JAPAN
Volcano spews 5km plume
Residents in the southern city of Kagoshima were busy washing ash off the streets yesterday after a nearby volcano spewed a record-high smoke plume into the sky. Ash wafted as high as 5km above the Sakurajima volcano in the on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006. Lava flowed about 1km from the fissure, and several huge volcanic rocks rolled down the mountainside. Kagoshima officials said in a statement that this was Sakurajima’s 500th eruption this year alone.
SOUTH KOREA
Joint military drills start
The country began annual joint military drills with the US yesterday that North Korea usually calls a rehearsal for invasion. North Korean state media have not made major statements on the exercises thus far. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills set to continue until Aug. 30 are computer-simulated war games that involve 30,000 US and 50,000 South Korean troops, according to the Ministry of Defense and the US military command in Seoul.
AUSTRALIA
Baseballer murdered in US
A family was yesterday struggling to come to terms with the “senseless” death of their baseballer son in a random drive-by shooting by three teenagers in the US. Chris Lane, 22, was in the US on a baseball scholarship and was jogging in the small town of Duncan, Oklahoma, when he was shot in the back on Friday last week and left to die on the side of the road. Three teenagers aged 15, 16 and 17 were arrested and face the death penalty, Duncan Chief of Police Danny Ford told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “They wanted to be Billy Bob Badasses. I think they were on a killing spree. We would have had more bodies that night if we didn’t get them,” Ford said.
NEW ZEALAND
First same-sex couples wed
Dozens of same-sex couples said “I do” yesterday as the nation became the first Asia-Pacific country, and only the 14th in the world, to legalize gay marriage. Vows were exchanged in venues ranging from an airliner cruising at 9,150m to a historic bath house as gay men and women took advantage of the law change. The amendment to the Marriage Act was passed by parliament in April, but did not come into effect until yesterday.
INDONESIA
Prison riot quelled
Security forces have retaken control of an overcrowded prison in North Sumatra Province following a night-long riot, and have captured most of the estimated 30 convicts who escaped, authorities said yesterday. The riot erupted on Sunday afternoon at the Labuhan Ruku jail, which was built for about 300 prisoners, but houses more than 850. Local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Japerson Sinaga said the riot began when a warden was beaten by inmates who had just been transferred to the facility from other prisons. Inmates torched the prison and at least 30 prisoners overpowered security guards.
CHINA
Floods kill 105
Devastating floods at opposite ends of the country have left 105 people dead and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes in recent days, officials and Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Flooding in the northeast that left 72 people dead was described as “the worst in decades” by Xinhua, while another 33 people died in Guangdong Province, where 510,000 were evacuated.
GERMANY
Hermaphrodites recognized
The nation will become the first in Europe to join a small group of nations which recognize a third or “undetermined” sex when registering births, the Suddeutsche Zeitung said. From Nov. 1, babies born without clear gender-determining physical characteristics will be able to be registered without a sex on their birth certificates, according to the report. While transsexuals are already legally recognized, hermaphrodites — those with both male and female genitalia — have always been forcibly registered as one or other sex at birth.
TUNISIA
Ennahda agrees to talks
The governing Islamist party Ennahda switched course on Sunday and agreed to meet with opposition parties to seek a consensus on resolving the country’s worst political crisis since its 2011 Arab Spring revolution. Fethi Ayadi, chairman of the party’s supreme council, said the talks could start by the end of the week and could consider opposition demands for a caretaker technocrat government to find a way out of the current standoff. Ennahda chairman Rached Ghannouchi firmly rejected that demand on Thursday last week, prompting criticism from opposition leaders who accuse his party of complacency toward threats from violent hardline Salafis.
GERMANY
Al-Qaeda plots attacks: ‘Bild’
Al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe’s high-speed rail network, the mass circulation daily Bild reported yesterday, citing intelligence sources. The extremist group could plant explosives on trains and tunnels or sabotage tracks and electrical cabling, Bild said. Bild said the information came from the US National Security Agency, which had listened in to a conference call involving top al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks on Europe’s rail network was a “central topic” of this call, Bild said. Authorities have responded with discrete measures such as deploying plainclothes police officers at key stations and on main routes, the daily said.
UNITED STATES
Rare Ferrari auctioned
A rare 1967 Ferrari owned by an orphan-turned-millionaire sold at auction for US$27.5 million. The red Ferrari was one of only 10 ever built, and its single-family ownership increased interest in the sale, the Los Angeles Times reported. The owner, the late Eddie Smith, was a former mayor of Lexington, North Carolina. He died in 2007 at age 88. “This is a bittersweet moment for us,” Eddie Smith Jr told a crowd before bidding began on Saturday. In keeping with his father’s philanthropy, the family was giving all proceeds to various charities, Smith Jr said.
GERMANY
Gunman holds three hostage
A gunman took three people hostage at the city hall in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt yesterday, officials said, and a planned election rally there featuring Chancellor Angela Merkel was canceled. The hostage-taker was a young man armed with a handgun, and the hostages were believed to include Ingolstadt Deputy Mayor Sepp Misslbeck, police spokesman Hans-Peter Kammerer said. The incident started shortly before 9am. Police said they are in contact with the man by telephone. There is no immediate word on what he wanted. The dpa news agency reported that Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had previously stalked a female employee at the city hall. The hostage-taking happened several hours before Merkel was due in the city for a late afternoon rally in the square in front of the city hall.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
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