■CHINA
Dorm fire kills 10 workers
PHOTO: REUTERS
At least 10 people have been killed in a fire at a dormitory for railway workers in Inner Mongolia, Xinhua reported yesterday. Fourteen people were injured and taken to hospital after the fire, which broke out in Hohhot late on Monday, the agency said in a brief dispatch. Doctors said four of the injured were in critical condition after suffering severe burns, it said. The blaze was quickly brought under control, the report said. The workers had been building a railway tunnel in the area.
■MALAYSIA
Anwar trial to continue
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy trial will continue next week after the Federal Court yesterday rejected his final appeal to have the charge against him dropped. Anwar’s lawyers argued before the country’s highest court that the charge was a political conspiracy against him and that a medical examination on his accuser found no conclusive physical signs of sodomy. The appeal was dismissed by the three-man panel of judges who ruled that the medical examination report needed to be analyzed along with DNA test results of swabs taken from Anwar’s accuser that have yet to be released. The trial will resume on May 10.
■PHILIPPINES
Election machines fail
Vote-tallying machines to be used in Monday’s presidential polls have malfunctioned, the Commission on Elections said yesterday. Some of the 82,200 machines tested on Monday failed to read the names of candidates, forcing a recall of the software used, commission spokesman James Jimenez said. “Right now we are assuming that all of the machines were affected. We have stopped the testing and are pulling out all memory cards for [re]configuration,” he said.
■CHINA
No word on Kim’s visit
The government yesterday remained silent on the visit of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who was reportedly heading to Beijing for talks with the country’s leaders on aid and stalled nuclear disarmament talks. “On this issue in which you are very interested, at present I don’t have any information to offer you,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters when asked to confirm Kim’s presence on Chinese soil.
■CHINA
Expo attendance down
Attendance at Shanghai’s World Expo fell short of expectations during the opening weekend, official data showed yesterday. Only 207,000 people went through the turnstiles at the huge culture and technology show on Saturday, the opening day, the official Expo Web site said, although officials said all 500,000 tickets had been sold or distributed. Attendance was up slightly on Sunday at 215,000 and the number of visitors on Monday — a national holiday in China — was at least 193,000, organizers said.
■SOUTH KOREA
Dancers fake schizophrenia
Nine break dancers were arrested for pretending to have schizophrenia and other mental illnesses in order to escape compulsory military service, Seoul police said on Monday. Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested nine members of the crew TIP — short for “Teamwork Is Perfect” — after receiving an anonymous tip that the dancers faked symptoms of mental illness to avoid the country’s two-year mandatory military service, case officer Lee Jin-hak said. “The suspects pretended to hear sounds and to see ghosts, feigning schizophrenia and insanity so that they will fail the physical for conscription,” Lee told reporters.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Prisoner cuts ear to escape
A criminal successfully escaped from prison by ambulance after slicing off part of his ear. Michael O’Donnell, who was on remand for burglary and conspiracy to rob, was escorted from his cell by three officers after calling for help at around 1:30am. O’Donnell, 28, told staff that he had been injured in an accident and they called an ambulance. After it left the prison in Salford in the early hours of Sunday it was forced to stop by four masked men in a stolen BMW. They smashed its windows and used bolt cutters to reach O’Donnell, who was handcuffed to a prison officer, but quickly released. The prisoner had been warned by a judge that he was facing a long prison sentence. He was due to be sentenced later this month.
■IRAQ
Vote recount criticized
The Iraqi prime minister’s coalition cried foul just one hour into a partial vote recount that began on Monday and demanded the process be halted, the latest political tussle delaying the formation of a government in the aftermath of the close election. The recount of roughly 2.5 million votes cast on March 7 in the capital was demanded by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition, which narrowly lost to a bloc led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi that enjoyed heavy Sunni support. Shortly after election workers began to tally ballots under the watchful eye of observers, representatives from the prime minister’s State of Law held a news conference railing against the recount. They alleged the commission wasn’t conducting it properly since it was not reopening voter records and checking voter signatures against ballots.
■RUSSIA
Mars simulation to begin
A group of volunteers have started final training in preparation for being locked up in a capsule for 520 days to simulate the psychological effects of the voyage to Mars. Three Russians, two other Europeans and one Chinese national will be shut away inside the 180m² module on the outskirts of Moscow starting late this month or early next month. The project is the first full-duration simulated mission to Mars. One of the biggest unknowns of an eventual manned mission to Mars will be the psychological effects of the isolation, and the experiment aims to garner crucial data on the participants’ state of mind and body.
■WEST BANK
Arson likely in mosque fire
Fire damaged a mosque in a village yesterday, burning holy books and prayer carpets — a blaze the local Palestinian mayor said he suspected Jewish settlers were responsible for. No one witnessed the attack in Luba a-Sharkiyeh, a village ringed by three Israeli settlements, Mayor Jamal Daraghmeh said. Holy books were pulled from shelves and placed on the ground in the area that burned, suggesting arson, he added. Settlers have attacked village property in the past, Daraghmeh said.
■CYPRUS
Reunification talks to resume
A UN envoy says talks to reunify divided Cyprus will resume during the last week this month. Alexander Downer says the exact date hasn’t been finalized, but that it will likely be May 26. Downer says newly elected Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu and the island’s Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias will pick up where the talks left off prior to the April 18 Turkish Cypriot presidential election. Downer was speaking yesterday after meeting with Christofias. He met Eroglu on Monday
■MEXICO
Bejeweled guns seized
Security forces have seized 31 gold and silver-plated, diamond-incrusted guns believed to belong to allies of the Sinaloa drug gang, the Attorney General’s office said in a statement on Monday. The weapons, including machine guns and assault rifles with sparkling grips, were also engraved with the words “Lobo Valencia,” a nickname for Oscar Orlando Nava Valencia, the alleged leader of the Valencia gang, the office said. Four shotguns, more than 700 cartridges and a small amount of marijuana, jewelry and documents containing Valencia’s name were also found in a storage room in an apartment building in Zapopan, Jalisco state.
■UNITED STATES
Former officer convicted
A West Point graduate who stole nearly US$700,000 from the government while serving as an Army captain in Iraq was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday. Michael Dung Nguyen acknowledged stealing more than US$690,000 entrusted to him for distribution to Iraqi humanitarian relief, rebuilding projects and security services. The 28-year-old pleaded guilty to theft and money laundering charges in December. US District Judge Ancer Haggerty ordered Nguyen to undergo mental health treatment, serve three years of post-prison supervision and pay back US$200,000.
■UNITED STATES
TV hurts toddlers’ learning
Toddlers who watch too much TV may struggle in school later, with measurably lower scores in math, and they may get bullied more than other children, Canadian and US researchers reported on Monday. Children who watched more TV at age two weighed more by the time they were 10 and ate more snacks and soft drinks, the researchers reported in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. “The results support previous suggestions that early childhood television exposure undermines attention,” wrote Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and colleagues at Bowling Green University in Kentucky and the University of Michigan. Every additional weekly hour of TV at 29 months corresponded to a 7 percent drop in classroom attention and a 6 percent drop in math skills, they found.
■BRAZIL
Sweep triggers clashes
Clashes between police and drug traffickers left 11 people dead on Sunday in the slum districts near Rio’s international airport, police said on Monday. Exchanges of gunfire erupted during a police sweep aimed at breaking up a network of traffickers in drugs and stolen vehicles, police said. Several suspects also were arrested and a tonne of marijuana was seized.
■UNITED STATES
Diners ‘fear the deer’
The rallying cry of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team — “fear the deer” — turned into a punchline when two deer burst through the glass doors of a restaurant in Menomonie, Wisconsin, as patrons watched the Bucks in a playoff game. The first deer apparently hurt itself, bloodying its snout and becoming dazed, said Jay Ouellette, manager of the Stout Ale House. Two customers were able to wrestle it to the ground. The other deer fled into a private room, where a restaurant worker managed to wrestle it down as well.
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
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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