HONG KONG
Penis cutter suspect on trial
A Chinese woman is on trial for killing her former boyfriend with a hammer after first cutting off his penis with scissors, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday. Yeung Ki, 41, has admitted killing 32-year-old piano teacher Zhou Hui on Dec. 26, 2012, but denies murder. Yeung, who had had an affair with the married Zhou for years, killed him after he beat her, slapped their daughter and then raped Yeung, the High Court has heard. She drugged him with soup laced with sleeping pills, cut off his penis and flushed it down the toilet, then when he was awakened by the pain, beat him to death with a hammer, the prosecution said on Monday.
NORTH KOREA
Almost perfect poll turnout
Pyongyang yesterday confirmed near-perfect turnout for its parliamentary election on Sunday in which single candidates stood uncontested in 687 constituencies nationwide. “According to the election returns available, 99.97 percent of all the voters registered ... took part in the election,” the KCNA news agency said. Of the votes cast, “100 percent” were for the candidates, KCNA said. However, turnout was slightly lower than the last election in 2009, when 99.98 percent of voters cast ballots.
SWITZERLAND
Tamils protest in Geneva
Thousands of Tamils demonstrated in Geneva on Monday to protest Sri Lanka’s rejection of calls for an international probe into alleged war crimes at the end of its civil war. About 4,000 people marched through Geneva and crowded into the square outside the UN’s European headquarters. The demonstrators blocked traffic and police were forced to use pepper spray to contain the situation when protestors began pressing against the security barriers.
JAPAN
Research recall urged
A coauthor of a study that promised a revolutionary way to create stem cells has called for the research to be retracted over claims its data was faulty. The findings, published by Haruko Obokata and US-based scientists in the January edition of British journal Nature, outlined a simple and low-tech approach in the quest to grow transplant tissue in the lab. However, allegations have been raised that researchers used erroneous image data for the article. Teruhiko Wakayama, a Yamanashi University professor who coawrote the article, said the research should be retracted.
NEW ZEALAND
Key vows flag referendum
Prime Minister John Key yesterday pledged to hold a referendum on changing the national flag if he wins a third term in office in September. Key had been tipped to hold the referendum alongside Sept. 20 elections, but said he did not want the campaign dominated by debate over the flag. He said he supported ditching the current flag in favor of a silver fern on a black background, the emblem used by the nation’s sport teams.
AUSTRALIA
Volcanoes help survival
The steam and heat from volcanoes allowed species of plants and animals to survive past ice ages, a study published yesterday said. “Volcanic steam can melt large ice caves under the glaciers, and it can be tens of degrees warmer in there than outside,” said Ceridwen Fraser, the joint team leader from the Australian National University. “Caves and warm steam fields would have been great places for species to hang out during ice ages.”
UNITED STATES
General’s trial ‘politicized’
A military judge in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Monday found that politics had been unlawfully injected into the rare court-martial of Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, but refused to dismiss the sexual assault charges against him. The judge said he would allow Sinclair to renew an offer to plead guilty to some lesser charges in exchange for the most serious allegations of coercive sex acts being dropped. Military leaders at Fort Bragg rejected a previous proposal by the general after giving improper consideration to a letter from the main accuser’s lawyer that invoked politics while urging them to deny the offer, Colonel James Pohl ruled.
UNITED STATES
Snowden has no regrets
National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, speaking via live video conference on Monday, told a packed audience at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival that he had no regrets and acted because he believed the constitution had been “violated on a massive scale.” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), spoke to Snowden, who is in Russia, from the Austin event along with Snowden’s legal adviser, the ACLU’s Ben Wizner. Snowden dispensed advice on how citizens can keep their Web-surfing activities more private and urged the technology industry to create more software and services that help guard privacy.
SOUTH AFRICA
More testimony on autopsy
The pathologist who conducted an autopsy on the girlfriend shot by Oscar Pistorius was testifying yesterday for a second day at the athlete’s murder trial. Gert Saayman was speaking about the gunshot wounds suffered by Reeva Steenkamp when Pistorius opened fire through a toilet cubicle door at his home on Feb. 14 last year. On Monday, Pistorius vomited into a bucket at his feet and retched as he listened to Saayman’s testimony, which was so graphic that it was not broadcast or reported live on social media by journalists under an order from Judge Thokozile Masipa. Saayman methodically listed the extent of the three main gunshot wounds Steenkamp suffered when she was shot in the right side of the head, the right hip and the right arm through a toilet cubicle door.
TURKEY
Alleged coup plotters freed
A court on Monday released scores of defendants convicted last year over an alleged coup plot, media reported. The ruling came after former army chief Ilker Basbug — sentenced to life in jail in connection with the so-called “Ergenekon” conspiracy — was released from prison on Friday. The constitutional court had ruled earlier that Basbug’s legal rights were violated, saying that a lower court failed to publish its detailed verdict on the case and send it to the appeals court. That ruling paved the way for 19 more defendants to be released, including prominent journalist Tuncay Ozkan and retired army officers, the private NTV channel reported.
UNITED STATES
House cat menaces family
Portland police had to be called in to subdue a 10kg house cat that trapped its owners inside their bedroom after attacking their baby. Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sergeant Pete Simpson said officers responded to an emergency call on Sunday evening from a couple who had locked themselves in their bedroom with the baby and their dog after the cat attacked the child, although the baby was not injured. He said the cat remained with its owners.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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