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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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