HONG KONG
Publisher jailed for 10 years
A Chinese court has sentenced a Hong Kong publisher to 10 years in prison to stop him from putting out “subversive” books about China’s leaders, his son told a newspaper. Retired engineer-turned-publisher Yiu Man-tin (姚文田), 73, was found guilty and sentenced to jail for smuggling after failing to pay import duties on industrial paint he took to China from Hong Kong in October last year, his lawyer said yesterday. Yiu planned to release a book about Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) called China’s Godfather Xi Jinping by dissident Yu Jie (余杰) before he was detained on Oct. 27 last year, the South China Morning Post said, citing family and friends. Yiu’s son, Edmond Yiu Yung-chin (姚勇戰), told the newspaper he believed his father had been set up to prevent him from publishing subversive books.
JAPAN
Fetishist taxi driver arrested
A taxi driver who got a sexual thrill out of watching women desperate to urinate has been arrested for allegedly feeding passengers snacks laced with diuretics, police said yesterday. Toshihiko Nishi, 41, lured women into long rides in his cab, in at least one case by offering a half-price fare, and then plied them with crackers covered in a substance that would make them want to go to the toilet. Police who raided the man’s home said they found videos that Nishi said were from a security camera inside the cab that showed about 50 women wetting themselves on his back seat. One alleged victim told police she had got into Nishi’s taxi in Osaka, western Japan, in October last year and had been given a small paper cup containing water biscuits. A short time after eating the snack, she began to need the toilet, but when she told the driver to let her out of the car so she could relieve herself, he refused and instead passed back an absorbent sheet on which he encouraged her to urinate. “I got excited by watching women trying to withstand the urge to urinate,” the driver told investigators.
JAPAN
Bones left on firm’s doorstep
Two neatly sealed boxes of human bones — one containing a skull — were left on the doorstep of a real-estate agent, police said Wednesday. The 34-year-old manager of the firm in Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo found the two sealed boxes outside the door of his office on Tuesday morning, police said. He called the emergency services after opening one of the boxes and discovering a human skull inside. The other box was found to contain a number of bones of varying lengths and sizes, believed to be from the same body. “The remains appear to have belonged to one person, but neither the sex nor the age of the person is yet known,” a police officer said, adding it was likely an adult.
AUSTRALIA
Missing Irishman found
Police said yesterday that an Irishman missing after last being seen in a Sydney pub has been found at the bottom of a stairwell after apparently being trapped for five days. Donal “Donie” O’Sullivan was last spotted at the bar in Bondi on Saturday morning, but never made it home. He was reported missing on Sunday night by relatives, sparking a search by friends and the local Irish community, with more than 800 people joining a Facebook page dedicated to finding him. The 33-year-old was eventually found on Wednesday lying in an emergency stairwell of a commercial building just meters away from where he was last seen, suffering head and back injuries. Police said they were treating the case as possible “misadventure.”
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Skull Cracker’ arrested
Police on Wednesday said that they have caught a fugitive armed robber nicknamed “Skull Cracker” five days after he escaped from a low-security prison in southeastern England. Michael Wheatley was given 13 life sentences in 2002 for a series of violent raids on banks. He absconded on Saturday after being granted a day-release license. Police said they arrested Wheatley, 55, and another man in east London on suspicion of conspiracy to commit armed robbery. The arrests came after a branch of the Chelsea Building Society in Surrey was robbed earlier on Wednesday. Wheatley got his nickname for striking his victims with his pistol during bank raids.
SPAIN
Sandwich carries cocaine
Police on Wednesday said that they arrested a Colombian man after he was found to be carrying a ham and cheese sandwich stuffed with more than 100g of cocaine. The 29-year-old was detained at a bus station in the Mediterranean beach town of Benidorm and he is suspected of drug trafficking, police said in a statement. A photograph released by police show a sandwich cut in half with nine small cylindrical plastic capsules on top of the ham and cheese. Police found more than 1kg of cocaine in the man’s home in Benidorm, as well as marijuana, and detained his roommate, a 20-year-old Colombian.
CANADA
‘Rehab like camp’: Ford
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford told the Toronto Sun on Wednesday that “rehab is amazing,” adding that it is a lot like a football summer camp he attended as a child. Ford, 44, took a leave of absence from city hall in the middle of his re-election campaign last week to enter rehab for drug and alcohol abuse after another video recently surfaced showing him allegedly smoking crack. “I feel great,” he told the newspaper. “Rehab is amazing. It reminds me of football camp. Kind of like the Washington Redskins camp I went to as a kid,” he said. Ford described daily meetings with four to eight people, including “two doctors, a captain of industry and a professional athlete... There are terrific people in my group. We are all supporting each other. We are connecting in a weird way.”
PERU
‘Miracle’ saves parachutist
A noncommissioned air force officer whose parachute malfunctioned during a training exercise survived a 1,500m fall without any broken bones. “It’s a miracle he’s alive,” emergency room doctor Guillermo Pacheco said. “It was the will of God he survived.” Amasifuen Gamarra, 31, underwent a battery of medical tests at the hospital in Arequipa, Pacheco said, “and there weren’t any fractures.” The doctor said Gamarra jumped from a military plane at 1,500m, but when he tried to open his parachute, the webbing wrapped around his neck and he lost consciousness. “We don’t know what cushioned his fall, but he’s alive. It’s a miracle,” Pacheco said.
VENEZUELA
‘Bird smuggler’ nabbed
A German woman attempted to board a plane to France with 103 tropical birds hidden in her luggage, some of them endangered species, authorities said on Wednesday. The birds were in boxes in her baggage when she was stopped on Friday last week at a Caracas airport and the National Guard carried out a search, state prosecutors said. The woman was charged “for the alleged offense of aggravated and planned smuggling,” officials said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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