UNITED STATES
Shark attacks 68-year-old
A shark on Wednesday bit a 68-year-old man several times in waist-deep water in North Carolina, officials said, in the seventh attack in the state’s coastal waters in less than three weeks. The man received wounds to his rib cage, lower leg, hip and both hands as he tried to fight the animal off, local emergency official Justin Gibbs said. The attack happened at about noon at a beach on Ocracoke Island, he said. “The individual was actually located right in front of the lifeguard tower when it occurred,” said Gibbs, who said witnesses reported the shark was about 2m long.
GERMANY
Robot crushes contractor
Human error led to the death of a contractor setting up a robot at a Volkswagen production plant, the automaker said on Wednesday. The man died on Monday in Baunatal, about 100km north of Frankfurt, Volkswagen spokesman Heiko Hillwig said. The 22-year-old’s team was setting up a stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate, Hillwig said. Initial conclusions indicate that human error was to blame, he said.
ITALY
Man jailed for trafficking
A court on Wednesday found a Tunisian man guilty of trafficking migrants and sentenced him to 18 years in prison for contributing to a 2013 shipwreck that killed 366 people, a judicial source said. A court in Agrigento, Sicily, convicted Khaled Bensalem, 36, of causing the 2013 shipwreck and the deaths of the mainly Eritrean passengers, and of aiding illegal immigration, the source at the Agrigento prosecutors’ office said. The disaster near the southern island of Lampedusa was one of the worst recorded in decades.
UNITED STATES
Leland Yee pleads guilty
A former California state senator has pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in an organized crime and public corruption case centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Leland Yee (余胤良) entered the plea on Wednesday and could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October. The FBI arrested Yee and 19 others last year during a series of raids, one of which targeted a Chinese fraternal organization. Yee was accused of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for providing help from the state capital, Sacramento. The FBI also alleged that the Democrat conspired to connect an undercover agent with an international arms dealer in exchange for campaign contributions.
UNITED STATES
Drummer denied bail
Journey drummer Deen Castronovo, 50, was high on methamphetamine and hallucinating when he was arrested two weeks ago in Oregon and accused of misdemeanor assault and menacing, his attorney said on Wednesday during a bail hearing. Castronovo’s attorney, Jeffrey Jones, asked a judge to set his bail at US$50,000. Castronovo was released on bail after he was arrested on June 14 and ordered to stay away from a woman who has accused him of rape. Despite the order, prosecutors said Castronovo has texted the woman 122 times and called her 35 times since posting bail, with his messages swinging between contrition and threats. He faces felony charges including sexual abuse. Marion County Circuit Judge Channing Bennett denied bail. “My finding is he has no regard for the court’s order,” Bennett said. “I do find he is a danger to the victim.”
AUSTRALIA
Shark attacks surfer
A 32-year-old surfer was critically injured yesterday by a shark in the same coastal town where a Japanese tourist was killed in February, police said. The man was surfing with two friends at Light House Beach in Ballina, a tourist town about 600km north of Sydney, when he was bitten by a shark, “suffering significant injuries to his lower legs,” a police statement said. Friends of the victim, whose name has not been released, helped him to shore before he was flown by helicopter 100km north to Gold Coast Hospital, police said. Police have released no details about the shark.
CAMBODIA
Ex-leaders begin appeals
Two former Khmer Rouge leaders yesterday began appeal hearings against their landmark convictions last year for crimes against humanity which saw them handed life sentences by a UN-backed court. “Brother No. 2” Nuon Chea, 88, and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, 83, were the first top leaders of a regime responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million people to be jailed. However, their lawyers appealed, with Nuon Chea’s team accusing the court of a string of errors and the judges of failing to remain impartial due to their personal experiences under the communist regime from 1975 to 1979. Appeal judgements are expected during the first quarter of next year.
BANGLADESH
Police foil militant attack
Police yesterday said they had arrested 12 suspected militants and foiled an attack planned for the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The Rapid Action Battalion also seized explosives and other bomb-making materials during raids on Wednesday on the militants’ hideouts in the capital, Dhaka, spokesman Major Maksudul Alam said. The militant group had been planning an unspecified attack after Eid al-Fitr, which celebrates the end of Ramadan, Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan, the most senior battalion spokesman, told reporters. “They have selected a madrasah in [the northern district of] Bogra for training,” he said.
AUSTRALIA
HIV risk for dental patients
Up to 11,000 dental patients yesterday were urged to see their doctors amid fears that they might have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis due to hygiene breaches at clinics in Sydney. New South Wales (NSW) Health said 12 dentists from four clinics were accused of poor cleaning and equipment sterilization practices and advised patients to get blood tests for HIV as well as hepatitis A, B and C as a precaution. While NSW Health Director of Health Protection Jeremy McAnulty said no cases had been found so far and the risk of transmission was low, there was concern about people who had undergone invasive procedures.
CHINA
Ten Koreans die in accident
A bus carrying a group of South Koreans fell off a highway bridge in the northeast, killing 10, officials said yesterday. The incident took place on Wednesday after the vehicle left Jian and was about halfway to its destination of Dandong, which borders North Korea, Xinhua news agency said. South Korean officials said 26 South Koreans were on the bus as part of a 140-person delegation of mainly government employees. They were on a tour of historical sites, including places where Korean independence fighters resisted Japan’s colonial rule before the end of World War II, officials from the South Korean Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
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
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