CHINA
Man caught with sex slaves
Police in Henan Province detained a man on Sept. 6 for holding six women as sex slaves in an underground prison for two years, media reported yesterday. Former firefighter Li Hao (李浩), 34, who worked at a local government office in Luoyang, is accused of killing and burying two of the women in rooms he dug below his basement, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported. Li kidnapped the six nightclub and karaoke bar workers and repeatedly raped them, the newspaper reported. The report said Li allowed the women to leave the basement only when he was short on cash and would force them to have sex with other men for money. A 23-year-old woman escaped during one of those sessions and led police to the basement. Police released three of the victims. The fourth woman is being detained on suspicion she helped Li kill one of the women, the China Daily said.
KYRGYZSTAN
Foreign news banned
The country is banning all foreign news channels from this weekend for the duration of its presidential election campaign to limit “foreign involvement” in the polls, sources said yesterday. The ban affects all foreign news broadcasters, but seems aimed mainly at pro-Kremlin Russian channels. The implementation of the ban coincides with the start of the presidential election campaign tomorrow. “From the beginning of the election campaign, Russian First Channel, Rossiya TV, CNN and BBC will disappear from our channel lineup,” said Vasily Goncharov, the head of the cable TV company Ala-TV. The parliament adopted the law in June after the Russian NTV channel broadcast a sex video, featuring a man resembling leading Ata Meken party politician Omurbek Tekebayev ahead of the general elections last year.
SOUTH KOREA
Northern student refugees up
The number of North Korean student refugees has more than tripled in the past five years, official data showed yesterday. A total of 1,681 student refugees now live in the South compared with 475 in 2006, the education ministry said in a report. Elementary school students accounted for 60.7 percent of the total, followed by high school students with 22.2 percent and middle school students with 17.1 percent.
MALAYSIA
‘Miss Bikini’ event axed
A beach resort has scrapped a publicity event for an international “Miss Bikini” pageant after officials warned it could promote indecent behavior. The Pangkor Island Beach Resort had planned to host a preview of the pageant, which is scheduled to take place in Thailand later this year. However, government officials in Perak state issued a statement this week insisting the event would “tarnish the country’s image.” A resort spokeswoman said yesterday the preview would have featured an ice sculpture and announcements of pageant details, but no bikini-clad women.
INDONESIA
Researcher deported
An Australian conducting research into a minority Muslim group in the country has been deported, police confirmed yesterday. “The Australian citizen was deported on Thursday by the immigration department,” national police spokesperson Anton Bahrul Alam said. Police arrested Tirana Hassan of Adelaide on Monday in Sampang, East Java, where she was interviewing members of the Shiite community for Human Rights Watch. Hassan was questioned because she did not have the correct researcher’s visa.
CANADA
Plane crashes in Yellowknife
Two people died and seven were injured after a float plane crashed between two buildings on a street in the northern city of Yellowknife. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Kathy Law said on Thursday that she was not sure whether the plane was taking off or coming in for a landing on Great Slave Lake. A spokesman with the Stanton Hospital said two crew and seven passengers were aboard the Twin Otter owned by Arctic Sunwest Charters. Transportation Safety Board spokesman Chris Krepski said at least four people were critically injured.
UNITED STATES
Hurricane gains strength
Hurricane Hilary swelled to a Category Four storm yesterday but was moving away from Mexico’s Pacific coast and was not expected to strike land, according to the US-based National Hurricane Center. Packing winds of 235kph, the storm was 185km away from Acapulco. “The core of Hilary should continue to move parallel to the coast of southwestern Mexico ... but any deviation to the north of the track could bring stronger winds to the coast,” the center said in its 6am bulletin. Mexican authorities warned that tropical storm-force winds and heavy surf could affect the coast, but Hilary was not expected to make landfall.
MEXICO
Drug gang dumps 14 bodies
Fourteen more bodies have been dumped on roads in and around the eastern port city of Veracruz, two days after 35 bodies were left under a busy underpass nearby, local officials said. The grim discoveries on Thursday came amid a spate of violence in Veracruz city and the eponymous state and coincided with a national meeting of prosecutors there. Police found bodies dumped in three areas of the city, including four on a road in the city center, according to an official from the state prosecutor’s office, who declined to be named. Extra police and soldiers were deployed in the city for a conference of prosecutors and legal officials from across the country, to end yesterday. Veracruz officials said most of the 35 found dead on Tuesday in the southern district of Boca del Rio had criminal records. Local media said a message lying near those bodies carried threats to the Zetas, a violent drug gang set up by former elite soldiers.
BRAZIL
Boy shoots teacher, self
A 10-year-old student killed himself on Thursday in the Sao Paulo suburbs after shooting his teacher during class, Sao Caetano do Sul’s mayor said. Authorities said the boy entered a classroom where another 25 students were taking class and shot Rosileide Queiros de Oliveira, 38, who survived. He then left the room and shot himself in the head. The boy, who was not identified, did not die immediately, but succumbed after two cardiac arrests. The teacher was shot in the back of a leg and remained in stable condition.
PARAGUAY
Hundreds of cattle culled
Authorities began slaughtering hundreds of cattle on Thursday as part of an effort to combat an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, officials said. About 820 animals were being killed in the effort to eradicate an outbreak that has sent tremors through a region famous for its meat industry, National Animal Quality and Health Service Interim Director Carlos Simon said. The procedure was being performed in the presence of international observers from the WHO and Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture. Officials said the slaughter was to end yesterday.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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