SOUTH KOREA
Bridges top suicide choice
Suicidal people increasingly chose Han River bridges instead of subway stations for their fatal leaps after platform screen doors were installed at many stations, police said yesterday. The number of people who jumped off river bridges in Seoul increased 30 percent to 108 last year, the National Police Agency said in a report submitted to a ruling party lawmaker, Yoon Seok-yong. Twenty-eight of the 108 died. In contrast, the number of people who attempted suicide by throwing themselves in front of subway trains fell drastically to 29 last year from 77 in 2009, according to the report. Most of the incidents happened at stations without screen doors, indicating such barriers were effective in preventing suicides. The country’s suicide rate is the highest among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with 15,413 taking their own lives in 2009.
CHINA
Super surveillance planned
The mega-city of Chongqing plans to build a US$2.6 billion security system that will be one of the world’s largest with 500,000 surveillance cameras, state media said yesterday. Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun (王立軍) said the system would be the world’s largest new security network since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, the Global Times reported. The system would dwarf a network of 40,000 security cameras installed in the capital of China’s far-western Xinjiang region last year, following deadly July 2009 clashes between Muslim Uighurs and members of the majority Han group. Chongqing’s more than 500,000 cameras, which are due to be installed by next year, will mainly be used for crime prevention, emergency controls and rescue operations, a police spokesman told the Global Times. The computerized cameras will be managed under one network, allowing authorities and emergency services in municipality of more than 30 million people to share the video feeds, it said.
MALAYSIA
Ibrahim wins rare victory
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim won a rare victory in his long-running sodomy trial yesterday as DNA tests on items taken from his detention cell were ruled as inadmissible. The High Court’s decision is a major boost for Anwar, a former deputy premier who was jailed on separate sex and corruption counts a decade ago, and who faces 20 years in jail if found guilty of the new charges. The court found that a toothbrush, mineral water bottle and a hand towel taken from the lock-up where Anwar was held after his arrest in July 2008 were improperly obtained. “I find that in this case the DNA samples from the three items ... were obtained by unfair means from the accused,” said Judge Zabidin Mohamed Diah, adding that they were to be “excluded from evidence.”
MALAYSIA
‘Enticer’ settles out of court
A man has reached an out-of-court settlement after being charged with luring someone else’s wife to have sex with him. Rights activists had criticized the charge against businessman Choy Khin Ming as archaic. The decades-old law makes it a crime punishable by two years in prison to “entice” a married woman into having sex. A district court terminated the case after Choy read an apology to Ryan Chong, the former husband of TV celebrity Daphne Iking. Chong initiated court proceedings against Choy in 2009 for having an affair with Iking before she and Chong divorced. Chong’s lawyer said yesterday that he was dropping the case as part of a settlement. Choy will also apologize in newspapers.
UNITED STATES
Ambulance thief nabbed
A Kentucky man charged with stealing an ambulance says he just needed a ride home. A Perry County ambulance crew was inside a hospital in Hazard for only a few minutes on Friday night and left the keys in the ignition. When they came out, the vehicle was gone. Hazard Police Sergeant Randy Napier said an off-duty Kentucky State Police detective saw the ambulance being driven erratically and pulled it over. Napier says 26-year-old Shane Hale told the detective he only needed a ride home and was going to call the ambulance service the next day and report where the vehicle was. Hale was jailed on drunken driving and other charges.
BRAZIL
Relieving revelers arrested
More than 200 people have been arrested during Rio de Janiero’s Carnival for relieving themselves in the street, underlining the government’s determination to clean up the city. “Two hundred and fourteen people have been arrested over the weekend ... We are going to constantly fight those urinating in the street. Such a lack of respect for the city and its citizens in unacceptable,” Rio’s official in charge public order, Alex Costa, told the G1 news Web site on Monday. In tandem with the “Zero Tolerance for Pissing,” as the campaign is called, authorities have established portable toilets in many of the most popular areas. Long lines at the toilets prompted many to complain to there weren’t enough to meet the demand.
ITALY
Berlusconi has surgery
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi underwent jaw and dental surgery for four hours in Milan on Monday to repair damage suffered when a man hurled a statuette of Milan’s cathedral at him in 2009. The 74-year-old Berlusconi was in good condition after the operation and had already returned to his villa in Arcore near Milan, his personal doctor told the ANSA news agency. He said the operation went well but it will take few days for Berlusconi to recover. Berlusconi suffered a broken nose and two broken teeth when he was hit by the statute at the end of a political rally in Milan. The attacker had a history of psychological problems.
UNITED STATES
Lohan video surfaces
Lindsay Lohan is shown in a surveillance video broadcast on Monday texting and trying on multiple pieces of jewelry in front of a clerk in a California store that has accused her of stealing a US$2,500 necklace. Snippets of the footage taken by four cameras in the Venice store of Kamofie & Co was aired by Entertainment Tonight along with analysis by attorneys not handling the case. Lohan returns to court tomorrow, when her attorney will tell a judge whether the actress will accept a plea deal in the felony grand theft case that guarantees a jail sentence. The video was sold by a representative of Kamofie to a commercial images unit of The Associated Press.
MEXICO
Student-turned-cop is fired
A college student and mother who was police chief in a violent border town has been fired for abandoning her post, local officials said on Monday. The government of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero will “remove Marisol Valles Garcia, head of the office of public security, from her post,” an official statement said. A relative of Valles said last week that the 20-year-old had fled to the US seeking asylum after receiving death threats. Valles took over as police chief last October after all other candidates dropped out following the assassination of the mayor and his son.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS