AUSTRALIA
Falling sheep cause havoc
Sheep fell onto cars on Thursday on a busy Melbourne highway after a livestock truck crashed, spilling its cargo into the path of terrified motorists below. The accident saw dead and injured animals fall onto at least two moving cars and into the paths of others. “There was nothing we could do. They were, like, literally on top of us,” one woman whose car was hit told the Melbourne Age newspaper. Police said the crashed truck had rolled over on a bend and there appeared to be no other vehicles involved.
AUSTRALIA
Woman admits grisly act
A woman yesterday pleaded guilty to killing her former lover in Sydney by sedating him and then stabbing him and attempting to cut off his penis. Jian Chen, 47, was originally charged with murder but the New South Wales Supreme Court accepted her guilty plea to the less serious offence of manslaughter. Australian media reported that the man, Xian Peng, 48, returned to Australia from China last year in February with his new girlfriend. Police said Jian used pills to sedate Xian at her home and then stabbed him a number of times in the neck and groin, before hacking at his penis.
MALAYSIA
Suspect flees on cop’s bike
A suspected car thief was cornered by police but managed to escape — by riding off on one of their motorcycles, a report said yesterday. Police stopped the man in the northern state of Penang as he drove a BMW believed to have been stolen, the New Straits Times reported. Police asked him to step out of the car, but while they were inspecting the vehicle, he jumped on a police motorcycle and escaped.
FRANCE
President cuts costs
President Francois Hollande is shrinking his security team and naming a woman to lead it for the first time. Hollande campaigned on promises to trim the deficit and be a more “normal” leader than his predecessor. The new government’s first move was to trim members’ salaries and Hollande took a train to his first EU summit instead of a plane. Now Hollande’s office says he is reorganizing the elite presidential security team, including a reduction in staff from 93 to less than 60. He named Sophie Hatt to lead the team, the first woman in the post.
SOUTH AFRICA
Fire-bombing ‘lover’ jailed
A court has jailed for nine years an Australian who fire-bombed the family home of a woman he was obsessed with, after trying to hire a hitman to kill her father. Shumsheer Singh Ghumman had offered to pay an alleged gangster to murder the father of Hannah Rhind, but when the “hitman” pulled out, Ghumman threw gasoline bombs at their home in a Cape Town suburb. Ghumman, who has appealed the sentence imposed on Thursday, was convicted earlier this year on charges of fraud, incitement to commit murder, attempted murder and malicious damage. Described by the British press as a former high-flying City of London fund manager, Ghumman met Rhind in London in 2009, but she later accused him of stalking her and he was convicted by a British court of harassment that year.
UNITED STATES
Family gets cash in walls
A Court of Appeals ruled that a man’s heirs are entitled to US$500,000 in cash that was found in the walls of his former home years after he died. The ruling on Thursday upholds a judge’s decision that the money, stashed in ammunition cans inside the walls, belongs to Robert Spann’s estate. Spann died in 2001. According to the ruling, his daughters found stocks, bonds, cash and gold hidden in his suburban Phoenix home before they sold it seven years later. The couple who bought the home in Paradise Valley claimed the cash after a worker found it in the walls during kitchen and bathroom remodeling. The court said that legally, the money was only mislaid, not abandoned, so it still belonged to Spann’s estate.
BRAZIL
Man steals golden vibrator
An armed man has heisted an 18 carat gold-plated vibrator selling for US$4,000 at a luxury sex shop. Police said he walked into the Erotica Luxo store in Brasilia, tied up a clerk and took the item from its display case. He stole nothing else. Store owner Vanessa Baldini told the G1 news Web site that the robber might get no satisfaction from Wednesday’s theft. She said the vibrator has a stainless steel core, making removing any gold plating extremely difficult. She added that the robber did not take the vibrator’s charger. “I really don’t know what he’ll do. I’ll leave it up to his imagination,” she said.
MALAYSIA
Radio presenter disappears
A presenter for a London-based radio service critical of the government of Sarawak State has gone missing, the station and opposition figures said yesterday. Radio Free Sarawak presenter Peter John Jaban was taken away by three men shortly after arriving from Britain on Thursday in Sarawak, they said. Michael Teo, an official with the opposition People’s Justice Party, said he picked up Jaban from the airport in Miri. However, three men later stopped his car and took Jaban away. Police are investigating the case.
UNITED STATES
Quiet hurricane season seen
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season officially began yesterday, with forecasters predicting a “less active” season of one to three major hurricanes, but warning coastal communities to remain vigilant. “NOAA’s outlook predicts a less active season compared to recent years,” said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which tracks tropical storms and hurricanes. “But regardless of the outlook, it’s vital for anyone living or vacationing in hurricane-prone locations to be prepared,” she said. The NOAA predicted nine to 15 named storms, with winds of 62kph, saying four to eight would likely grow into hurricanes, with wind speeds of 120kph or higher.
UNITED STATES
Teen wins spelling bee
A 14-year-old daughter of immigrants from India clinched the 85th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday by correctly spelling an obscure French word for ambush, snare or trap. “G-U-E-T-A-P-E-N-S,” said Snighda Nandipati, an eighth-grade student from San Diego, to become the fifth US youngster of south Asian origin to win the venerable competition in as many consecutive years. “I knew it. I’d seen it before,” Nandipati, the daughter of a software engineer, said afterward as she collected the spelling bee’s coveted gold cup and US$30,000 that she plans to put aside for university.
BRAZIL
Ex-president Lula may run
Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday he may run for president again in 2014 if he is needed to prevent the victory of the party that governed before his two-term 2003 to 2011 presidency. “The only situation under which I’d be a candidate again is if she [current President Dilma Rousseff] doesn’t want the job,” Lula said on the O Ratinho, or The Rat TV show on the country’s SBT network. “I will not permit a member of the PSDB [Brazilian Social Democracy Party] to become president of Brazil again.”
ARGENTINA
Pot-bangers voice anger
The cacerolazo is back in Argentina — a noisy anti-government protest where citizens bang casserole pots and honk horns to express their anger. Frustrated by soaring inflation and government currency controls that make it difficult to buy dollars, citizens spread word of Thursday night’s street protest on social networks. Then, for nearly an hour, drivers honked horns and apartment dwellers banged pots as they leaned out of windows and balconies in support. Cacerolazos are highly symbolic in Argentina, where a decade ago pot-banging citizens angered by the collapsing economy marched in huge crowds and drove several presidents from office.
UNITED STATES
Law is unconstitutional
A federal appeals court in Boston on Thursday ruled that a law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman is unconstitutional. In a decision that could push the gay nuptials debate closer to a hearing at the Supreme Court, the court ruled against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA was adopted when Hawaii appeared to be close to legalizing gay marriage — something that has now been approved by eight states, with Massachusetts leading the way in 2004. The decision affirms a lower court’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional, saying that DOMA denies homosexual couples the same rights afforded to heterosexual couples.
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
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
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
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