CHINA
Yao Ming fights for sharks
Recently retired NBA star Yao Ming (姚明) has taken the fight against eating shark fins back to his home country, where consumption of the traditional delicacy is soaring despite efforts to ban their use and trade. Yao and British tycoon Richard Branson made an appeal yesterday in Shanghai against the consumption of shark fins to a group of 30 of China’s richest and most influential businesspeople. The event was sponsored by the conservation group Wildaid. Despite moves to ban the trade and consumption of shark fins in California and elsewhere, 95 percent are consumed in China.
MALAYSIA
Watchdog officers suspended
The country’s anti-graft watchdog has suspended three officers who allegedly robbed moneylenders of US$300,000 at the country’s main airport. The incident is another blow to the Anti-Corruption Commission’s reputation. It has suffered criticism over failed prosecutions and accusations of brutality after two men interrogated by its officers died under suspicious circumstances. The commission said in a statement yesterday that it was helping police investigate three officers who were arrested last week.
JAPAN
Typhoon kills at least 10
A powerful typhoon that barreled through the country and threatened the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant killed at least 10 people, including a woman aged 101, officials and reports said yesterday. Typhoon Roke, which churned across the main island of Honshu and through the already disaster-ravaged northeast, caused flooding and triggered landslides in an echo of a vicious storm earlier in the month that killed about 100 people. However, it did not cause any further damage to the battered nuclear power plant, as had been feared, its operators said, after workers had scrambled to secure the facility to prevent more radiation from seeping out.
INDIA
Rescuers reach villages
Rescuers yesterday finally reached villages in the remote northeast that were cut off by a powerful earthquake that rattled the Himalayan region last weekend, as the death toll in the disaster climbed past 100. After the magnitude 6.9 quake struck on Sunday evening, rescue efforts were hampered by heavy rain and mudslides that blocked roads leading to villages in the remote, mountainous region. As the weather improved yesterday, with no rain, helicopters ferried relief workers to the inaccessible areas, said R. Sahu, an Indian air force spokesman. Separately, aircraft dropped rice and other food items to nine inaccessible villages with a combined population of nearly 1,000, he said.
RUSSIA
Convoy runs down migrants
Four migrant workers were mowed down on a pedestrian crossing close to Moscow by a motorcade reportedly carrying a top banker, the head of a road safety campaign group told reporters on Wednesday. Two cars, a Mercedes and a Toyota Land Cruiser, ran over and killed the men from ex-Soviet Moldova as they used a pedestrian crosswalk on the road leading to the city’s southern Domodedovo airport, Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported. “According to many eyewitnesses, the convoy was traveling at a speed of at least 120kph at this location, where the speed limit is 40kph due to roadworks,” Sergei Kanayev, the head of an influential drivers’ federation, told reporters.
UNITED STATES
Taiwan-born woman jailed
A California finance researcher who prosecutors said used code words like “recipes” and “sugar” to disguise an insider-trading scheme has been sentenced in New York to four years in prison. Winifred Jiau was sentenced to about half the term called for by federal sentencing guidelines. She was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud in one of the first trials to result from a government probe of Wall Street researchers passing secrets. The 43-year-old Jiau was among 13 people arrested last year. Jiau, a US citizen born in Taiwan, has been held without bail for nine months.
PERU
School lunch kills three
Three children have died and more than 50 were hospitalized in a serious condition after eating food mixed with insecticide at a school, health officials said on Wednesday. The poisoning took place on Tuesday when the school lunch of rice and canned anchovies was placed in a container that held insecticide residue. About 56 people, including teachers and parents, sought medical treatment in Cajabamba Province. The three dead were between seven and 10 years old, Women and Social Development Minister Aida Garcia Naranjo said.
BRAZIL
Trapped Britons rescued
A British couple who got trapped in the Amazon jungle were rescued unhurt by the authorities on Wednesday after making a desperate call to relatives in Britain, officials said. Bruce Scott and Lesley Norris, both in their 60s, got into “difficulties” on Tuesday when a bridge they were crossing near the city of Manaus collapsed, sending their motorhome plunging into a ravine, according to the British consulate in Rio de Janeiro. Norris called her family in Britain with their location and Brazilian authorities scrambled a helicopter on Wednesday to assist them. The couple were being taken to a hospital in Manaus for a checkup.
UNITED STATES
Officer pleads not guilty
An off-duty police officer accused of raping a teacher in upper Manhattan admitted he was drunk at the time and fretted about his girlfriend finding out he had been caught “cheating with another girl,” prosecutors said on Wednesday. The statements to arresting officers were made public after Officer Michael Pena pleaded not guilty to rape, sexual assault and other charges. The 27-year-old officer was arrested last month and remains behind bars after failing to post a US$1 million bond. Prosecutors allege a drunken, off-duty Pena approached the 25-year-old woman in the Inwood neighborhood about 6am on Aug. 19 and asked her how to get to a subway stop. Then he grabbed her, showed her a gun, ushered her several blocks to an apartment building backyard and raped her, they said.
MEXICO
Jailed tweeters freed
A man and woman jailed for sending online messages that mistakenly warned an elementary school was under attack were freed on Wednesday, an attorney for the pair said. Gilberto Martinez, a math teacher, and Maria de Jesus Bravo, a local radio host, walked out of jail on Wednesday afternoon, their lawyer Fidel Ordonez said. The pair had been behind bars for more than three weeks after using their Twitter accounts to say that gunmen had targeted a school in the city of Veracruz one afternoon late last month. The two faced charges that equated spreading word of a violent attack with terrorism.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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