AUSTRALIA
Police e-mailed death video
Melbourne police circulated an Internet video of an Indian man being electrocuted on top of a train and joked that it “might be a way to fix the Indian student problem,” a report said yesterday. The video shows graphic images of a man being jolted by overhead power lines as onlookers screamed, and did the rounds among Melbourne officers following a series of violent attacks against Indians, the Herald Sun newspaper said. Comments including “this might be a way to fix the Indian student problem” were added as the video was e-mailed around, the report said. “This is completely offensive and contrary to the views and values at the heart of the Victorian community — tolerance and respect,” Victoria Premier John Brumby was quoted as saying. Simon Overland, the state’s police chief, described the material as “disturbing, offensive and gross.” The video was uncovered in a sweeping internal probe into offensive emails launched in March which Overland has acknowledged involves a “large number of police,” including some of senior rank.
VIETNAM
Floods kill 62, 20 missing
The death toll in devastating floods in the center of the country rose to 62 as authorities rushed aid to about 100,000 people facing food shortages, officials said yesterday. Fourteen more bodies were recovered over two days, and authorities were searching for 20 people still missing, the national floods and storms control committee said on its Web site. The floods have caused an estimated damage of 2.2 trillion dong (US$110 million) to crops and infrastructure, the committee said.
NORTH KOREA
Nuclear boost threatened
Ambassador to the UN Sin Son-ho said his country would continue building its nuclear capabilities as long as the US refuses to sign a peace agreement and continues to escalate threats against Pyongyang. Sin said on Friday that the US Nuclear Posture Review has essentially given the “green light” to a pre-emptive nuclear strike against his country. In April’s review, Washington said it would not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. The North was not included in that pledge because it refuses to give up its nuclear weapons. Sin said without Pyongyang’s nuclear deterrent the Korean Peninsula would already have turned into a “bloody ground of war.”
SOUTH KOREA
Wife-killer sentenced
A man with a history of schizophrenia was sentenced to 12 years in prison for stabbing his 20-year-old Vietnamese wife to death in a case that prompted promises of better monitoring of the country’s international matchmaking business. The Busan District Court handed down the sentence to the 47-year-old for killing Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc in July, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday. The court also mandated treatment and placed him under supervision, including 10 years of electronic tracking, Yonhap said.
PHILIPPINES
Kidnappers kill two
Gunmen abducted an elderly woman and killed her bodyguard and driver in a kidnapping attack on Friday in Cotabato city, police chief Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane said yesterday. The presence of the armed bodyguard failed to deter the abduction, he said. A car carrying the 73 year-old woman was about to turn into the family driveway when two vehicles cut it off, he said. The bodyguard put up a fight but was outgunned.
UNITED KINGDOM
Pirate Depp visits school
Hollywood star Johnny Depp took “show and tell” to a new level at a London school when he turned up in full pirate regalia after a fan wrote to him seeking help stage a “mutiny,” media reports said. Beatrice Delap, 9, wrote to Captain Jack Sparrow, Depp’s character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, asking for help with an uprising against teachers at Meridian Primary School in Greenwich, southeast London. “We are a bunch of budding young pirates and we were having a bit of trouble mutiny-ing against the teachers, and we’d love if you could come and help,” Delap wrote to Depp. Depp, who was in southeast London filming the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides, gave the school 10 minutes notice on Wednesday that he was on his way. The school quickly called an assembly and Depp walked in to gasps from the students, People magazine said. Depp, holding the letter, called Delap up to the front and hugged her, but he dashed any thoughts of a rebellion. “Maybe we shouldn’t mutiny today because there are police outside monitoring me,” Depp, a father of two, was quoted as saying.
IRELAND
Nine IRA suspects nabbed
Detectives have arrested nine suspected Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents and seized weapons, police said. Friday’s arrests follow a British government decision to raise its warning of possible attacks by IRA splinter groups in England. Irish authorities said they agreed with that threat assessment. Police said they arrested two men aged 20 and 33 at a house near the Northern Ireland border and seized a gun and ammunition. They arrested seven people aged 19 to 71 in southeast Ireland and sealed off a home where they found bomb components.
UNITED KINGDOM
Charles says slum a model
Prince Charles has cited the Mumbai shantytown setting for the film Slumdog Millionaire as a role model for sustainable living in Western cities, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. The 61-year-old heir to the throne writes in a new book being published next week that the Dharavi slum was better and more instinctively organized than many Western towns, the report wrote. In the book, called Harmony, Charles contrasts the “fragmented, deconstructed” housing estates of Western nations with the “order and harmony” of the dusty potters’ colony featured in the Oscar-winning movie. “We have a great deal to learn about how complex systems can self-organise to create a harmonious whole,” he adds. “The real lesson I took from Dharavi was about the vast asset we can call ‘community capital.’” Charles said that, despite the complete absence of government support, Dharavi’s residents recycle their waste and build their own homes out of whatever materials come to hand.
UNITED KINGDOM
Grumpy over 52: survey
Britons find being older than 52 is nothing to laugh about, because that’s the age when they start becoming grumpy, a survey said on Friday. The poll of 2,000 Britons found those over 50 laughed far less than their younger counterparts and complained far more. While infants laughed up to 300 times a day, that figure had fallen to an average of six laughs by teenage years and only 2.5 daily chuckles for those over 60, the survey for cable TV channel Dave found. Men were also found to be grumpier than women. One reason for the decline in mirth might be the lack of joke-telling skills. The study found the average Briton only knows two jokes.
UNITED STATES
Lennon commemorated
It’s hard to imagine which event sounds more implausible: John Lennon’s 70th birthday, or the 30th anniversary of his murder. On the day when the Liverpool Lad would have become a septuagenarian, fans will visit Central Park’s tranquil Strawberry Fields and attend a nearby benefit concert in Manhattan. The memorial includes a mosaic donated by the city of Naples, Italy and a plaque lists 121 countries that endorse Strawberry Fields as a Garden of Peace. The birthday celebration got started on Friday in England, where Google UK released a video “doodle” to Lennon’s Imagine.
MEXICO
Probe opens in lake death
The government has opened a federal investigation into the reported shooting of a US tourist on a border lake plagued by pirates and strongly denied delaying action on finding the man or his attackers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Friday that “categorically rejects claims to the effect that Mexican authorities are not doing enough to find” David Hartley. Hartley’s wife, Tiffany, says she and her husband were riding Jet Skis on back to the Texas side of Falcon Lake on Sept. 30 when they were attacked by Mexican pirates in speedboats who opened fire and shot him in the back of the head. Tiffany Hartley has said she tried to rescue him when he fell into the lake, but that she fled to US waters as the pirates continued shooting.
MEXICO
Gay marriage criticized
Jalisco State Governor Emilio Gonzalez said on Friday that gay marriages disgust him. Marriage should be between a man and a woman, he said, adding: “That other thing, as they say, still grosses me out.” He made the comments at a forum on family in Guadalajara city, which has become a focal point of the national debate over gay marriage. Cardinal Juan Sandoval, the archbishop of Guadalajara, stirred controversy by suggesting Mexico City — which enacted a law in December allowing same-sex couples to wed and adopt children— bribed the Supreme Court to uphold the law in August.
UNITED STATES
Dead sent stimulus money
The Treasury mistakenly sent more than US$20 million in stimulus payments to dead people and prisoners as part of an effort to jolt the economy out of recession, an investigation has found. The 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act authorized one-time US$250 payments to about 52 million people, totaling US$13 billion. An inspector general’s investigation found that more than 71,000 of the checks — worth US$18 million — went out to people who had died. Another US$4.3 million was sent to more than 17,000 people who were in prison and were either ineligible for the payment or were not supposed to receive them until after they were out of prison.
UNITED STATES
Grand jury probes murder
A federal grand jury is investigating whether last year’s murder of a Kansas abortion doctor was connected to a broader case involving radical anti-abortion activists, a federal law enforcement official familiar with the case said on Friday. The official said several federal civil rights prosecutors were holding grand jury proceedings in Kansas City, looking into whether a broader case surrounded the death of George Tiller, who was shot in his Wichita church by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. Roeder is serving a sentence of life in prison.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
RSS