■INDONESIA
Second Javan rhino dies
A second Javan rhino has died, conservationists said yesterday, underscoring the need to expand the critically endangered mammals’ last refuge in Ujung Kulon National Park. With fewer than 50 Javan rhinos remaining, the deaths of two males in recent months has brought the world’s scarcest mammal closer than ever to extinction, experts said. “We have 40 to 50 rhinos here now. If two die, that’s 4 percent of the population,” Indonesian Rhino Foundation head Widodo Ramono said. A carcass was found Monday in a river in West Java province. Like another male found dead earlier last month, Ramono said the animal could have drowned in a wallow during heavy rain. “There were no signs it had been killed by poachers as its horn was intact,” he said.
■PHILIPPINES
Man shoots radio journalist
A brazen gunman shot and killed a radio journalist as he hosted a singing contest before shocked spectators, police said yesterday. Desidario Camangyan of Sunshine FM radio died from a gunshot wound to the head Monday night inside the gymnasium of Davao Oriental province’s Manay township, said Inspector Ariel Nueva, the town’s police chief. Camangyan was sitting on stage when the attacker shot him from behind, Nueva told reporters. The gunman escaped on foot. The Philippines prides itself on having among the freest media in Southeast Asia, but it also is among the world’s most dangerous places for journalists.
■BANGLADESH
Landslides claim 46 lives
Landslides triggered by heavy rain in the southeast buried dozens of houses and killed at least 46 people yesterday, officials said. The landslides hit villages in the Cox’s Bazar hill and resort district, where officials said they recorded 25cm of rainfall in 24 hours to 9am yesterday. Landslides hit hillside villages in southern and northeastern districts almost every year during the monsoon season. At least 130 people died in the worst landslide in the port city of Chittagong in June 2007.
■HONG KONG
Nuclear plant leak reported
A nuclear plant in Guangdong Province has recorded a small leak, the territory’s government said yesterday, after the incident was exposed by a US-based radio station. A small rise in radioactivity was observed on May 23 in a reactor-cooling unit of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station in Shenzhen, which is run by CLP Power, the territory’s largest electricity supplier, the government said. Daya Bay is located about 50km north of the territory. The incident was revealed after Radio Free Asia quoted a “Hong Kong expert source” as saying that the plant’s unit experienced an abnormal situation on May 23.
■CHINA
Police told to work harder
Police have been ordered to identify and resolve conflicts before they boil over as part of a “strike hard” campaign aimed at social tensions blamed for a recent wave of violent crime. A series of attacks have shocked the country, including five assaults at schools that killed at least 17 youngsters and have forced authorities to confront violent crime. “China, during a process of social and economic transformation, is facing emerging social conflicts and new problems in social security,” yesterday’s China Daily newspaper cited public security vice minister Zhang Xinfeng (張新楓) as saying.
■GREECE
Vandals burn loot
Vandals dubbed the “Robin Hood gang” by local media had no truck with the poor following their latest supermarket heist on Monday, instead setting their loot on fire, police said. A series of similar non-violent raids over the past years, which police blame on a group of anarchists, have usually ended with the vandals distributing the goods to clients and passers-by. However, police said they disturbed the party when 20 masked vandals raided a supermarket on a university campus in the northern city of Thessaloniki on Monday. Instead the gang set fire to the money they had taken from the cash registers, police said.
■FRANCE
Record price for stone head
A sculpted stone head by artist Amedeo Modigliani sold at Christie’s in Paris on Monday for 43.18 million euros (US$52.8 million), breaking the record for a work by the Italian artist, the auction house said. It was also the highest-priced work sold at an auction in France, Christie’s said. An anonymous buyer bid for the piece by telephone. The piece, sculpted between 1910 and 1912, depicts an elongated head with almond-shaped eyes and flowing hair, and it is reminiscent of the artist’s paintings.
■AUSTRALIA
New sanctions announced
The government yesterday announced it has imposed new sanctions against two Iranian companies and an Iranian general to protest Tehran’s nuclear program. The new financial and trade sanctions were in addition to those adopted by the UN Security Council last week, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Parliament. The targeted individual is General Rostam Qasemi, commander of Khatem ol-Anbiya Construction Organization, a company owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and listed in the latest Security Council sanctions. Qasemi and two companies — Bank Mellat and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line— “assist Iran to violate its obligations” under UN resolutions, Smith said.
■RUSSIA
President visits Chechnya
President Dmitry Medvedev made a surprise visit to Chechnya on Monday after a series of attacks in the troubled North Caucasus region, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency. In the regional capital Grozny, Medvedev congratulated Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, on the republic’s recent armed operations which killed 14 insurgents. Kadyrov, largely credited by the Kremlin for rebuilding the republic after two separatist wars with Moscow since the 1990s, vowed to continue pursuing Islamist fighters until they “are completely destroyed.”
■FRANCE
Drug could save thousands
An easy-to-use blood-clotting drug that costs just a few dollars could save up to 100,000 lives each year, according to a paper published yesterday by the Lancet. Doctors at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tested an off-patent treatment called tranexamic acid (TXA) among 20,000 severely-injured adults in 274 hospitals in 40 countries. Participants received either one gram of TXA by injection followed by another one gram in a drip over the following eight hours, or a dummy lookalike. TXA reduced the risk of death by any cause by 10 percent compared with the placebo, the paper said. When it came to the risk of death by bleeding, TXA scored a reduction of 15 percent over the placebo.
■UNITED STATES
Editor resigns after arrest
A newspaper editor criticized for publishing the details of the arrests of public officials for driving under the influence (DUI) has resigned after being nabbed for the same offense on Saturday. Mike Alexieff, 50, managing editor of the Bowling Green Daily News, resigned on Monday. Alexieff “took a tough stance on publishing the DUI’s of public officials,” the paper said, adding it had received considerable criticism in 2006 for publishing the DUI of a former sheriff’s deputy whose family had suffered tragedy. Alexieff had justified the publication in an editorial at the time, by saying: “Driving under the influence is the leading cause of fatal accidents on Kentucky roads. And yes, if I get a DUI, you can be assured an article about it will be in the newspaper.”
■MEXICO
Prison clashes kill 29
At least 29 inmates were killed on Monday as rival gangs clashed inside a prison and three policemen guarding the prison were wounded. In one attack, 20 inmates were shot to death when a group of prisoners opened fire on members of a rival gang inside the prison in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, state Public Safety Secretary Josefina Garcia told Radio Formula. The gang that initiated the attack killed 17 rivals and lost three of its own members.
■UNITED STATES
Brothers found alive
A wounded three-year-old boy was found hiding outside his Anaheim home, and his five-year-old brother was found unhurt inside, 12 hours after their parents died in an apparent murder-suicide, police said on Monday. The shootings happened late on Sunday but weren’t discovered until midmorning on Monday, when a coworker stopped by to see why the father hadn’t gone to work, Anaheim Police Sergeant Tim Schmidt said. The coworker instructed the five-year-old to call police. “He said his dad killed his mom and shot himself and he can’t find his brother,” Schmidt said. The police found the parents’ bodies on lawn chairs in the backyard. From there, they followed a trail of blood leading to the three-year-old, who was hiding behind trash cans on the side of the house, Schmidt said. The youngster was shot three times in the shoulder, stomach and chest and has been hospitalized in critical condition.
■UNITED STATES
‘Star Trek’ items for sale
A treasure trove of Star Trek memorabilia is to boldly go under the hammer later this month, offering devotees of the show a chance to grab a piece of history. Personal belongings of late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry are among lots put up for auction from June 24 to June 27 at the Planet Hollywood Resort in Las Vegas. The items include props and costumes from the 2009 Star Trek blockbuster. All sales will benefit various charities, Julien’s Auctions said.
■UNITED STATES
Jackson doctor in court
A judge on Monday ruled that Michael Jackson’s physician can keep his California medical license, and he set Aug. 23 as the start date for a preliminary hearing into the involuntary manslaughter charge against Conrad Murray. The doctor betrayed no emotion as Judge Michael Pastor ruled that he did not have the authority to suspend the doctor’s license, as state officials asked. Pastor said that because a previous judge issued a ruling restricting Murray’s use of sedatives, any further restraint must come via an appeal to the initial ruling and not from a new decision by Pastor.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
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