CHINA
Woman kills, cooks husband
A woman in eastern China murdered her husband and boiled the corpse to cover her tracks after he abused her and her daughter, a report said yesterday. The woman drugged the man, her second husband, and tortured him for three days in June by withholding food and water and beating him, causing his death, said a report on government-backed news portal Anhui News. She then dismembered the corpse with a saw and boiled the parts in a pressure cooker to hide the evidence, the report said. It did not detail how she disposed of the cooked flesh afterwards. The psychological burden of the crime proved too much for her to bear, causing her to turn herself into police, the report said.
SPAIN
Activists nab school supplies
A Robin Hood-style band of left-wing activists openly stole cart-loads of school supplies from a supermarket on Friday, promising to distribute them to needy children. After alerting media, more than 200 members of the Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores (Andalusian Union of Workers) emerged from a Carrefour supermarket in Seville pushing about 10 shopping carts brimming with exercise books, pens, felt-tips and dictionaries. They loaded the back-to-school supplies into vans and left. Spain’s Interior Ministry vowed to identify and detain members of the union who “robbed” the supermarket so as to bring them to justice. “The Interior Ministry will act severely and firmly in this matter,” a ministry spokesman said. The “expropriated” school materials this time would be given to needy families in the next few days, the union said in a statement.
KENYA
Commission boss gets head
A human head and two hands have been sent to the nation’s police commission chief, viewed as a grim warning against his efforts to reform the force, officers said on Friday. A box containing the body parts was left outside the headquarters of the National Police Service Commission in Nairobi on Thursday, city police chief Benson Kibui said. Included was a threat for the chief of the largely civilian police oversight body, Johnston Kavuludi, who was appointed last year and is trying to push through reforms. “Kavuludi, you are next,” a note with the head read. Comprehensive police reforms were introduced in 2011 aimed at stopping violations committed by police during post-election violence in 2007 and 2008, but implementation has been blocked. The reforms transfer some powers from the police chief to the commission, including responsibility for recruitment and discipline of police officers.
VATICAN
First papal ‘selfie’ goes viral
Pope Francis has broken protocol once again, appearing with a puzzled look on his face in a “selfie” photo taken with a group of teenagers visiting the Vatican. The picture appeared on the Facebook page of one of the youngsters, who used it as his profile picture, and was going viral on social media yesterday. The picture comes in the same week that the Oxford English Dictionary included the word “selfie” to denote a self-taken photograph on a smartphone. The young believers were part of a church group from northern Italy who met with the pope on Wednesday and were seen going up to him afterwards to take their photo. “There is no marketing behind these actions. The pope clearly likes being with people while his predecessor liked being with books,” said Beppe Severgnini, columnist for the Corriere della Sera daily.
UGANDA
Officials deny refugee deal
The country has denied it has struck a deal with Israel to take in tens of thousands of African refugees, foreign ministry officials said yesterday. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday that Israel would finance the migrants’ flights to the country and their resettlement there, with each refugee apparently receiving US$1,500. However, Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Elly Kamahungye denied the deal. “It’s not true, it is unfounded, false and misleading that we have such an agreement,” Kamahungye said. Haaretz had quoted Israeli Minister of the Interior Gideon Saar as telling a parliamentary committee this week that a senior Israeli official had obtained Kampala’s assent to the deal. Israeli immigration authorities say there are about 55,000 illegal African migrants in the country. Many came by foot through Egypt and slipping through the formerly porous border into Israel, which is now being sealed by a sophisticated system of walls and electronic fences.
UNITED STATES
Suspect survives 64m fall
A bank robbery suspect trying to elude police searching for him in an apartment building jumped into a garbage chute and survived a 64m fall into trash in the basement, police said on Friday. Robin Gutheridge, 26, plunged from the 21st floor of the Clinton Plaza Apartments in Syracuse, New York, a few blocks from the Chase Bank Branch he had robbed earlier, Sergeant Tom Connellan said. He was conscious and told police he had climbed into the garbage chute to avoid being captured. Firefighters moved the compactor and removed Gutheridge from the chute, police said.
UNITED STATES
Foie gras ban upheld
California can continue to ban the sale of foie gras, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday, in a setback for producers of the delicacy who have sought to ship it to the state. Foie gras means “fatty liver” in French. Prized for its rich flavor and smooth texture, the delicacy is produced by force-feeding corn to ducks and geese to enlarge their livers, which are harvested to make gourmet dishes. Animal rights groups contend that the force-feeding process is painful, gruesome and inhumane. Los Angeles-based Hot’s Restaurant Group, Canada’s Association des Eleveurs de Canards et d’Oies du Quebec and New York producer Hudson Valley Foie Gras challenged the ban in a lawsuit filed last year. They argued the state’s law banning the sale of foie gras is vague because it lacks specifics on how much food a bird can be fed. However, Judge Harry Pregerson in the appeals court’s 27-page opinion dismissed that argument.
ECUADOR
President rebukes Assange
President Rafael Correa on Friday chastised WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange for making fun of Australian politicians in a video shot at his place of refuge in the country’s London embassy. “We have sent him a letter: He can campaign politically, but without making fun of Australian politicians. We are not going to allow that,” Correa said here on the sidelines of a South American summit. Correa was referring to a video featuring Assange in a comedy wig singing and sending up Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, his predecessor Julia Gillard and Australian Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott in the run-up to Australia’s Sept. 7 elections. The video has been watched 465,942 times since it was downloaded on Monday.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS