NEW ZEALAND
Angry wife hits wrong house
A woman angry at her cheating husband crashed a car into the building where she thought her love rival lived, only to find she had targeted the wrong property, the Nelson Mail reported yesterday. The 25-year-old woman pleaded guilty in court to causing damage of almost NZ$43,000 (US$36,000) to the property in the South Island town of Nelson, the report said. The woman, whose name was suppressed, was driving with her husband in the town in June, when she confronted him over text messages he had received from another woman. She demanded he direct her to the woman’s apartment complex and point out which property she lived in. The furious wife then crashed her car through the gates of the apartment complex and accelerated into the garage of the house where she thought the woman lived. Her husband ran off, while his wife waited for police to arrive, the report said.
AFGHANISTAN
No damage from rocket fire
The interior ministry said a rocket that was fired into the heart of Kabul did not cause any damage or casualties. Ezatullah, a police officer at the scene, said the rocket landed early yesterday morning inside the presidential palace compound. Another police official in that district of the capital had also confirmed it landed within the perimeter of the spacious presidential palace compound. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. A US military official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the rocket did not strike the palace and no damage was reported. The police are investigating.
NEW ZEALAND
Penguin heading home
A young emperor penguin that captured global attention when it washed up on a beach after straying thousands of kilometers from home will be head back to the subantarctic aboard a research vessel and in a specially designed cage. The Wellington Zoo, where the male penguin — nicknamed “Happy Feet” by locals — has been living since June, yesterday said he would be on the research vessel Tangaroa, when it leaves on Aug. 29 for a fisheries survey. The penguin will be released from the ship about four days out at sea, en route to his final destination. “Happy Feet has captured the hearts of New Zealanders and people across the world, and we’re pleased to be able to help safely return him to the Southern Ocean,” Rob Murdoch of NIWA, the research organization that operates the vessel, said in a statement issued by the zoo. A Wellington Zoo veterinarian will accompany the penguin, which will be housed in a crate designed by zoo staff to keep him cool and comfortable during the voyage. He will be fitted with a GPS tracker that will allow fans to monitor his progress on several Web sites, www.sirtrack.com and www.ourfarsouth.org.
CHINA
PRC denies chopper access
The defense ministry on Tuesday said media reports that Pakistan gave it access to a radar-evading helicopter that crashed during the US mission to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were “baseless and preposterous.” The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Pakistan allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples of the stealth chopper before giving it back to the US. The US suspects that Pakistan shared the technology with China in retaliation for its May 2 raid that killed bin Laden on Pakistani soil. Pakistan has denied the charge.
NIGERIA
Ex-militants extradited
Eight ex-militants undergoing a training program in Sri Lanka will be repatriated this week to face trial in Lagos after they fought and destroyed property, an official said on Monday. The ex-militants, who were sent to Sri Lanka a month ago for a nine-month training in ship building and under-sea welding, allegedly engaged in a brawl among themselves and destroyed some training equipment, he said. “By fighting, they have breached a code of conduct which they signed and promised to abide by. They will face prosecution,” he said.
SWEDEN
Mouse grounds plane
Air operator SAS on Tuesday canceled a flight from Stockholm to Chicago because of an unruly passenger — a mouse. The rodent was spotted ahead of boarding on the morning flight, but evaded the many mousetraps laid to catch it, SAS said. Company spokesman Anders Lindstroem said: “For safety reasons, you don’t board when there’s a mouse on board. We hope to find it overnight,” he said, adding that the 250 passengers on the Airbus A330 flight had been understanding. Apart from disturbing passengers, a mouse on board a flight is a potential danger as it could creep in among cables, Lindstroem said, adding that a complete inspection would be carried out once the mouse was caught. The spokesman said it was the first time a mouse had been discovered on an SAS plane.
UNITED KINGDOM
Riot agitators jailed
Two men who attempted to use the social networking site Facebook to incite riots during last week’s unprecedented civil disorder in London were both jailed on Tuesday for four years, police said. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Cheshire and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, both in northwest England, were imprisoned after setting up Facebook pages calling for unrest in their home towns. Blackshaw’s page, “Smash Down Northwich Town,” encouraged people to gather “behind maccies” — believed to be the McDonald’s restaurant in Northwich town center — on Aug. 9. Sutcliffe-Keenan’s creation, “Let’s Have a Riot in Latchford,” called for people to riot the following day.
ISRAEL
Military arrests journalist
The military has arrested the Palestinian head of al-Jazeera’s Afghanistan bureau after he visited the occupied West Bank, charging him with belonging to Hamas, the satellite station said on Tuesday. It called for the immediate release of Samer Allawi, who had been remanded by a military court a week after being taken into custody while trying to cross from the West Bank into Jordan. He had been visiting family in the Palestinian city of Nablus. Walied Al-Omary, al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said the military court accused Allawi of making contact with members of Hamas’s armed wing.
IVORY COAST
Main prison reopens
An official said the main prison in Abidjan has reopened after it was closed months ago because of post-election violence and a mass prison break. Minister of the Interior Hamed Bakayoko said the prison’s reopening on Tuesday was a step toward security and normalcy after six months of post-election violence earlier this year. The prison was closed in March amid violence in Abidjan. On Tuesday, 16 detainees were transferred from a military camp to the newly renovated prison.
UNITED STATES
Mile-high abuser jailed
A 65-year-old man was sentenced to a year in a federal prison and fined US$10,000 on Monday for sexually abusing a fellow airline passenger while she slept under a blanket in the seat beside him. Ramesh Advani, a New Jersey resident, had pleaded guilty to abusive sexual contact for groping the sleeping woman and sliding his hand into her pants. The abuse occurred on an overnight Continental Airlines flight from Hong Kong to Newark in May last year. Two witnesses, seated in the row behind Advani and his unidentified victim, saw what was happening and tried to stop the incident. “The witnesses began kicking the victim’s seat in an attempt to alert the victim as to what was occurring,” legal documents filed in the case said.
UNITED STATES
Stolen Rembrandt recovered
A Rembrandt drawing stolen from a California luxury resort hotel and reportedly valued at US$250,000 has been found in a church, though the thieves are still on the run, officials said on Tuesday. The Dutch master’s pen and ink drawing, The Judgment, was snatched late on Saturday from an exhibition held in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey. An accomplice of the thief distracted the exhibition’s curator during the heist. Officers found it at a church in Encino, northwest of Los Angeles, after the sheriff’s office received a tip late on Monday. “The reason why that tip was called in to us was because they saw all the [media] coverage. They saw it and then they remembered seeing this in a church in Encino,” Los Angeles County Sheriff spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
VENEZUELA
Hospitals to freeze fees
Health Minister Eugenia Sader said private hospitals have agreed to temporarily freeze their fees. The measure is part of efforts by President Hugo Chavez’s government to contain healthcare costs, while also trying to curb inflation now running at an annual rate of 25 percent. Sader said private hospitals have agreed not to raise their fees for at least three weeks. She called it a temporary measure while officials and hospital administrators discuss ways of lowering costs.
UNITED STATES
Judge dismisses Knights suit
A federal judge in Connecticut has dismissed a lawsuit against the Knights of Columbus by a man who said a youth leader sexually abused him decades ago. Judge Stefan Underhill said the claim is barred by a statute of limitations. Underhill dismissed the lawsuit last week. He said the deadline to file the lawsuit under Connecticut law was in 2009. Two men sued the Connecticut-based group in December and said a former leader of the Columbian Squires, the Knights’ official youth program, abused them in Texas in the 1970s and 1980s.
UNITED STATES
Retired colonel jailed
A retired US Army colonel was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 months in prison for her role in a bribery scheme linked to the awarding of Iraq war contracts, the Department of Justice said. Levonda Selph, 57, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay both a US$5,000 fine and US$9,000 in restitution. In 2005, Selph served as the chair of a selection board for a US$12 million contract to build and operate several warehouses in Iraq, the statement said. She accepted fraudulent bids from a “co-conspirator contracting firm” and helped the firm win the bid.
‘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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