UNITED STATES
Parents film baby with gun
Police in Evansville, Indiana, arrested the the mother of a one-year-old baby and her boyfriend after they discovered a video of the child playing with a 40-caliber handgun, police said in a statement. Police found the video on a cellphone owned by Michael Barnes, a 19-year-old robbery suspect who was arrested on Thursday last week. Police said they searched Barnes’ phone after his arrest and found the video, which shows the boy putting the muzzle in his mouth as Barnes instructs the child to say “pow.” Police said that when they questioned Barnes’ girlfriend, Toni Wilson, she claimed the weapon shown in the video was a pellet gun. Barnes and Wilson face charges of child neglect, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and allowing a child to possess a firearm.
UNITED STATES
Measles tied to Disney parks
Health officials are reporting seven more cases of measles in an outbreak tied to visits to Disney theme parks in California last month. The new cases confirmed on Monday by the California Department of Public Health brings the total to 26 people in four states. Officials say 22 of the cases are in California and two are in Utah, with one apiece in Colorado and Washington. Most of the patients visited Disneyland or Disney California Adventure between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, but some might have contracted the illness from others who visited. The new cases include three reported on Monday in Southern California, including two in San Bernardino County and one in Long Beach.
UNITED STATES
Camel tramples two to death
A male camel in rut trampled two people to death at the Camel Kisses farm in north Texas, KFDX television station reported on Sunday. A man had entered a pen holding a male and two female camels at the farm near Wichita Falls on Saturday, the report said. The male then charged the man, named as Mark Mere, 53. The farm’s owner, Peggye McNair, 72, tried to close the gate to the pen, but was also stomped, the Wichita County Sheriff’s Office told the television station. “It appears that both victims were trampled by the camel,” police said in a statement, according to the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, about 240km northwest of Dallas. McNair, a former bank executive, had raised camels for nearly two decades, the newspaper said. Mere entered the pen because a water trough was frozen over, Wichita County Sheriff David Duke told KFDX. Authorities were given permission to put down the male camel.
UNITED STATES
Dog a regular bus rider
A black Labrador named Eclipse just wants to get to the dog park. So if her owner takes too long finishing his cigarette and their bus arrives, she climbs aboard solo and rides to her stop — to the delight of fellow Seattle bus passengers. KOMO-TV reports that local radio host Miles Montgomery was amazed to see the pooch get off the bus, without an owner, at a dog park last week. The dog and her owner, Jeff Young, live right near a bus stop. In Young’s words, “She’s a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog.” Young says his dog sometimes gets on the bus without him and he catches up with her at the dog park three or four stops away. Bus riders report she hops onto seats next to strangers and watches out the window for her stop. “All the bus drivers know her ... she makes everybody happy,” commuter Tiona Rainwater said.
CHINA
‘Apple Man’ mocked
A man arrested on charges of attempting to smuggle 94 smartphones into the nation by strapping them to his body was mocked by netizens yesterday after pictures of his “iPhone armor” went viral. Online images of the man show him covered in dozens of handsets, held together under his outer clothes with clingfilm and masking tape, with commentators comparing him to comic book superhero Iron Man. He was held in Shenzhen as he tried to enter from Hong Kong with his hidden cargo, the People’s Daily said on Monday. “When the person passed through the metal detector gate, it made a loud and clear alarm,” the report said. Netizens on microblogging Web site Sina Weibo labeled the man “Apple Man,” using a Chinese character commonly used for superheroes, particularly Marvel’s Iron Man. “I just keep thinking this guy is trying to imitate Iron Man,” one said.
INDIA
Bootleg liquor kills 17
Officials say a bad batch of bootleg liquor killed at least 17 people and sent another 122 to hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh. Most of the victims had been among more than 200 people who had gathered to watch a cricket match on Sunday evening in a village on the outskirts of the state capital, Lucknow. While officials said 17 people had died, unconfirmed reports early yesterday put the death toll at 22. Government official Anil Garg said 14 of those hospitalized were in serious condition, and some had lost their eyesight. District official R.K. Pandey said police arrested a shop owner who sold the 200-milliliter pouches of alcohol for about US$0.30 each.
AFGHANISTAN
Officer kills superior, official
A policeman shot and killed his commanding officer and a district governor in Helmand Province, officials said yesterday, in an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents, who said the policeman had defected to their movement. Nawzad District Governor Sayed Murad Sadat and police commander Shamsullah were killed in the attack during a meeting on Monday, deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar said. “An investigation has already started to find out the reason for the shooting,” Rasoulyar said, adding the police officer suspect was shot dead after the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility on Twitter. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for a car bomb that killed two people in western Kabul yesterday. The bomb attached to a civilian vehicle detonated in front of a mosque, Kabul police chief spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai said.
JAPAN
Police tally non-urgent calls
A quarter of all calls to police emergency lines last year were not emergencies, including one in which the caller asked for help removing an insect from their ear. More than 2 million of those who dialed 110 — the nation’s emergency police number — sought assistance in less-than-dire situations, a survey by the National Police Agency has shown. They included a report that a vending machine had not coughed up the right change, a blocked toilet at home and someone having trouble recalling a forgotten smartphone password. In another case, someone rang police to report the toilet paper had run out in a public toilet. Jiji Press, citing agency figures, said on Sunday that frivolous calls last year were down slightly on the year before, but still accounted for more than 24 percent of more than 8.5 million that police received.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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