THAILAND
Dog smugglers caught
Authorities rescued more than a thousand dogs found stuffed into tiny cages and being smuggled out of the country to be cooked and eaten in Vietnam, officials said yesterday. Police intercepted four trucks stacked high with crates packed with the animals in an operation on Thursday evening in Nakhon Phanom Province in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos. Two Thai men and a Vietnamese man have been charged with trafficking and the illegal transportation of animals, police case officer Captain Prawat Pholsuwan said. “The maximum punishment is a one year jail term and a fine of up to 20,000 baht [US$670],” he said.
CHINA
Carrier exercises expected
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was yesterday scheduled to conduct an air exercise on the nation’s first aircraft carrier, unveiled earlier this week, state media reported. The maneuvers could include aircraft approaching the ship, landing and then quickly taking off again, the Global Times newspaper said, citing a military source said to be closely involved with the drills. The aircraft carrier embarked on its inaugural sea trial on Wednesday. Beijing only recently confirmed it was revamping an old Soviet ship to be its first aircraft carrier and has sought to play down the vessel’s capability, saying it will mainly be used for training and “research.” The Global Times report said that radio restrictions had been imposed in a maritime zone off the coast of Liaoning Province where the carrier is docked. The planes being used for the drills are the Shenyang J-15, a Chinese version of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker, it added. The Ministry of National Defense refused to confirm if an exercise was scheduled to take place yesterday.
INDIA
‘Rebels’ shoot at cars
Police say suspected rebels have fired guns at motorists on a highway in India’s insurgency-wracked northeast, killing one person and wounding five others. The attack came as nearly two dozen rebel groups in the region asked people to boycott India’s Independence Day anniversary celebrations next week. A police officer says the assailants fled after the firing early yesterday in Golaghat district, 300km southeast of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. No one claimed responsibility for the shootings.
AUSTRIA
Casino win was ‘faulty’
It seemed too good to be true — a slot-machine jackpot of almost 43 million euros. And maybe it was. Austrian state broadcaster ORF reports that Behar Merlaku is going to court over the refusal of the Bregenz casino to give him what he considers his win on March 26. Casino officials do not dispute that the gaming machine showed a payout of nearly 43 million euros (US$62 million). However, they say that a malfunctioning computer chip was responsible for what they say was the faulty display. Both sides are going to court.
POLAND
Mystery train smash kills 1
A passenger was killed and six gravely hurt in central Poland on Friday when an inter-city train derailed for reasons that were not immediately clear, the country’s prime minister said. “We have confirmation that one person has perished,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Poland’s TVN24 news channel. Earlier, medics had reported four casualties. “Luckily the death toll is not as high as we had originally thought,” Tusk said, adding that six people were seriously injured in the disaster which occurred near the town of Baby. Rescue workers said 56 passengers were being treated for injuries in hospital.
UNITED KINGDOM
More animals bite people
Beware of the biting dog, pig and bedbug, as hospital admissions resulting from animal-related injuries are on the rise in England, according to provisional figures released by the National Health Service (NHS) information center. Injuries from dogs caused 6,120 hospital admissions from May last year to April this year, representing a five percent increase from the previous year. “Our statistics show that the summer is a seasonal hotspot for admissions to hospital for injuries caused by dogs,” Tim Straughan, NHS information center chief executive, said. “However, the same time-frame also saw an increase in admissions for injuries inflicted by other creatures — from bugs and horses to cows and pigs,” he said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Mandela opera opens
The refined strains of Western opera and traditional Xhosa song and a sexy dose of jazz drive a new opera that opened yesterday in Johannesburg about South Africa’s former president and anti-apartheid hero, Nelson Mandela. Writer and director Michael Williams said the range of musical styles reflects South Africa’s mix of cultures. The sweeping production shows Mandela cheating on his wife, making political missteps and struggling with the burden of holding others’ lives in his hands. Aubrey Lodewyk, who plays an aging Mandela in the opera, says Mandela is “a human being, he had his faults. But yet he came out as great a man as he is.”
UNITED STATES
Rapper’s fans jam phones
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has opened a criminal investigation after the rapper The Game tweeted the number for the sheriff’s Compton station, prompting hundreds of calls and overwhelming the emergency phone system. Sheriff’s Captain Mike Parker told the Los Angeles Times that The Game told his 580,000 followers that if they wanted an internship with him, they should call the number. Parker says all of the phone lines were jammed for more than two hours. He says sheriff’s investigators are documenting the actions for possible criminal charges.
BRAZIL
Gunmen kill judge
Gunmen on Friday ambushed and killed a Brazilian judge known for taking a hard line against criminals, including corrupt police officers. The early-morning slaying of Patricia Lourival Acioli in Niteroi, across a bay from Rio de Janeiro, prompted the Supreme Court to demand a swift investigation by federal police. “Cowardly crimes against magistrates are an attack on the independence of the judiciary, the state and Brazilian democracy,” Supreme Court President Cezar Peluso said in a statement. “The preservation of the rule of law in our country demands a rapid investigation of the facts and a rigorous punishment of those responsible for this barbarous act.” A group of gunmen fired at least 16 bullets into the judge’s car as she arrived at her house, according to Brazilian media reports. The 47-year-old mother of three had been on a death list found in possession of a jailed militia leader this year, the Globo Web site quoted investigators as saying.
BRAZIL
Robber leaves his dentures
It wasn’t his fingerprints that placed alleged thief Milton Cesar de Jesus at the scene of the crime. It was his dentures. Police officer Alex Oliveira says a homeless man who witnessed a purse theft found the artificial choppers at the crime scene in the southeastern town of Severini, Brazil. The UOL Internet news portal quotes Oliveira as saying that the homeless man turned the dentures over to police and gave them a physical description matching that of de Jesus. Oliveira told UOL on Friday that De Jesus at first denied owning the dentures, but then confessed to the crime after they fit perfectly in his partially toothless mouth.
UNITED STATES
Music deters loiterers
Shoppers and employees say an Ohio convenience store has fewer people hanging around and hassling customers since the business started blaring classical music. Customers told WBNS-TV that loitering has declined quickly outside the United Dairy Farmers location in the Columbus Short North neighborhood. Workers who have also noticed a change say the new music went on earlier this week as part of upgrades at the store.
UNITED STATES
Strauss-Kahn inspires show
In a story line inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn assault case, a prominent European is arrested and accused of rape in the season premiere of US courtroom drama Law & Order: SVU, TV Guide has reported. Italy-born veteran screen and stage actor Franco Nero — who appeared in last year’s film Letters to Juliet with his wife, Vanessa Redgrave — stars as an Italian dignitary at the center of a criminal sex scandal.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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