SOUTH KOREA
Fines for driving with TV
Motorists caught watching dashboard televisions while driving will be penalized, an official said yesterday, following a deadly crash blamed on an inattentive trucker. The current law bans motorists from watching the TVs while driving, but there is no specific penalty. They can be punished only if their inattention causes an accident. Offenders will face fines of between 30,000 and 70,000 won (US$25.40 to US$59), said Lee Weong-woo, a director at the Ministry of Public Administration and Security.
AUSTRALIA
Wife-killer gets six years
An Indian man who strangled his wife then slit her throat at least eight times was jailed for six years yesterday, sparking outrage from the victim’s sister. Chamanjot Singh, 24, launched a frenzied attack on his wife in December 2009, first strangling her then cutting her throat repeatedly, the New South Wales Supreme Court heard. He said he “lost it” after his wife verbally abused him and said she loved another man. Singh was found not guilty of murder, after the jury accepted his argument that he was provoked, but convicted of manslaughter. Outside court, the victim’s angry sister, Jaspreet Kaur, criticized the sentence, telling reporters her brother-in-law lied when he told the jury her sister was having an affair. “They believed it [but] they did not have any proof, they didn’t show anything in the court, they don’t know who the guy is,” she said.
UNITED STATES
Air report tweets to go on
US embassies in China will not stop tweeting reports on air quality in Beijing and Shanghai which have annoyed the Chinese authorities, they said on Wednesday. “This is an initiative by the embassy in Beijing, by the mission in China, to convey what we believe is useful information to our citizens abroad,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. He added that despite Beijing’s assertions that it was illegal for foreign embassies to issue their own air quality readings, the US embassy had no plans to stop sending out the reports on its dedicated Twitter feed.
PHILIPPINES
Arroyo’s illness questioned
Ex-president Gloria Arroyo should be in a jail cell rather than a hospital room while awaiting trial for alleged vote-rigging and corruption, a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino III said yesterday. Edwin Lacierda questioned if Arroyo was really so ill that she should remain in the relative comfort of a military hospital, where she has been confined for six months.” If everything is well with her, she should be placed in a cell. Hospital arrest should not be used as a basis to feign illness,” Lacierda told ABS-CBN television. He called for doctors to reassess her condition.
SOUTH KOREA
North deemed cyberthreat
The military’s security chief accused North Korea yesterday of training elite hackers to steal military secrets and stir up public disorder. “North Korea is trying to steal military secrets and cripple our defense information system by using experts specially trained to hack into our military information network,” Defense Security Commander Bae Deuk-shik told a security forum. Korea University professor Lee Dong-hun said the North had set up a special unit of 3,000 elite hackers under control of leader Kim Jong-un. Seoul accused Pyongyang of staging cyberattacks on Web sites of government agencies and financial institutions last year in March and in July 2009.
UNITED STATES
Dog waits days for master
A nine-month-old Yorkie was not about to leave a Missouri rest stop without his master. Mistakenly left behind by an Arkansas truck driver, Rambo waited there for two days until his owner was able to track him down. Rambo jumped out of Michael Siau’s rig when Siau stopped at a rest area near Hannibal on Friday last week, the Hannibal Courier-Post reported. “Didn’t even cross my mind that he might jump out. He never has before,” Siau said. “I jumped back in the truck, put it in gear and drove off. And I just thought he was in the back asleep.” Siau made it all the way to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 273km to the north, before he realized Rambo was gone. He knew if he turned around, his schedule would be thrown off and his job jeopardized. Siau was heartbroken. In October, Rambo’s father, Ollie, who also accompanied Siau on trips, was run over and killed. Siau began calling authorities. By Sunday morning, Hannibal animal-control officer Tim Ledbetter was sent to the site. Sure enough, Rambo was there, sitting patiently. Siau was in Hannibal on Tuesday to pick up his buddy. Once in Siau’s arms, Rambo climbed up his shoulder and began kissing the back of his neck.
UNITED STATES
Japanese dock beaches
A huge dock unmoored during last year’s tsunami in Japan washed up on an Oregon beach this week. “This is the first object that has washed up that was unique enough to confirm that it was, indeed, from the tsunami,” Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, said on Wednesday. The Japanese consulate confirmed that the dock is from the tsunami. Japan has estimated that as much as 1.5 million tonnes of debris could still be afloat. The 20m dock is made mostly of concrete and metal, with a small metal plaque with Japanese writing attached. It washed up early on Tuesday morning on Agate Beach, just north of Newport, Oregon.
MEXICO
Candidate on adultery ad
Mexican presidential front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto has become the unwitting poster boy for a Web site promoting adultery after he admitted cheating on his first wife. A new Mexican billboard by ashleymadison.com, a site that helps married people arrange affairs, shows Pena Nieto with an index finger over his lips in a hushing gesture. Next to him are the words: “Unfaithful to his family. Faithful and committed to his country.” The billboard, mounted above a busy avenue in Mexico City, shows the 45-year-old with bright red lipstick on his collar. Pena Nieto’s first wife, who died in 2007, bore him three children. He is now married to a popular soap opera star and is favorite to win the July 1 presidential election.
RUSSIA
Dog adopts tiger cubs
Two Siberian tiger cubs abandoned in Russia by their mother have found an unusual wet nurse — a wrinkled, sand-colored Shar Pei dog named Cleopatra, a zoo worker said on Wednesday. The cubs were born late last month in a zoo at the Oktyabrsky health resort in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Zoo assistant director Viktoria Kudlayeva said the dog immediately gave the cubs all her attention. “She’s cleaning them and breastfeeding them as if they were her own. And they also sleep together,” she said. The cubs — named Clyopa, after their adopted mother, and Plyusha — are also being fed goat’s milk. Fewer than 400 Siberian tigers have survived in the wild.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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