■NEPAL
King’s Nazi Benz to be fixed
A car said to have been a gift from Adolf Hitler to a Nepali king will be repaired and used to drive visitors around the grounds of a palace museum, a government official said on Thursday. Hitler had presented the 1939 Mercedes Benz to King Tribhuvan, grandfather of King Gyanendra, who was deposed two years ago. It has been stored in a palace garage for more than five years after being abandoned by an engineering college that had been using it for classes. Authorities said the doors, seats and bonnet were damaged. The car was initially carried to Kathmandu by laborers at a time when automobiles in the city were scarce and the capital was several days’ walk from the outside world.
■CHINA
Man chained up daughters
Police have arrested a man for chaining up his two adopted daughters for nearly a week in an empty building under construction, state press said yesterday. The 30-year-old father, identified only by his surname, Yang, was arrested in Jiangxi Province on suspicions of child abuse, the Global Times said. The two four-year-old girls, nicknamed Baobao and Beibei, were found by a security guard on Tuesday in ragged clothes and covered with mosquito bites, the report said. They were each shackled at the wrist by a 1.5m chain attached to a water pipe in a bare room in the building, it added. The girls said their father came back every night to feed them and that they themselves had urged the security guard not to unlock them out of fear of facing worse punishment, it said.
■AUSTRALIA
Kids suspected of slaying
Three pupils have been suspended from school as authorities investigate whether they beat a kangaroo to death with a metal pole, police and their principal said yesterday. The animal was found dead in the Great Otway National Park in the southern state of Victoria on Sept. 8, while a school camp was under way in the reserve. One of the three, who are believed to be aged 13 or 14, has been cautioned, but the other two are yet to be dealt with, police said. The principal of Torquay College said three pupils had been suspended as police investigate the marsupial’s death. “We can say that if the students did the wrong thing, the school will be deeply upset,” school principal Pam Kinsman told ABC Radio.
■SRI LANKA
Blast kills at least 60
Three trucks carrying explosives blew up inside a police compound yesterday, killing at least 60 people in what the military called an accident. The blast occurred in Karayinadaru, about 50km from the eastern port of Batticaloa and in an ethnically mixed area controlled by the Tamil Tiger separatists until 2007. “Sixty people inside the police station have been killed. Most of them are policemen,” military spokesman Major-General Ubaya Medawela said. Two Chinese employees of a Chinese construction company doing road work in the area were among the dead, he said. The trucks were parked inside the compound around the police station in Karadiyanaru. Pictures on TV showed a building with two sections of wall collapsed into piles of rubble.
■NEW ZEALAND
Disgraced lawmaker resigns
A politician resigned from his party yesterday after admitting he stole a dead baby’s identity to obtain a false passport 26 years ago. David Garrett, a lawmaker with the minor Act Party, made the surprise admission in parliament this week, calling the identity theft a “harmless prank” when he was in his mid-20s. Garrett, now 52 and Act’s spokesman on law and order issues, said he picked the idea up from the best-selling novel Day of the Jackal. He told parliament he stole a dead baby’s identity in 1984 using details he found on a cemetery tombstone. Police arrested him in 2005 after uncovering the fraud.Garrett was released without conviction at the time and the details were not released until now. Garrett made his statement to parliament after details of the case were leaked to the media.
■VIETNAM
Police seize animal bones
Police in the capital seized hundreds of bones from endangered tigers and other animals in raids targeting suspected poachers who hunt animals for traditional medicines, state media reported yesterday. Five people were stopped by Hanoi police as they transported tiger bones in their cars and officers later raided a house on Wednesday where more bones were found. Police discovered eight full tiger skeletons, 134 tiger kneecaps and six tiger skulls. Also confiscated were 370kg of panther bones, as well as bones of other wild cats, chamois and monkeys, the Labor newspaper reported.
■NEW ZEALAND
Obese tourist stuck in ice
An obese Australian tourist died after becoming stuck in an ice crevasse while hiking on a glacier at a rugged New Zealand beauty spot, a coroner’s court has been told. John Parisis, 37, was at the Franz Josef Glacier — which was used as a location in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy — on South Island when he became wedged in the ice in June, national news agency NZPA reported. Witnesses said Parsis, who weighed 154kg, struggled from the start of the tour, breathing heavily and struggling to fit through gaps in the ice. He died after becoming stuck while trying to squeeze through a fissure that measured 35cm at waist height and suffering a heart attack, the court was told.
■NEW ZEALAND
Huge storm lashes nation
A storm that meteorologists described as being the size of Australia buffeted New Zealand yesterday, prompting severe weather alerts across most of the country and warnings of localized tornadoes. The official MetService said gale force winds of up to 130kph were lashing some areas, including the capital Wellington, accompanied by heavy rain, lightning and icy temperatures.
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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