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.
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
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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