■ AUSTRALIA
Police end refugee breakout
Police yesterday ended a mass breakout and seven-hour demonstration by 92 Afghans protesting against lengthy detentions at an immigration jail in the northern city of Darwin. The asylum seekers, holding signs reading “Show us mercy” and “We are homeless, defenseless and we seek protection,” escaped from the center to protest against what they said was months in custody since arriving off Australia’s coast by boat. “Nine months we’ve been here. I need your help. Every week, every day, we’re going to die,” one of the refugee hopefuls told Australian television after pulling down electrified fences to escape the center after two days of unrest.
■ PAKISTAN
Army scraps talks with US
Pakistan’s army said yesterday it scrapped talks with US military officials after a military delegation sent to Washington had to go through “unwarranted” airport security checks. The Pakistani delegation was visiting the US at the invitation of the US military’s Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said US security officials detained an army brigadier who was part of the eight-member delegation at Dulles International Airport after a passenger complained he did not feel safe around the delegation. The newspaper said the brigadier was removed from the flight and detained along with other members of the delegation after they disembarked, and were later released.
■CHINA
School security stepped up
Schools opened nationwide for a new term yesterday with thousands of police and safety officers deployed to ensure security following a string of deadly attacks on young students. The central government has instructed kindergartens and schools to beef up security and put in place video surveillance and alarm systems to guard against any further attacks. Authorities in Chongqing have deployed 45,000 police and security guards at schools across the municipality, Xinhua said, while Fujian Province has deployed more than 22,000. Beijing has sent about 2,000 specially trained safety personnel to schools in the capital, it said.
■ CHINA
Crackdown nets 256,000
The country has handled 278,000 criminal cases resulting from a crackdown on gangs, violence and corruption. The “strike hard” campaign has uprooted more than 1,500 mafia-style gangs since it began late last year, Xinhua reported late on Tuesday. The campaign resulted in arrests of 256,000 suspects, Xinhua said. The report did not explain who the suspects were or why the number of criminal cases handled this year was higher than the number of arrests. The nationwide campaign has also been seen as aimed at political targets — especially those in areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet, where ethnic tensions have boiled over to violence in recent years.
■INDIA
Protect elephants: panel
India should protect its elephant population by securing its wildlife reserves, curbing poaching and restricting development in the corridors they use to travel between forested areas, a panel recommended. Poaching for ivory and increased conflicts between people and elephants due to their dwindling habitat are key problems faced by India’s wild elephant population, estimated at around 26,000.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Rowling donates £10m
The author JK Rowling has donated £10 million (US$15.35 million) to set up a clinic to research treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS), the degenerative disease that killed her mother at the age of 45, it was announced on Tuesday. The Anne Rowling regenerative neurology clinic, which will be based at the University of Edinburgh, will carry out research into a range of degenerative neurological conditions and diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntingdon’s and motor neurone disease. The university said it was the largest direct donation Rowling — who has recently turned 45 herself — had made to a charitable cause, and the biggest single gift the university had ever received.
■ IRAN
Woman’s execution delayed
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to death by stoning, was told on Saturday she was to be hanged at dawn on Sunday, but the sentence was not carried out, it emerged on Tuesday. Mohammadi Ashtiani wrote her will and embraced her cellmates in Tabriz prison just before the call to morning prayer, when she expected to be led to the gallows, her son Sajad told the Guardian. “Pressure from the international community has so far stopped them from carrying out the sentence, but they’re killing her every day by any means possible,” he said. Sajad, 22, said he believes the only reason his mother is still alive is because of the international campaign for her release. “I beg everybody in the world to continue their support for my mother. That is the only way she might be spared,” he said.
■ GREENLAND
Activists climb oil rig
Greenpeace forced a Scottish company to stop drilling off Greenland on Tuesday by having four activists climb onto an oil rig. The activists breached a 500m security perimeter around the Stena Don rig off western Greenland, climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, police spokesman Morten Nielsen said. The breach triggered an automatic shutdown of the rig’s operations. The activists are still on the rig and will be arrested, Nielsen said. Greenland Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist called Greenpeace’s stunt an “openly illegal act” and a “gross violation” of safety rules.
■ SUDAN
Army loots food aid: groups
The army of Southern Sudan has been looting food convoys and carrying out other attacks on aid groups, officials of those groups alleged, and a top military officer warned that the humanitarian groups could be expelled if the complaints get too “harsh.” The aid community in Southern Sudan documented 80 incidents of obstruction, vehicle hijackings or harassment of aid staff by southern troops since February. No aid staff have been killed, but several have been wounded.
■ ARGENTINA
Top tango prize awarded
An Argentine-Japanese couple on Tuesday beat 400 dancing pairs to take top prize in the Mundial de Tango world competition in Buenos Aires’ Luna Park amusement center. “I can’t think straight, only feel, feel and feel this emotion,” a sobbing, nearly speechless Tokyo-born Chizuko Kuwamoto said after winning the competition. She and her partner Diego Ortega live in Tokyo, where they competed in last year’s Mundial de Tango, but lost. This year, they decided to represent his hometown of Colon in the contest. The couple this time beat their Japanese rivals Kyoko and Hiroshi Yamao, last year’s title holders.
■ UNITED STATES
Murkowski concedes loss
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has dropped out of contention in the Republican Senate primary, conceding to Tea Party-endorsed insurgent Joe Miller, media reports said on Tuesday. She is the seventh member of Congress voted out of office this year amid the anti-incumbent fervor fanned largely by the weak and the conservative Tea Party movement. Miller, a Fairbanks attorney, had the backing of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. He had maintained a razor-thin lead over Murkowski as state officials counted some of the last remaining ballots cast in the Aug. 24 primary.
■ UNITED STATES
Hurricane Earl weakens
Hurricane Earl weakened to a Category 3 storm yesterday as it churned toward the eastern seaboard and looked to sideswipe the coast from North Carolina to New England, the US National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters expected the main core of the storm to stay offshore as Earl moves parallel to the coast over the Labor Day holiday weekend. Earl was forecast to clip the barrier islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks tonight.
■ UNITED STATES
Subway joyrider steals bus
Darius McCollum, the New Yorker with the notorious habit of taking city subways for joy rides, was arrested on Tuesday while sitting at the wheel of a stolen Trailways bus, the police said. Over the last three decades, McCollum, 45, has accumulated about two dozen transit-related arrests, starting in 1981, when he drove the E train to the World Trade Center at the age of 15. The empty Trailways bus had been reported stolen from a maintenance garage in Hoboken, New Jersey, and tracked via global positioning satellite to Queens.
■ UNITED STATES
Buyer receives own phone
A California man who bought a cellphone off Craigslist received the same phone that had been stolen from his car. So he called sheriff’s deputies, who arrested a man they believe broke into dozens of vehicles. Also recovered were 163 cellphones, computers, wallets, gift cards and rare coins. Neil Hefner, 28, has been booked for investigation of burglary. The buyer said when the phone arrived, many of his phone numbers were still programmed into it. The seller’s return address was on the package.
■UNITED STATES
Duffer sparks fire
A golfer’s off-target swing sparked a 5 hectare blaze in Southern California. The golfer at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine landed a shot in the rough on Saturday. On his next swing, his club snagged a rock, causing a spark that lit the rough ablaze and eventually attracted 150 firefighters to the scene. The fire burned through the rough, into vegetation next to the course and over two dry, brushy hillsides. No charges have been filed against the golfer, whose name was withheld.
■ UNITED STATES
Man left dead mom alone
North Carolina authorities have arrested a man on charges that he kept the body of his 94-year-old mother in a house for nearly six months. Police in Burlington said on Tuesday that housing inspectors found the body of Lucy Mae Hutchins Wade on Aug. 25. An autopsy determined that Wade died of natural causes six months ago. Police say Don Lee Wade, 50, was aware of his mother’s death last March and did nothing about it, although he collected her mail, cashed her federal pension checks and used her bank card.
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
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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