■INDIA
Bus crash kills 17
A minibus veered off a mountain road under construction and plunged into a river in Kashmir, killing at least 17 people, a police officer said yesterday. Rescue workers were searching the fast-flowing waters of the Chenab River for any survivors, Hemant Lohia said. The accident occurred late on Friday in the Kishtwar region, 190km southeast of Srinagar, the main city in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. It was not immediately clear how many passengers were traveling on the privately owned bus, or the cause of the crash. More than 110,000 people die annually nationwide in road accidents, according to police figures. Badly maintained roads, overcrowding and aged vehicles are the main causes.
■AUSTRALIA
Bon Jovi donates tickets
American rocker Jon Bon Jovi has purchased four season tickets for the new Melbourne Heart team in the A-League and will donate them to fans. Bon Jovi was announced as the soccer club’s No. 1 international ticket holder in a statement released by the team yesterday. The four premium memberships, valued at about US$2,000, will be donated for each home game to fans who otherwise “don’t have the financial means.”
■UNITED STATES
Facebook feud kills woman
Authorities say a Facebook feud between two Michigan women over the love of a prison inmate led to a high-speed car chase and crash that critically injured one woman, killed her friend and landed the other woman in jail. Torrie Emery was arraigned by video on Friday in Pontiac district court on several charges, including second-degree murder. Police say Emery was driving around with her three-year-old daughter in the back seat when she saw her rival, Danielle Booth, in the passenger seat of another car. They say Emery rammed the car, then chased it at speeds of up to 100kph. Police say Alesha Abernathy, who was driving the second car, ran a red light and hit a dump truck. Abernathy was killed and Booth was critically injured. Emery and her daughter were unharmed.
■CHINA
Executions scaled back
Legislators will reduce the number of crimes subject to the death penalty from the current 68 in the latest step to cut back on the use of capital punishment, state media said yesterday. The nation’s top legislative committee will begin revising criminal law next month to reduce the number of capital crimes, the China Daily reported, quoting a legislative source. The report did not say how many crimes would be subject to capital punishment after the revision or which offenses would be removed from the current list. China is widely believed to carry out more executions that the rest of the world combined, but the actual figure remains a state secret. Amnesty International, in a report earlier this year, said the number was “believed to be in the thousands,” compared to last year’s second-ranked executioner Iran, which the rights group said carried out at least 388 last year.
■PAKISTAN
US missiles kill 16
US missiles hit a suspected militant hide-out, killing 16 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border before dawn yesterday, intelligence officials said. The six missiles struck a compound in the Nazai Narai area of South Waziristan. The hide-out was known to be frequented by foreign fighters who were among the dead, two intelligence officials said.
■UNITED STATES
Gabor in critical condition
Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was in critical condition on Friday after undergoing hip replacement surgery earlier in the week, her husband said. Gabor, 93, had injuries to the right side of her body, including a broken hip, after she fell out of bed last weekend trying to get into a wheelchair, said Prince Frederic von Anhalt, Gabor’s husband. Gabor initially appeared to be recovering after the surgery on Monday, her publicist John Blanchette said. Blanchette said von Anhalt told him on Friday that “doctors were working very hard to stabilize her.” “Right now she’s not communicative,” Blanchette said. “Only time will tell.”
■IVORY COAST
Prime minister resigns
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro has resigned from his post as the head of the country’s main rebel movement in order to concentrate on organizing the country’s long-delayed elections, his spokesman said on Friday. Guillaume Soro became prime minister after the government agreed to a 2007 power-sharing deal with the New Forces, a coalition of rebel groups that had controlled the northern half of the country since a failed 2002 coup. Since his appointment, Soro became the symbol of the country’s reconciliation process which was supposed to produce presidential elections within a year but have repeatedly been delayed.
■UNITED STATES
BP set to drill off Libya
BP will start drilling off the Libyan coast within a few weeks, the Financial Times reported yesterday, amid a row over the oil giant’s connections to the north African state. The deep water drilling will take place in the Gulf of Sirte as BP faces intense scrutiny over its acquisition of rights to a huge oil and gas field in 2007. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to investigate whether BP played any part in the Scottish government’s decision last year to release Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds. Some US lawmakers charge that the British-based energy giant lobbied for Megrahi’s release to make doing business easier.
■ITALY
Fake goods seized
About 800,000 fake luxury watches worth 10 million euros (US$12.8 million) were seized on Friday in a shop run by five Chinese nationals in Tuscany. The store in Prato, south of Bologna, transformed unfinished replicas of Dolce & Gabbana, Rolex, Omega, Patek Philippe and Mont Blanc watches brought from China. Police also seized real estate, a car, three computers and watch-making equipment, they said. Some 30,000 Chinese live — often illegally — in the textile industry around Prato.
■JAPAN
Plane crash releases krypton
An unmanned Japanese military plane carrying a small amount of radioactive krypton gas crashed into the Pacific, but there was no danger of nuclear contamination, officials said yesterday. The plane was dispatched from a F-15 fighter on a test flight early on Friday off Iwo Jima island, but crashed with a stalled engine two minutes later, a defense ministry official said. The drone was carrying 107.7 kilobecquerels of krypton 85 in a sealed glass capsule to be used for igniting the jet engine, a science and technology ministry official said. “If the capsule is shattered underwater, it would not have any impact on the environment,” Tomokazu Ueda, an official in charge of nuclear safety at the ministry said.
■ITALY
Magazine ‘outs’ gay priests
A magazine cover story on gay priests with pictures of them cavorting in Rome nightclubs prompted a Roman Catholic diocese to say on Friday they do not belong in the Church. “Those who live a ‘double life,’ who do not understand what it is to be a Catholic priest, should not become priests,” the diocese said in a statement after the Panorama weekly’s expose hit the newsstands. The expose titled “Gay Priests’ Nights on the Town” offers details on their “vices and perversions” obtained over a month of undercover reporting with hidden cameras. The Rome diocese pledged to pursue “with rigor any behavior that is unworthy of the priestly life.” It added: “No one obliges them to remain priests and keep enjoying the advantages. Consistency demands that they reveal themselves. We don’t wish them any harm, but we cannot accept that the honor of all the others is dragged through the mud because of their behavior.”
■UNITED STATES
Agent demanded sex favors
A New York judge has sentenced a former immigration agent to at least 18 months in prison for threatening to block a woman’s citizenship application unless she gave in to his sexual demands. Isaac Baichu of the Bronx pleaded guilty in April to coercion, sexual misconduct and accepting a bribe. The sentence handed down on Friday calls for him to serve between one and-a-half and four-and-a-half years. His victim was a Colombian woman who had applied for a green card based on her marriage to a US citizen. Prosecutors says the woman was terrified and eventually gave in, but she used a phone hidden in her purse to record the encounter. She later gave the audio recording to Queens prosecutors and the New York Times. Baichu was arrested three months later.
■UNITED STATES
‘Darth Vader’ robs bank
A bank robber dressed as Star Wars villain Darth Vader made off with an undetermined amount of cash after pointing a handgun at startled tellers inside a Chase bank branch on Long Island. Detectives say the man walked into the bank shortly before noon on Thursday wearing a full head mask and a blue cape. The only part of the uniform that was out of place were his camouflage pants. And that handgun — no light saber. Suffolk County police detective Sergeant William Lamb told reporters that at least one customer at the time didn’t think the theft was legit. The customer, whose identity was not released, can be seen cowering on the floor in a surveillance camera photo, moments after the robber shoved him away. “The customer thought it might have been a joke and not a serious attempt at a robbery,” Lamb told the Daily News.
■MEXICO
Official passed on info
A Mexican law enforcement official who worked with US authorities was charged with passing along classified information to drug traffickers and arranging the arrests of his drug boss’ rivals, an indictment unsealed on Friday said. Jesus Quinones, a liaison to US law enforcement with the Baja California attorney general’s office, was among 43 defendants named in the complaint that alleges murder, kidnapping and other crimes. Prosecutors allege Quinones and other defendants worked for Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the brothers who head the Arellano Felix cartel and one of the most wanted alleged drug traffickers in Tijuana, Mexico. The complaint charges the defendants with conspiracy to conduct a criminal enterprise through racketeering.
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to
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