on Tuesday against producer Nicolas Chartier, who violated Oscar rules that prohibit mailings promoting a film by disparaging another. Chartier sent e-mails seeking support for The Hurt Locker, “not a “[US]$500 million film” — an obvious reference to best-picture contender Avatar. Chartier apologized in a subsequent e-mail.
■UNITED STATES
Campbell won’t be charged
Police say model Naomi Campbell likely won’t face criminal charges in New York City after her driver said she hit him from the back seat of her luxury SUV. The driver told police Campbell hit him from behind and his head struck the steering wheel, causing bruising under his right eye. Police on Tuesday issued a harassment report after the driver decided not to pursue the matter.
‘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
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
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
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
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