JAPAN
Mangoes sell for US$3,000
A pair of mangoes grown in the nation’s south sold yesterday for a whopping ￥300,000 (US$3,000), a record price for the fruit’s first auction of the season, Kyodo news agency reported. The “Taiyo no Tamago” (Egg of the Sun)-brand mangoes were set to be airlifted from Miyazaki in the far south to a department store in Fukuoka, where they were to go on sale, the agency said. To qualify as a “Taiyo no Tamago” mango, each fruit must weigh at least 350g and have a high sugar content, according to the Miyazaki Agricultural Economic Federation. Fruit is routinely expensive and it is not unusual for a single apple to cost upwards of US$3, while a presentation pack of 20 cherries can set you back US$100. However, all pale in comparison with the eye-watering US$25,000 price tag for a pair of cantaloupe melons auctioned in 2008.
CHINA
Guard poisons children
A woman has been detained for killing two children at a preschool nursery and making 30 others ill with poisoned food, state media said. The woman — a security guard at the premises, angered over having to leave her living quarters — “put poison into a bag of snacks and left it in the classroom,” Xinhua said on Wednesday, citing police in Qiubei in Yunnan Province. Two girls aged four and five died, following the poisoning on March 19. Another five pupils were in a critical condition immediately after the poisoning, and a further 25 received hospital treatment. A Qiubei local official said yesterday that all the sickened pupils had been released from hospital. The suspect, 44-year-old Zhao Jianzhi (趙建芝), had admitted the crime, the Xinhua report said.
ITALY
Mafia boss hospitalized
Jailed former Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano has been taken to hospital in Milan from a maximum security prison suffering from “neurological pathologies,” media reported on Wednesday. The 81-year-old, who was arrested in 2006 after 40 years on the run during which he communicated with his lieutenants by word of mouth or typewritten notes, is serving several consecutive life sentences. Provenzano’s detention in solitary confinement was extended last month, while the supreme court last week also rejected an appeal from his lawyers that he be released from prison due to ill-health. Nicknamed “The Tractor” for his propensity for violence and stubbornness, Provenzano became the uncontested head of the Cosa Nostra after the incarceration of his predecessor Toto Riina in 1993. Provenzano was the nation’s most-wanted man for many years.
DR CONGO
More than 3,600 raped: UN
More than 3,600 women, children and men were subjected to rape and other sexual violence over a four-year period by the country’s defense and security forces or armed rebels, according to a UN report released on Wednesday. The report by the UN’s human rights office said the period from 2010 through last year “has been characterized by the persistence of incidents of sexual violence that were extremely serious due to their scale, their systematic nature and the number of victims.” About half the 3,645 attacks were by rebel groups and half by government forces, though the percentages varied year by year, the report said. The victims ranged in age from 2 to 80 years old, with 73 percent women, 25 percent children and 2 percent men, it said.
UNITED STATES
Contract killer confesses
A suspected contract killer charged in California with killing nine people confessed to investigators that he carried out up to 40 slayings in a career spanning decades, a prosecutor said. Errek Jett, the district attorney in Lawrence County, Alabama, said on Wednesday that Jose Manuel Martinez, 51, told investigators he carried out the crimes working as an enforcer for a drug cartel. Martinez was arrested last year shortly after crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona and sent to Alabama, where he awaits trial on one murder charge. Once word got out, a steady stream of investigators from across the country came to question Martinez, Jett said. Martinez targeted victims in Tulare, Kern and Santa Barbara counties between 1980 and 2011, said Tulare County Assistant District Attorney Anthony Fultz, who filed charges on Tuesday.
PUERTO RICO
Glowing bay goes dark
Authorities announced on Wednesday they are investigating why a glowing bay that attracts thousands of tourists a year has grown dark in recent weeks. The popular Mosquito Bay on the island of Vieques is considered one of the nation’s top attractions and its waters glow thanks to microscopic plankton known as dinoflagellates that emit a blue-green light through a chemical reaction when disturbed. The bay went dark in early January because of rough seas. Cristina von Essen, with Vieques-based adventure company Black Beard Sports, said the bay went dark about three weeks ago and remained in that state for about two weeks. “It caught everybody by surprise,” she said. “Not just us, but all companies that run tours down here were struggling. Everybody was a little bit frustrated.”
MEXICO
Migrants ask Senate for help
About a dozen Honduran migrants who lost legs and arms after falling from trains during northbound journeys across Mexico asked the Senate on Tuesday to stop the government’s persecution of Central Americans, protect them from criminal gangs and contribute money to shelters for their care. The migrants say that drug gang members and other criminals frequently beat, stab or push them from moving trains during their journeys through Mexico to the US. Jose Luis Hernandez, the leader of the Association of Disabled Returning Migrants, said the group hopes to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto to discuss their demands. Hernandez said there are 452 mutilated migrants from Honduras and more from other Central American nations. “We have hit bottom,” Hernandez said. “It is no longer even news when two people die on ‘The Beast,’ or that somebody fell under the train and lost his legs,” Hernandez said, referring to the train that travels through the south of the country.
UNITED STATES
Weed invades Colorado
Mini-storms of tumbleweed have invaded the drought-stricken prairie of southern Colorado, blocking rural roads and irrigation canals, and briefly barricading homes and an elementary school. The invasion of the tumbleweed, an iconic symbol of both the West’s rugged terrain and the rugged cowboys who helped settle it, has conjured images of the Dust Bowl of 80 years ago, when severe drought unleashed them onto the landscape. Officials have tried to attack the tumbleweed with snow blowers and rotary attachments on tractors used to cut crops like alfalfa. They have even tried to bale it for cow feed, but the weed clogs machinery and baling is too expensive to be economical.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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
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