CAMBODIA
Court releases ‘First Lady’
A war crimes court yesterday ordered the release of Ieng Thirith, dubbed the “First Lady” of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, saying she was unfit to stand trial. “As there is no prospect that the accused can be tried in the foreseeable future, the trial chamber has confirmed the severance of the charges [against the 80-year-old],” a statement from the UN-backed tribunal said. Explaining its decision to stay proceedings against Ieng Thirith — who was the sister-in-law of regime leader Pol Pot — the court said her “cognitive impairment is likely irreversible.” One of only a handful of people ever brought before a court over the 1975-1979 regime, blamed for the deaths of up to 2 million people, Ieng Thirith was accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Three other ageing top former regime leaders — including her husband, former foreign minister Ieng Sary — remain on trial.
SOUTH KOREA
Transgender show pulled
A TV channel yesterday said it had pulled the plug on a newly launched talk show aimed at the transgender community, following strong objections from viewers. KBS Joy, an entertainment subsidiary of KBS TV, said on its Web site that it had reached the decision after “taking viewers’ opinions into account.” The midnight program, titled XY That Girl, was only launched last week, but the first airing sparked uproar from conservative groups, who staged protests outside the broadcaster and took out newspaper ads denouncing the show. The program invited transgender individuals to appear in person or to phone in to discuss their experiences living in the transgender community. Gay and transgender Koreans remain largely under the radar in a country that remains deeply conservative about matters of sexual identity and where many still regard homosexuality as a foreign phenomenon. Various teacher and parent groups bought a newspaper ad in which they attacked KBS Joy for “fanning” gay sexuality and warned that “children will blindly follow in the steps of transgenders.”
SWEDEN
Thief leaves man on tracks
Police are searching for a thief who found an inebriated man unconscious on subway tracks, stole his valuables and then left him there to be hit by a train. A surveillance camera captured the incident at a Stockholm subway station early on Sunday. A video clip broadcast on Wednesday by SVT showed the middle-aged man falling down from the platform. Another man in a blue jacket sees him and jumps down on the tracks, but instead of helping the man, he robs him, climbs back on the platform and walks away. Moments later the man is struck by a train. Police spokesman Dan Ostman said one of the man’s feet was crushed and he was also injured in the face and shoulder, but he survived.
DENMARK
Elephants go for a stroll
Two elephants said goodbye to the circus and took a walk along a Copenhagen street packed with rush-hour traffic on Wednesday, one following the other with trunk linked to tail. Sonia, 31, and Vana Mana, 41, star turns at the Circus Benneweis, strolled down the multi-lane Borups Alle in the Danish capital for about 200m before their trainer caught up with them. “They were walking past the morning traffic trunk-to-tail,” a police officer told Danish news agency Ritzau. Police blocked the road so the elephants could return to the circus site unhurt. “Nobody was hurt, so it was just two elephants out for a stroll,” the police officer said.
UNITED STATES
‘Ben & Cherry’ DVDs recalled
A movie studio has agreed to recall pornographic DVDs whose titles and packaging mimic those of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Caballero Video also agreed to stop marketing and to destroy materials used to make 10 titles in its “Ben & Cherry’s” X-rated film series while a lawsuit against it is pending. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc sued Caballero on Sept. 5 for trademark infringement. It complained that its DVD titles, such as Boston Cream Thighs, Chocolate Fudge Babes and Peanut Butter D-Cups, were too similar to its ice cream flavors Boston Cream Pie, Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Peanut Butter Cup. Ben & Jerry’s also said Caballero’s packaging played off its own with images of puffy white clouds and grazing cows, just as the slogan, “Porno’s Finest,” punned on “Vermont’s Finest.”
BRAZIL
‘Husband’ breaks into palace
A woman claiming to be “the husband” of President Dilma Rousseff was overpowered as she tried to force her way into the presidential palace, officials said on Wednesday. The 29-year-old woman, identified as Edileine Celestino da Silva and sporting men’s clothes and haircut, showed at the palace late on Tuesday and tried to enter through a restricted entrance, the Correio Braziliense daily reported. A presidential guard warned her to stay away and fired his weapon into the ground to frighten her. However, the two “traded blows and rolled down the ramp” until security agents intervened, the paper said. “I came here to propose to Dilma. I am her husband,” the sobbing woman said. “I am not crying because of the blows I received. I am crying because I am in love,” she said. The woman was taken to hospital before being transferred to a police station.
UNITED KINGDOM
Roger Moore alleges abuse
Former James Bond actor Roger Moore on Wednesday said he was a victim of domestic violence during his first two marriages. The 84-year-old British star, who first played Agent 007 in 1973’s Live and Let Die, said his former wives, Doorn Van Steyn and Dorothy Squires, subjected him to a string of attacks in both of their doomed marriages. Van Steyn, an ice skater who married Moore when he was 19, once threw a teapot at him, he told TV presenter Piers Morgan in an interview due to be broadcast today. Moore, who is on his fourth marriage, said that on one occasion, Van Steyn had even attacked a doctor who was treating a cut on his hand. “She said to him: ‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ and punched him,” he said. “Which made a change, because normally she punched me.” Moore divorced Van Steyn in 1953 and soon after married Welsh singer Dorothy Squires. However, this marriage was also stormy, and she once hit him over the head with a guitar, he said.
GUATEMALA
Villagers kill murder suspect
Angry villagers killed a man by setting fire to him after he allegedly hacked two children to death with a machete, authorities said. The villagers in Tactic, about 85km north of Guatemala City, grabbed the 35-year-old suspect, identified as Julio Saquil, doused him with gasoline and set him ablaze, local authorities said on Wednesday. “He walked into to one of the classrooms and assaulted the students, completely beheading a 13-year-old boy and slitting the throat of an eight-year-old girl with a machete,” Tactic firefighter Wilson Cahuec said. Local security officials said the dead man had a history of drug problems and violence, but they have not yet identified a motive for the attack.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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