■CHINA
Tortured Tibetan sentenced
Tibetan environmentalist Karma Samdrup, who said he was “brutally tortured” in custody, has been jailed for 15 years on tomb-robbing charges, his lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said yesterday. The 42-year-old was tried in Yanqi County, Xinjiang, on charges brought in 1998 and later dropped, after he bought artefacts that turned out to have been stolen. “He says he is innocent and that Xinjiang police used false evidence and torture, and didn’t provide an interpreter,” Pu said by telephone. “He said he had been brutally tortured, and I believe him — I last saw him in mid-January and he weighed around 90 kilograms then. Now he’s around 70 kilos, which is too thin for his height.” Karma Samdrup’s wife said he was unrecognizable when he appeared in court.
■NEW ZEALAND
Drunk driver has another
A drunk driver trapped after overturning his car cracked open another can of beer while he waited for emergency crews to rescue him, a court was told. Paul Nigel Sneddon, 47, pleaded guilty to careless driving and drunken driving after being nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit in a district court in Palmerston North, the Dominion Post reported on Wednesday. Police found Sneddon trapped in his overturned Ford Laser on June 1, drinking a can of beer after he failed to take a corner properly and crashed through a wooden barrier. When asked by police how much he had consumed, Sneddon replied: “Plenty, I’ve been drinking for four days straight.” Sneddon told the paper that he went on a drinking binge after losing his job at a bakery on the same day that he heard his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Judge Gregory Ross fined him NZ$1,100 (US$780) and disqualified him from driving for 10 months.
■PALESTINE
Israel raids Gaza Strip
Israeli warplanes flew three raids against the Gaza Strip on Thursday night wounding one person, witnesses and Palestinian medical officials said yesterday. A Palestinian man was hurt when the planes attacked the town of Rafah, in the southern part of the territory close to the border with Egypt. Nobody was wounded in the two other raids on the former airport, also in the south, and the town of Beit Hanun in the north. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the raids to reporters. “The raids are a reaction to the shelling Thursday from the Gaza Strip of the western sector of the Negev desert” in southern Israel, she added.
■SPAIN
Blame placed on victims
Spanish officials blamed summer solstice partygoers for crossing the tracks into the path of an express train that killed at least 13, but others said a new underground exit was poorly marked and an old crossing was blocked off, leaving travelers confused. At least 14 were injured in the beach resort of Castelldefels, south of Barcelona, shortly before midnight on Wednesday as crowds of young people left a train heading for bonfires on a Mediterranean beach. Many jammed the underpass leading to the beach, but about 30 others climbed down from the platform and tried to scurry across the tracks. Development Minister Jose Blanco on Thursday denied claims the underpass was poorly marked, and insisted that passengers should have known that “you never, never, never cross the tracks.”
■FRANCE
Party axed to save cash
President Nicolas Sarkozy has axed the traditional lavish Bastille Day garden party in the grounds of his Elysee Palace residence as a symbolic savings measure, parliamentary sources said on Wednesday. The decision, to be announced officially next week with other cost cuts, comes as Paris is under pressure from the EU and credit ratings agencies to slash its budget deficit, set to reach 8 percent of national output this year.
■FRANCE
Cannibal get 30 years
A convict who killed his cellmate and ate his lung was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Thursday. Nicolas Cocaign and Thierry Baudry had a fight when Cocaign asked Baudry to wash his hands after he had used the toilet during the night of Jan. 2, 2007. Cocaign strangled Baudry and cut open his chest with a razor blade. “What I did, I liked doing,” said Cocaign, 37. He will have to serve at least 20 years of his sentence.
■UNITED STATES
Jumping genes common
Stretches of DNA known as “jumping” genes are far more common than anyone thought, and almost everyone has a unique pattern of them, US researchers reported on Thursday. They also found an unexpectedly high number of these jumping genes, known as transposons, in lung tumors and said they may hold clues to the highly deadly cancer. “We found that if you have a child, the child could have one or more new copies of these transposons that you don’t have,” Scott Devine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine said in a statement. “From these findings, we predict that there is going to be more variation in human genomes than scientists first believed,” added Devine, who led the research while at Emory University in Atlanta.
■UNITED STATES
Man drifts out to sea
A man who apparently passed out on a pool float at a Tampa area beach ended up drifting about 1.6km from Florida’s shore in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Coast Guard rescued the man on Wednesday afternoon. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Mariana O’Leary told the St. Petersburg Times they suspect the man was very drunk. The Coast Guard says a boater reported seeing an unconscious man floating well offshore. The Coast Guard and a Clearwater Fire Rescue unit found the man, still unconscious and wearing a life jacket. He eventually woke up and was checked by paramedics at a Coast Guard station, O’Leary said
■UNITED STATES
American diet too salty
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday said that only one in 10 Americans keep their salt intake within recommended levels, with the others risking high blood pressure and heart ailments. The report found that average daily sodium intake was 3,466mg, twice as much as the recommended level. Healthy individuals are advised to consume less than 2,300mg of sodium per day, while people with high blood pressure, all middle-age and older adults and all African-Americans are encouraged to limit their intake to 1,500mg. The CDC study found that only 9.6 percent of the population followed the guidelines. It also determined that 77 percent of the salt eaten by Americans comes from processed and restaurant foods, especially pizza, breads and cookies.
■UNITED STATES
Scientists ‘grow’ lungs
Scientists reported important progress on Thursday toward building new human lungs by successfully implanting lab-cultivated cells into a rat’s lungs and through the creation of an artificial device on a microchip that mimics the human lung. Researchers at Yale University managed to create lungs that worked for up to 120 minutes by using laboratory-cultivated cells and implanting them into rats, a scientific first. Separately, researchers with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University created a device that acts like a human lung using blood vessel cells. The artificial lung can be used to test the effects of new medicine and toxins on human lungs. Both studies appear in yesterday’s edition of the journal Science.
■UNITED STATES
Disney opens pet resort
A new luxury resort opening at Walt Disney’s World Resort in Florida boasts air-conditioned suites with televisions and a water park, but this resort is a bit different — it’s for dogs and cats. The new Best Friends Pet Care Resort has more than 4,600m2 of indoor and outdoor space with runs, play areas and room to accommodate up to 270 dogs and 30 cats overnight as well as “pocket pets” like hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and ferrets. It also offers four VIP suites with TVs, raised bedding and private outdoor yards, a 121m2 “canines only” water park, a grooming salon, orthopedic bedding and treats such as ice cream and tuna on a cracker.
■VENEZUELA
Drug smuggler arrested
Venezuela has captured a suspected Colombian drug smuggler wanted on cocaine charges in the US, who has allegedly collaborated with Mexico’s Zetas drug gang, the justice minister said on Thursday. Tareck El Aissami held up the arrest of Luis Frank Tello Candelo, 47, better known as “El Negro Frank,” as proof of the country’s determination to combat organized crime and drug trafficking.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘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
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
As violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Iran is walking a tightrope by supporting Hezbollah without being dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands. With a focus on easing its isolation and reviving its battered economy, Iran is aware that war could complicate efforts to secure relief from crippling sanctions. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, has intensified, especially after last week’s sabotage on Hezbollah’s communications that killed 39 people. Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon followed, killing hundreds. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket barrages. Despite the surge in
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