■THAILAND
Tiger found with stuffed toys
A two-month-old tiger cub was discovered hidden among stuffed tiger toys in the baggage of a woman heading to Iran from Thailand, wildlife protection officials said yesterday. The 31-year-old Thai woman, who has not been named, was arrested on Sunday night after the tiger was spotted by X-ray staff in overweight luggage destined for the cargo hold. An official from the Wild Fauna and Flora Protection Division said the cub was drugged and placed in the bag with the toys — apparently to make it appear as if it were a stuffed animal. The cub was found at Suvarnabhumi Airport and has been sent to a rescue center.
■SINGAPORE
N Korea car in brothel crash
A North Korean embassy vehicle crashed into a parked car in Singapore’s brothel district and fled the scene, triggering a police investigation, media reports said yesterday. A police statement said they were informed by a member of the public before dawn on Thursday that “an embassy car had hit a ... car parked along Lorong 21 Geylang.” No one was in the car, which suffered a slight dent at the rear, it added. A police spokesman declined to name the embassy, but the Straits Times said the vehicle — a silver Toyota — displayed diplomatic plates and the North Korean flag. Geylang is Singapore’s red light district, where prostitutes offer their services on pavements and in licensed brothels. Witnesses quoted by the daily said they saw the driver hurriedly reversing from the damaged car and almost hitting two female pedestrians before speeding off. Calls to the North Korean embassy by reporters went unanswered yesterday.
■CHINA
Panda project popular
More than 17,000 people from around the world have entered a contest to become a panda keeper for a month in China, organizers said yesterday, less than two weeks after the competition was launched. “Project Panda,” launched by the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan Province and the WWF, aims to give the contest’s six winners a chance to study panda behavior for a month. The keepers will witness panda births and trek in the mountains around Chengdu to study wild pandas. According to pandahome.com, where people can apply for the position, 17,114 people have entered the contest. A panel will select 12 finalists, which they will then whittle down to six winners at the end of next month.
■SINGAPORE
Firm imposes casino ban
Retail and property firm Second Chance has banned its management from the country’s two new casinos following reports a local businessman lost a fortune at the gaming tables, its founder said yesterday. CEO Mohamed Salleh said he had applied for casino exclusion orders for himself and six of his top personnel using a system designed to keep gambling addicts out. “A few days ago I read about this Henry Quek ... that lost S$26 million [US$19.2 million] at this casino, so I was thinking, why not I include all my top executives and my finance people?” he said. Media reports said Quek, a local seafood industry magnate, had squandered the amount over a three-day gambling spree at the Resorts World Sentosa casino. “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Mohamed said.
■AUSTRALIA
School regrets Hitler award
A school in Perth issued an apology to parents yesterday after a young boy dressed as Adolf Hitler won a costume parade. The boy was judged best dressed among his class of nine and 10-years-olds by the principal and teachers in a book week contest, with a costume featuring the swastika, a famous symbol of Nazi brutality. But the unnamed Perth Catholic school sent a letter of apology to parents after a number of complaints that commending an outfit of the Nazi dictator was inappropriate. “It’s a one-off thing that in retrospect we’d do differently,” the principal, who was not named, told the West Australian newspaper, defending himself by saying Hitler “was a fairly famous person.” He added that for him, “it’s a mountain out of a molehill.”
■AUSTRALIA
DNA not Crawford’s
DNA evidence in Texas has ruled out a major lead in the search for a fugitive Australian man accused of killing his pregnant wife and their three children 40 years ago, police said yesterday. Facial recognition experts had concluded earlier this year that an unidentified male who died in San Angelo, Texas, in 2005 could be Elmer Crawford. The dead man had four different pieces of identification and his fingerprints were worn smooth, so a DNA test was ordered to confirm his identity. But DNA from a relative of Crawford failed to match a sample from the body’s, a Victoria state police spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in compliance with police policy. That means a US$100,000 reward still stands for anyone who can help catch Crawford, who has been on the run since July 1970.
■AUSTRALIA
Campbell gets vegan choc
Beauty queen Jesinta Campbell, who came third in the Miss Universe pageant on Monday, has been sent a box of vegan chocolate sheep after deciding not to wear lamb’s wool clothing at the event. Campbell, 19, had come under fire from PETA for planning to model high-heeled woolly Ugg boots and a lamb’s wool shrug during the national-costume portion of the competition in Las Vegas. PETA argued it was cruel and unethical to use Australian wool sourced from mulesed sheep — while other critics questioned the tackiness of the high-heeled Uggs. Mulesing, a common practice among Australian farmers, involves removing strips of wool-bearing skin from the buttocks of sheep in a bid to reduce a potentially lethal maggot infestation called flystrike. PETA said Campbell opted for faux sheepskin, and the group sent her a box of politically correct chocolates in gratitude.
■Sweden
Court charges ship captain
A court on Thursday charged with “aggravated drunkenness at sea” the captain of a Dutch ship that ran aground this month near the southwestern port of Helsingborg. Andrey Sharafonenko, a 44-year-old Ukrainian, was arrested on Aug. 13, shortly after he ran aground the 85m Flinterforest in the Oeresund Strait that separates Denmark and Sweden. Court documents said Sharafonenko was at least twice over the legal limit for navigating, which is 0.1mg of alcohol per liter of breath. Police had at the time said his alcohol level, as measured by a breath test, was four times over the limit. The court said it charged the captain with “aggravated” drunkenness after considering he was working in conditions that demanded his full attention, that the Oeresund is a tight passage with heavy traffic, and that the way he commanded the ship “posed a significant risk to safety at sea.”
■Russia
Returned spy reveals figure
Glamorous agent Anna Chapman has posed provocatively for a magazine shoot in her first public appearance since she was deported from the US in a major spy swap. The tabloid-style lifenews.ru site on Thursday showed film footage of the 28-year-old redhead being photographed for an upcoming edition of glossy magazine Zhara in a VIP room in the upscale Balchug hotel near the Kremlin. In the one minute and 43 second clip, Chapman struts about in two figure-hugging dresses. “Clearly enjoying showing off her curves, Chapman shows that women’s secrets mean more to her than those she kept at the secret service,” the popular Web site wrote, in a clear jibe at the fact Chapman and nine other Russian spies were caught. Last month, 10 people in the US who admitted to being agents for Russia were exchanged for four imprisoned Russians who were accused of having traded secrets with the West.
■United Kingdom
War declared on signage
The government has declared war on the profusion of unnecessary road traffic signs, railings and advertising boards, saying they blight towns’ English character. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has written to local council leaders, calling on them to cut the number of unsightly signs and other “street clutter.” Ministers want the public to inform local authorities of particularly bad examples of excess signage, to clean up the national landscape. “Our streets are losing their English character,” Pickles said. The government says that in some cases traffic signs are installed by councils in the mistaken belief they are legally required, when they are not. For signs to be most effective, ministers say, they should be kept to a minimum. When busy Kensington High Street in central London was stripped of excess road furniture, for example, it helped reduce accidents by 47 percent.
■Switzerland
Piggy banks cause uproar
No jokes about Liechtenstein, please. A company has been forced to apologize and pull its piggy banks off the market after heavy criticism from the tiny Alpine principality known for its private banking industry. The offense was all in the name, “Liechtenschwein,” turning the last syllable into the German word for “pig.” Hans Buff & Co said on Thursday that it meant only to poke some fun at the country, which is even wealthier per capita than Switzerland. It said it was sorry that the joke caused offense, and apologized to Liechtenstein’s people.
■UNITED STATES
Activists sue porn king
An AIDS activist group filed a workplace safety complaint against Larry Flynt on Thursday, accusing the porn king of creating an unsafe environment for his stable of sex stars by not requiring they use condoms. To illustrate its point, the AIDS Health Foundation also delivered 100 DVDs of hardcore Flynt films to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health’s Los Angeles office. Only a single scene in one of the films shows a performer using a condom, AHF spokesman Ged Kenslea said. Larry Flynt Productions president Michael Klein indicated that is an unreasonable demand, adding porn audiences don’t want to watch people using condoms. “We won’t budge when it comes to condomless productions,” he said in a statement. “That’s what the consumer wants and we deliver it.”
■UNITED STATES
Fake fin scares swimmers
A practical joker in Massachusetts has taken advantage of recent shark sightings and caused a scare with a fake fin. Police say about 50 people were drawn to a Somerset, Massachusetts, cove on Wednesday night after someone reported seeing a shark fin in the water. Police told the Herald News of Fall River that several calls came in. Responding officers soon realized that the “shark” was just a piece of Styrofoam cut into a fin shape, wrapped in gray duct tape and weighted down. There was no word on who pulled the prank.
■UNITED STATES
Casino fined for table dance
Nevada’s gaming board has fined Caesars Palace US$250,000 for allowing a high-limit baccarat player to dance on a Las Vegas casino card table while the game was being played. The Las Vegas Sun reported that Caesars Palace agreed to the fine announced this week by the state Gaming Control Board. The board filed a complaint accusing Caesars for failing to take action to protect the game and the customer. Caesars Palace admits a player in the high-limit baccarat room climbed onto the table three times on Oct. 10 and even placed a bet while standing on the table.
■UNITED STATES
Man arrested for video
A Connecticut man arrested on allegations he coached his eight-year-old neighbor to swear and posted a video of it on YouTube said he was shocked the child’s family turned him in to police. Thirty-four-year-old Bridgeport resident Josh Eastman said on Thursday he did not encourage the boy to spew profanity and recorded the clip because the boy developed a reputation in the neighborhood for swearing. Police say Eastman was charged with impairing the morals of a child after the boy’s mother alerted authorities of a clip titled Swearing Kid. Eastman posted US$2,500 bail and is due in court on Sept. 8. A police spokesman said the video had been removed.
■UNITED STATES
Gambling parents jailed
A Northern California couple who left their newborn daughter in a casino parking garage while they went gambling are heading to jail. A Placer County Superior Court judge sentenced Thuan Huy Nguyen and Panfila Phu Phan on Wednesday to 60 days. He also ordered them to attend a mandatory parenting class as part of a four-year probation sentence that could result in their regaining custody of the baby. The couple were arrested in April after a security guard at Thunder Valley Casino found their seven-week-old infant alone in a car. Investigators determined the baby had been there for about two hours.
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
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
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
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