JAPAN
Cash for islands flooding in
The Tokyo city government said yesterday members of the public had pledged almost ¥1 billion (US$12.5 million) to its drive to buy a group of uninhabited islands at the center of a row with China. About ¥864 million has already been sent to a bank account Tokyo’s metropolitan authorities opened less than a month ago to accept citizen donations, according to the city’s latest tally. Separately, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said he has had an offer of ¥100 million from an entrepreneur, although the money has not yet reached the city’s coffers. Ishihara reignited a long-simmering maritime territorial dispute last month when he vowed to buy a group of islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japan. The islands are also claimed by Taiwan, where they are known as the Diaoyutais (釣魚台). The uninhabited islands sit around 2,000km from Tokyo in rich fishing grounds that may harbor lucrative energy resources.
SOUTH KOREA
First chemical castration
South Korea plans to chemically castrate a sex offender convicted of repeated crimes against children, the country’s first use of the punishment, officials said yesterday. The 45-year-old man is to get an injection today that lowers testosterone-suppressing hormones and aims to inhibit sexual impulses, Justice Ministry officials said on condition of anonymity citing department rules. South Korea passed a law in 2010 allowing judges or a Justice Ministry panel the option of ordering chemical castration after a series of violent sexual assaults on children sparked public outrage. The man to be castrated this week was convicted four times between 1984 and 2002 of raping or sexually molesting girls under the ages of 13, the ministry said in a separate statement. A psychiatric test has concluded the man is a pedophile and needs medication, the officials said. He will be released from prison in July under the condition that he receive injections every three months for three years, according to the ministry.
CHINA
Beijing wages war on flies
Beijing’s public toilets must not exceed two flies, according to new standards imposed by zealous officials striving to clean up China’s notoriously filthy bathrooms. The unusual rule applies to lavatories in parks, railway stations, airports, hospitals, malls and supermarkets in the capital, the Beijing News said on Wednesday. More conventional demands from the municipal committee in charge of the image of the city include an order that there is no accumulation of urine or water in the capital’s public toilets and that bins are not overflowing. It is not clear if failing washrooms will be punished and if so, how.
INDIA
Child killer confesses
A man was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly raping and murdering a four-year-old girl whose body was thrown from a building in the western state of Goa, police said. A married 22-year-old laborer from eastern Bihar state was held after the body of the girl was found in a pit on a construction site on Tuesday, Police Inspector Santosh Desai said. The child, from Mumbai, was staying at her grandparents’ home when she went missing on Sunday. “He lured the girl with an offer of giving her a chocolate and took her to the building nearby,” Desai said. The accused confessed to killing the girl after raping her as he feared she would tell her grandparents, the policeman added.
RUSSIA
Medvedev meets cowboys
Just back from a trip to the US, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday encountered another US phenomenon: the cowboy. Medvedev met some US cattle wranglers in Bryansk, who were training Russians to develop the local beef industry. Medvedev was quick to tweet a picture of the unexpected meeting, introducing the snapshot of an American in a stable in a broad-brimmed black hat as a “Real Bryansk cowboy.” Medvedev chatted in English to two Americans dressed in boots, jeans and checkered shirts from Idaho and Oregon, the state RIA news agency reported. He patted their horses and asked about their progress with the Russian language. The cowboys joked that the first phrases they learned in Russian were those needed for herding cattle — “open the gate” and “close the gate.”
RUSSIA
Woman kicks man to death
An inebriated 22-year-old woman from Udmurtiya kicked a man to death on the eve of her wedding because he owed her money, investigators said on Wednesday. The woman, identified only as Yekaterina M, and her fiance were celebrating their upcoming marriage when a 45-year-old acquaintance called on the couple, regional investigators said. “The man owed the girl some money, but was in no hurry to pay her back,” they said in a statement. “A drunk Katya created a scene and began kicking the debtor right in front of her house,” said the statement, referring to the young woman by her diminutive name. “Her drunk fiance calmly watched the execution.” The man’s body was discovered the next morning. The couple went to the registry office to marry, but the bride was arrested at her wedding banquet.
ITALY
Size won’t matter soon
It won’t be size that matters anymore for soldiers and policeman, but their strength, according to a draft law soon to be adopted by parliament, the Corriere della Sera said on Wednesday. A pair of Sardinian MPs have asked the government to change the admission criteria for the security services. At present, male recruits have to be at least 165cm, while their female colleagues have to be 161cm or taller. “I’ve been receiving letters for ages from young people who complain they have had to give up on the dream of wearing the uniform for a matter of one or two centimeters,” lawmaker Salvatore Cicu said. Others are worried. “Smaller soldiers are all well for going to war against the Chinese, but what shame against the Russians and the Americans,” lawmaker Giacomo Chiappori said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Stuck bandits sentenced
Authorities said on Wednesday that three bandits were foiled when their attempt to pry open a stolen cash box ran up against a new security system that slathered the bills with glue. Baffour Amponsah, 25, Brian Ocaya, 28, and Daniel Collins, 28, were part of a gang that ambushed a cash delivery man working for security company G4S in London on Jan. 16 last year. The group stole his cash box, but ran into trouble when they retreated to a parking lot to open it. Gavin Windsor, a G4S director, said the company’s cash boxes had recently been fitted with a new security system that coats the bills with glue — along with dye and a colorless, traceable liquid known as “smart water” — if it is tampered with. Police said in a statement that the gang was spotted by a witness less than an hour after the robbery as they struggled with the glued-up bills. The three received sentences of four years to six years and 10 months in prison.
UNITED STATES
Fraudster to repay victims
A New York bride who faked having terminal cancer to swindle well-wishers into funding her dream wedding and honeymoon to the Caribbean was on Wednesday ordered to repay more than US$13,000 to her victims, prosecutors said. Jessica Vega, 25, pleaded guilty last month to fraud and forgery charges for deceiving people in the Hudson Valley area of New York into thinking she had only a few months to live, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. Moved by her tale, individuals and businesses donated thousands of dollars to pay for her wedding in May 2010 and her honeymoon in Aruba. Her scheme unraveled after her husband, Michael O’Connell, contacted the Times Herald-Record in Orange County to say his bride had faked her illness. He was not charged, and the couple have since divorced, although the Times Herald-Record reported he was there to pick her up from jail on Wednesday. Besides repaying US$13,368 to her victims, Vega was sentenced to time already served in jail, 300 hours of community service and five years probation. She spent eight weeks in jail before her release on Wednesday.
UNITED STATES
Unabomber updates alumni
Harvard University alumni attending their 50th class reunion this week are getting updates on classmates — including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski graduated in 1962 and is locked up in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado for killing three people and injuring 23 during a nationwide bombing spree between 1978 and 1995. In an alumni directory, he lists his occupation as “prisoner” and says his awards are “Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.” Harvard’s alumni association said all class members, including Kaczynski, were invited to submit entries for the class report, distributed for reunion activities during commencement week, but it said it regrets including his references to his convictions.
UNITED STATES
Man stabs two at TV station
A man wielding a knife has broken into a Kansas TV station and stabbed two sales employees. WIBW-TV reported the suspect got into the station on Wednesday morning. He was eventually tackled and held down by several employees until police arrived. The suspect and the two men he is accused of stabbing were taken to a hospital for treatment. None of their injuries were considered serious. The station reported the man spoke to the news director on a lobby telephone, saying the Department of Veterans Affairs was mishandling his case. After the news director said that the man needed to discuss the issue with the department, the man threw a lamp through the glass front doors. The station said the man then ran through the halls as employees fled.
PERU
Bats give children rabies
Seven children have died from rabies in the country over the past two months after being bitten by bats, an official said on Wednesday. The children, aged 11 months to 14, hailed from a remote region about 1,160km southeast of the capital, Lima, Health Ministry official Ana Maria Navarro said. “According to the symptoms and medical reports, it appears the seven indigenous children died of rabies,” she said. To prevent further fatalities, vaccination teams have been rushed to the affected Camana community of 720 people, which can only be reached by river.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while