UNITED KINGDOM
Wildfires follow dry spell
A fire was raging on Ogden moor, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, for a fifth day yesterday. It was one of many heathland fires raging across parts of the Scottish Highlands, Ireland, northern England, and Berkshire after the record-breaking dry spell of last month, with flames fanned by high winds over the holiday weekend. Six people and a dog were airlifted by helicopter in the Torridon mountains on Tuesday. The Environment Agency fears the continuing dry weather could have an adverse impact on wildlife, including fish and plants in and around rivers and lakes where water levels are low.
UNITED KINGDOM
Vendor was killed: inquest
Newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, who died on the fringes of a G20 protest in London in April 2009, was illegally killed, an inquest jury ruled on Tuesday, potentially reopening a case which has crystallized concerns over how police manage violent demonstrations. Tomlinson was shoved to the ground by Police Constable Simon Harwood as he tried to find his way out of the cordon thrown up to contain protests. He collapsed and died moments afterward, and, even though he wasn’t a protester, his case became a cause celebre for those who alleged that police brutalized demonstrators. Officials initially ruled out pursuing a case against Harwood, saying that the conflicting accounts of how Tomlinson died meant that a successful prosecution was unlikely. The Crown Prosecution Service said it would now review the case.
INDIA
US teen guilty in murder
A teenage boy from Pennsylvania has been convicted of murdering his mother by slitting her throat during a holiday in Rajasthan in August last year. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced on Monday to three years in an Indian juvenile detention center for killing Cynthia Iannarelli, 51. He attacked her with a knife, wrapped her body in a sheet and left it on a sand dune before being arrested when trying to board a flight back to the US, a court in the city of Jodhpur heard. Reports from the Reggies Camel Camp resort in Osian said the boy had been demanding that his mother, a business consultant, get back together with his father, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The teen’s lawyers said he would challenge the verdict.
NORTH KOREA
Japanese held over drugs
Pyongyang said yesterday it was holding two Japanese on charges related to drug trafficking and the use of counterfeit currency in its free-trade zone, and had expelled a third. The three were detained in March and had admitted their criminal actions, the official Korean Central News Agency said without explaining why one was deported. The three had entered the free-trade zone to work for Japanese firms, the agency said. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported last month the trio were detained on charges that they hid drugs in canned goods to be exported to China.
SAMOA
Government mulls time shift
The government is reportedly considering switching timezones so the island nation falls to the west of the international dateline. Samoa sits to the east of the international dateline — which runs through the middle of the Pacific — meaning that it is 11 hours behind GMT and is one of the last places on Earth to see out the day. The time difference puts it 21 hours behind eastern Australia and 23 behind New Zealand, its two major trading partners.
MEXICO
Mine blast kills three
Rescue workers dug three bodies out of a coal mine in the northern part of the country and scrambled early yesterday to reach 11 other miners still missing after a suspected gas explosion caused a cave-in. A teenager who was working outside the mine, but was caught in the blast, had to have both his arms amputated, investigators said. Labor Minister Javier Lozano said the death toll from the accident could rise, in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter late on Tuesday in which he confirmed the three deaths. “The prognosis is not encouraging,” he said. Rescuers had been racing against the clock to dig out the miners after an explosion at 8am on Tuesday left them trapped about 50m underground on the site in the state of Coahuila, near the US border.
AUSTRIA
Court rules against abductee
A lawyer said authorities have rejected a compensation claim from a woman who was held captive for eight-and-a-half-years by a man who tormented her both physically and verbally and locked her in a dungeon. Natascha Kampusch was snatched off a Vienna street when she was 10 and held prisoner until she fled in August 2006. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide within hours of her escape. Kampusch and others claim authorities didn’t properly handle the probe into her disappearance. In an account of her captivity published last year, Kampusch said she was repeatedly beaten, starved and forced to do housework half-naked at the mercy of a paranoid man, who admired Hitler and wanted her to call him “maestro” and “my lord.”
PARAGUAY
Six escape in jailbreak
A group of heavily armed men broke into a maximum security prison and liberated six prisoners, all alleged members of a major Brazilian drug cartel, police said on Tuesday. Two prison guards and four women, who were visiting inmates at the time of the breakout, all believed to be accomplices, were detained for questioning, police said. The breakout took place on Tuesday morning at the Pedro Juan Caballero prison, located 550km north-east of Asuncion, on the border with Brazil. The region is considered the main pathway for marijuana and cocaine heading to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s most populous cities.
UNITED STATES
Retailer sued for spying
A couple has filed a class action lawsuit against retailer Aaron’s, alleging it spied on them through a Web cam installed on a rent-to-own laptop in violation of privacy laws. Brian and Crystal Byrd of Wyoming said the computer was mistakenly listed in default in December last year, two months after they claim to have paid it off, when an Aaron’s representative came to their home. The couple alleges that while trying to reclaim the computer, the representative showed them a Web cam image of Brian Byrd using the laptop, according to a statement by their lawyers on Monday.
UNITED STATES
Police tase nude runner
A marathon runner who stripped during a race stunned authorities, who returned the favor, giving him a jolt with a Taser, local media reported on Tuesday. Brett Henderson, 35, was arrested for “public indecency” during the Flying Pig Marathon on Sunday, the Cincinnati Inquirer wrote. When police saw that Henderson was missing his shorts, they ordered him into their car, but he kept running, leading them to break out the Taser and subdue him, the report said.
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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