■THAILAND
Teens charged with murder
Two boys aged 16 and 19 were charged with murder yesterday over the shooting of a nine-year-old, police said. The younger suspect, whose name has been withheld to protect his identity, appeared at a police press conference with his face hidden by a balaclava and confessed to firing the shots that killed Jatupon Ponpaka on Wednesday. Jatupon was killed when a student gang fired at his bus in an apparent attack on pupils from a rival school. About 10 teenagers launched the attack at a stop in eastern Bangkok and Jatupon was shot in the face and neck as the bus sped away.
■INDONESIA
Cops evacuated after riot
Police officers and their families were being evacuated to prevent further violence after a riot on Sulawesi left six people dead, police said yesterday. Hundreds of people in the town of Buol attacked a police station on Wednesday after a man died in custody. Officers opened fire on the mob, killing six people and injuring dozens, but the unrest did not abate, police said. National police deputy chief Yusuf Manggabarani said more than 100 replacements from the Brimob paramilitary police headquarters were to arrive yesterday.
■AUSTRALIA
Qantas jet hits ‘speed bump’
Passengers on a Sydney-bound Qantas jet rocked by an exploding engine yesterday described how the plane felt like it had hit a “speed bump” and showered flames and sparks like fireworks. The Boeing 747-400 had to turn back to San Francisco about half an hour into Monday’s flight after an engine failed, blasting a large hole in its casing. Passengers among the 212 on board finally arrived in Sydney yesterday. No one was injured and the aircraft landed back at San Francisco without incident.
■CHINA
Huge traffic jam continues
More than 10,000 trucks mainly carrying coal are stuck in a 120km traffic jam in Inner Mongolia, in the latest dramatic snarl-up on the country’s roads. State television said the highway heading toward Beijing and neighboring Hebei Province was now more like a car park. The jam started forming on Tuesday after traffic restrictions began being enforced in Hebei, it added. Most of the vehicles were coal trucks, the report said, which were also blocking feeder roads leading onto the highway, but the road further into Hebei had already begun freeing up, offering hope to the drivers stuck in Inner Mongolia, it added. Just over a week ago, authorities finally cleared a previous 100km jam that had lasted nine days.
■AUSTRALIA
Kookaburra no longer ‘gay’
A school was under fire yesterday after erasing the word “gay” from iconic song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree to stop children tittering. Garry Martin, head of Melbourne’s Lepage Primary, said he did not mean to insult gay people by replacing the word with “fun” in the chorus, which normally goes: “Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be.” “I knew if we sing: ‘Gay your life must be,’ the kids will roll around the floor in fits of laughter,” Martin told commercial radio. “I just suggested to kids: ‘Nowadays, that can mean different things, so let’s just sing fun.’” Martin admitted he had probably been “hypersensitive,” but said the word was commonly used as a playground insult and he was keen to minimize disruption in the classroom.
■NEW ZEALAND
Pub crawl successful
There was a pub crawl with a difference on Wednesday, as a landmark hostelry was painstakingly moved 40m up an Auckland hill to make way for a road tunnel. The 124-year-old Birdcage Tavern lies in the path of a major motorway expansion. Rather than demolish the heritage-listed pub, owners, the NZ Transport Authority, decided to move the entire structure temporarily up a hill until the construction work is completed in six months. The three-story building was jacked onto concrete rails lubricated with Teflon and liquid silicon, then carefully pushed up the hill by hydraulic rams. The move, which was six months in the planning and cost NZ$2.5 million (US$1.75 million).
■CHINA
Man digs shack extension
A retired coal miner has found an underground solution to the country’s sky-high housing costs, by carving out a new home beneath the shack he lives in, the China Youth Daily reported yesterday. Needing more room for his family, but priced out of a soaring market, Chen Xinnian, 64, spent four years digging out the subterranean chamber under his tiny house in the city of Zhengzhou, the paper said. So far, he has excavated 50m² of living space in the chamber 6m underground in the capital of Henan Province and he plans to eventually have a residence with three bedrooms and a living room, it said.
■CAMBODIA
Skyscraper planned
Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Wednesday that the country plans to build a 555m skyscraper, a feat that would give one of the region’s least-developed capitals the tallest building in Asia. Hun Sen said he had approved a masterplan for the skyscraper, which would be located about 1km from the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh — a dusty city of colonial villas, slums and one skyscraper, the recently completed 115m-high Canadia Tower.
■NETHERLANDS
Babies’ corpses found
Authorities have found two babies’ bodies in the garden of a woman arrested last week for killing another child, the prosecution service said yesterday. The corpses of the newborns were found in Geleen, a village about 200km southeast of Amsterdam. Police arrested the 41-year-old woman on Aug. 27 following the discovery of the first corpse, the prosecutors said in a statement. Two other bodies were found in the garden later. Forensics investigators are probing whether the three babies are related as well as how and when they died. It is the second case in less than a month of a mother being suspected of killing multiple babies.
■NETHERLANDS
Collapse in talks averted
A collapse in talks to form a new coalition government was averted yesterday when the Christian Democrats opted to stay in the negotiations after resolving an internal dispute, party officials said. The Liberals and Christian Democrats (CDA) began talks on Aug. 9 about forming a minority government with parliamentary support from the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (PVV), but concern grew in CDA ranks about the PVV’s views on Islam. A late-night CDA meeting, however, resolved the issue when the party agreed to press ahead with the talks and assess at the end what sort of working coalition agreement could be reached. The country has been without a permanent government since late February when the last coalition collapsed in a dispute over the military mission in Afghanistan.
■GERMANY
Ashes return to Berlin
The bizarre story of a woman arrested trying to fly her dead husband home from England on easyJet in April has had a happy ending of sorts, a newspaper report said on Wednesday. Gitta Jarant and her daughter Anke Anusic denied knowing that Kurt Willi Jarant, 91, had breathed his last when the trio arrived to check in for a flight to Berlin from Liverpool. Now, though, almost five months later, Willi has been cremated and his ashes arrived last weekend back in Berlin and now have pride of place on his widow’s mantelpiece while they await burial, the Bild daily reported.
■KENYA
Authorities warn of hoax text
The telecommunications regulator on Wednesday told mobile phone users to ignore swirling rumors that receiving calls from some numbers appearing in red can cause brain hemorrhage. A text message sent around since late on Tuesday and seen by reporters said 27 people had died after they picked calls from numbers listed in the SMS. The Communications Commission of Kenya said the message should be dismissed. “Upon analysis of the messages, the commission has established the warnings are a hoax generated by unscrupulous people bent on causing fear and despondency among members of the public,” a statement said.
■NETHERLANDS
Colleges may sue over ad
A number of colleges are considering legal action against the publisher of a move-in guide for new freshmen, after the company included an ad recruiting students for jobs as online sex workers. The “Student Information Guide 2010-2011,” which was handed out in recent weeks, included an ad offering the chance to earn money by engaging in sexual activities in front of Web cams.
■BRAZIL
Murders soar in 15 years
The nation’s murder rate has jumped 32 percent over 15 years, new government figures released on Wednesday showed. Health ministry records show the homicide rate in 2007 was 25.4 per 100,000 inhabitants — nearly a third more than the 19.2 rate recorded in 1992, the study from the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute said. Men were 10 times more likely to meet with a violent death than women. From 2003 the murder rate trend was going lower, the institute said, nevertheless, the impact of the murders was enough that it weighed down overall life expectancy, especially for young men. In terms of its ranking within Latin America, Brazil was in sixth place with its murder rate. Colombia and Venezuela topped the table.
■MEXICO
Kidnapped Cubans rescued
Police have rescued six Cuban migrants who had been held for ransom for a month near Cancun, officials said. A patrol stormed a house in Bonfil on Tuesday after receiving a tip, Quintana Roo state public security chief Enrique Alberto Sanmiguel said on Wednesday. “When the patrol arrived, they found five men and a woman who explained they were Cubans,” he said, adding that the abductors were seeking between US$8,000 and US$10,000 in ransom from the migrants’ US relatives in Miami. The Cubans had been moved around frequently to avoid detection by police.
■UNITED STATES
Paint spy pleads guilty
A Taiwanese-American chemist pleaded guilty on Wednesday to stealing trade secrets valued at up to US$20 million from an Indiana paint company as he prepared to start a new job with a Chinese company. David Yen Lee, a naturalized US citizen born in Taiwan, admitted to downloading approximately 160 secret formulas for paints “with the intent to convert a trade secret to the economic benefit of someone other than the owner,” a plea agreement said. Lee, 54, worked as a technical director in Valspar Corp’s architectural coatings group from 2006 until March 16 last year, when he resigned after accepting a job at competitor Nippon Paint in Shanghai. He began negotiating with Nippon Paint in September 2008 and accepted the job on Feb. 27 last year. He admitted to downloading the paint formulas, sales and cost data and other trade secrets beginning in November 2008. Lee is expected to be sentenced to between 57 and 71 months in jail.
■UNITED STATES
Massive pot haul seized
Border agents have seized more than 408kg of marijuana hidden inside a pickup truck trying to cross from Mexico into Arizona. US Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday a 33-year-old woman and a 26-year-old male passenger, both US citizens from Phoenix, Arizona, tried to cross the border around 6:30pm on Sunday. They were referred to secondary inspection, during which officers found 440 packages of marijuana hidden inside the truck.
■GERMANY
Retiree hands out cash
A man celebrated his first day of retirement by handing out 1-euro (US$1.27) coins to passers-by in Aschaffenburg, near Frankfurt, police said on Wednesday. Dressed in a suit, the man wore a sign around his neck that read: “I am not unemployed, nor homeless. I am married. I am doing fine. That’s why I wish to offer you an euro.” Police were alerted after a suspicious pedestrian mistook the man’s joy for a scam, but no charges were laid because giving out money in the streets is not an offense.
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
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
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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