JAPAN
Scientist commits suicide
A senior scientist embroiled in a stem-cell research scandal has apparently committed suicide, police said yesterday. Yoshiki Sasai had supervised and coauthored stem-cell research papers that had to be retracted due to falsified contents. Hyogo prefectural police said Sasai, 52, was found yesterday at a government-affiliated science institute in Kobe, western Japan. Sasai was deputy chief of its Center for Developmental Biology. A security guard found him suffering from cardiac arrest, with a rope around his neck. Sasai was rushed to a hospital, but was pronounced dead two hours later. Police said Sasai left what appeared to be suicide notes, but refused to disclose their contents. Sasai’s team retracted research papers from British science journal Nature over coauthor Haruko Obokata’s alleged malpractice, which she has contested.
INDIA
Soaking kids long for bridge
Shivering with cold, a group of boys in a remote village put on their uniforms after swimming across a river to make it to school. It is a morning ritual for the students of far-flung Chottaudepur District in Gujarat State. Boys and girls have no option but to plunge into the cold waters of the Hiran River, which has no bridge. The alternative would be a 20km journey on foot. The boys can take off their uniform before getting into the river, but the girls are not so lucky and must swim with their uniforms on. Since there are no changing rooms, the girls are unable to take off their wet clothes and wear them in the classroom. “The children keep falling sick. They can’t afford to miss school and look what they have to go through each day,” village elder Ram Singh said. The villagers in the tribal area blame official apathy for their plight, saying plans to construct a bridge remain only on paper. “We have heard that they have finalized the cost estimates for the bridge. Once it is in place, it will change our lives,” Singh said.
FRANCE
Three killed in shooting
A man in his 70s, his 69-year-old wife and their 40-year-old daughter were killed on Monday when a motorist armed with a gun opened fire on their car, officials said. The gunman fled the scene after the shooting, which took place late afternoon next to a busy square in the town of Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk. A suspect, a man in his 40s, was later arrested in nearby Belgium after allegedly trying to commit suicide by ingesting an overdose of pills, prosecutor Eric Fouard said. He added that the arrested man was believed to be the ex-husband of the murdered daughter. The elderly man and his daughter died immediately in the shooting. The man’s wife succumbed to her serious wounds after being taken to hospital.
ISRAEL
‘Bomb Gaza’ app pulled
A mobile game that simulates Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and invites users to “drop bombs and avoid killing civilians” has been pulled from Google Inc’s app store, a company spokesman said on Monday after a public backlash. Bomb Gaza, developed by PlayFTW and still available as an app on Facebook, simulates the conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas. Players drop bombs from a fighter jet, while dodging missiles from Hamas fighters in black and green masks. “We remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies,” a Google spokesman said, confirming that the game had been removed. Google did not specify which policy the game had violated. The game triggered outraged comments on the app store review page, as well as on Facebook.
UNITED STATES
Pitbull bites man’s genitals
A New Mexico man almost lost his genitals to a dog bite when a 40kg mixed-breed pitbull attacked his eight-year-old daughter and he intervened to rescue her, police said on Sunday. Authorities say the dog, named Stitches, bit the girl in the face on Saturday, puncturing the child’s cheek. Her 35-year-old father, who was not named, moved quickly to save her. Police say it then attacked him, latching onto his groin. Fire department paramedics rushed the man to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where his wounds were listed as severe lacerations and partial detachment of the genitals. The eight-year-old was treated at the scene and released to her mother. The family told police they recently inherited the house and Stitches from the man’s grandfather, who passed away. Animal Control officials removed the dog from the property. They said it will be held for 10 days during which the family can reclaim it, otherwise it will be put up for adoption.
UNITED STATES
Wrong body put in grave
A grieving Texas man is planning a second burial service for his mother after a mortuary mistakenly placed the wrong body in a grave on top of his father. Mabrie Memorial Mortuary ignored warnings from Bruce Lawson that the body being buried on top of his father in the Houston National Cemetery on July 26 did not appear to be that of his mother, Edna, Lawson told a CBS affiliate in Houston on Friday. “I said: ‘It doesn’t look like my mom. Do you think maybe you have the wrong body? Maybe it’s someone else back there?’ And she said we don’t make those kind of mistakes,” Lawson told KHOU 11 News, relaying a conversation he had with a mortuary official. Lawson said he received a call days after the burial from a mortuary employee, who told him of the mistake. Lawson went to the mortuary, where he identified his mother’s body.
UNITED STATES
Boy, 5, shoots girl, 3
A three-year-old Colorado girl was shot and critically wounded by a five-year-old boy on Monday with a handgun belonging to her mother’s boyfriend, police said. Pueblo police said in a statement that a nine-year-old boy was playing with a handgun in the backyard of a home in the morning when he gave the firearm to the five-year-old, who pointed it at the girl and fired, striking her once. The bullet entered and exited the toddler’s body without breaking any bones, police said. She was airlifted to a Colorado Springs hospital where she was listed in critical, but stable condition after having surgery, they added. Police said they would investigate how the older boy got the weapon. The girl’s mother, whom police had not identified, was present at the home when the shooting took place. Her boyfriend, Adrian Chavez, 22, who was also at the home, fled the scene and was apprehended five hours later, police said.
UNITED STATES
Concertgoer bites off finger
Authorities say a man was arrested at Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Rose Bowl concert in California after allegedly groping a woman and then biting off the tip of her boyfriend’s finger during a fight. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports Roberto Alcaraz-Garnica, 25, was taken into custody on Saturday on suspicion of sexual battery and mayhem. Pasadena Police Lieutenant John Luna says Alcaraz-Garnica was accused of groping a woman in her 20s. When the woman’s boyfriend confronted him, a fight broke out and the suspect bit off the tip of one of the boyfriend’s fingers.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS