THAILAND
Jellyfish kills German tourist
A 20-year-old German tourist has died after being stung by a poisonous box jellyfish off Koh Samui, police said yesterday, the third known fatality in the nation in just over a year. The woman was pronounced dead late on Tuesday at a private hospital on the island after the attack during a nighttime swim at Lamai beach. “Doctors said she died due to poison from a box jellyfish,” said Lieutenant Thanakorn Patnankaew, a tourist police officer on the island. He added that local officials have since traveled to nearby beaches to warn tourists to be more cautious while swimming, though such stings are rare. The German consulate in Phuket confirmed that one of its citizens was killed due to a fatal jellyfish sting, but could provide no further details. The box jellyfish has trailing tentacles 2m to 3m long that can pack a lethal sting for swimmers. It feeds on small fish and crustaceans.
SINGAPORE
Dad charged with murder
A Belgian financial executive was charged yesterday with murdering his five-year-old son, an offense punishable by hanging. Philippe Graffart, 41, was accused of killing his son, Keryan, at an upmarket condominium between Monday night and Tuesday morning. He has been remanded for psychiatric observation at the medical complex in Changi Prison. Local media reported the boy was found strangled, with hand-shaped bruises around his neck, and Graffart was believed to have been fighting for custody of his son with his former wife. Graffart was arrested before dawn on Tuesday after showing up with self-inflicted wounds outside a police station, the Straits Times said.
AFGHANISTAN
Bodies uncovered at palace
The presidential palace said skulls and bones belonging to two bodies have been uncovered beneath a kitchen during renovation work on the palace grounds. The identity and cause of death of the skeletons are a mystery. Tuesday’s palace statement said the remains have been sent for forensic examination. It also said that a commission, including representatives of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and Physicians for Human Rights, had been set up to identify the bodies. The nation has had a long history of unearthing mass graves of unidentified victims of war, many linked to former warlords. In 2002, about 2,000 bodies were found in a mass grave, believed to be Taliban fighters killed after being taken prisoner during fighting that overturned their six-year regime.
SWEDEN
Nobel blunder recounted
With two men with the same name and a wrong number, a Nobel prize can easily fall into the wrong hands, as was the case when the Nobel Prize in Physics was accidentally awarded to an economist. In an interview with the Nobel Foundation broadcast on Tuesday, 1989 physics laureate Norman Ramsey recalled how the prize committee had first contacted another Norman Ramsey by mistake. “They had guessed maybe I might be in Washington DC. There was a Norman Ramsey there and the chairman of the committee called him,” he recounted in the interview conducted in 2005. At about 6am, the son of that Norman Ramsey picked up the telephone and was hesitant to wake his father. “And they said we want to tell him he’s received the Nobel Prize in Physics. This young man said: ‘That’s very interesting since my father’s an economist,’” the laureate said. The real laureate died in 2011 aged 96. He received the prize for his work on atomic clocks.
UNITED STATES
Lawsuit filed against Cosby
A woman on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Cosby alleging sexual assault, saying the veteran comedian drugged and molested her at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2008, when she was a minor. The civil lawsuit, filed at US District Court in California’s Central District, charges Cosby with “childhood sexual abuse,” demanding a jury trial and damages exceeding US$75,000. Chloe Goins joins more than 50 women who have come forward publicly over the past year with allegations against the now 78-year-old Cosby, including drugging, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. In most cases, the incidents date back decades, putting them outside the statute of limitations for legal action, but Goins’ allegations, coming within eight years of her turning 18, fall within California’s legal code.
UNITED STATES
Python attacks store owner
The owner of a Kentucky reptile store had to be rescued by police after a 6m-long python weighing up to 57kg wrapped around him, authorities said. Terry Wilkins was tangled up with the snake when two police officers arrived at the Captive Born Reptiles store in Newport, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, at about midday on Monday. “When officers arrived on the scene, they located the victim who was totally unconscious with a large snake wrapped around his head and neck,” according to a Newport police report. The officers grabbed the snake by the head and unwrapped it from Wilkins, who was not breathing, the report said. He began to breathe as rescue squad workers arrived, it said. Wilkins was treated at a Cincinnati hospital with nearly two-dozen stitches to his arm where the snake bit him and went home later on Monday, according to a colleague. The police report said a woman who was with Wilkins at the time told an investigator he was cleaning the snake’s glass cage when it clamped onto his arm. Wilkins told her to fill a bleach bottle with hot water to help get the snake to release him, but she did not have enough water initially and when she returned from refilling the bottle, the snake had wrapped itself around Wilkins and began choking him, the report said. The snake was unharmed.
UNITED STATES
Female kidnapper sentenced
A former day care worker convicted of abducting a five-year-old girl from her Philadelphia kindergarten classroom and sexually assaulting her has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Prosecutors believe 22-year-old Christina Regusters donned a Muslim dress and veil to impersonate the girl’s mother and take her from the public school classroom in January 2013. Regusters on Monday apologized, but said she is not a “monster.” She said her only role was taking the child from school and leaving her half-naked the next morning at a playground. The girl said: “I think what she did to me was wrong, and I think she should not do it to anyone else.”
UNITED STATES
Hanks to return student ID
If your name is Lauren, then actor Tom Hanks is looking for you — but only if you lost your student identification card. WNBC-TV reports Hanks on Tuesday found a card belonging to a Fordham University student and tweeted a photograph of it to find its owner. Hanks said: “I found your Student ID in the park.” He said that, if it is still needed, his office would get it back to her. The photograph has been retweeted more than 3,000 times.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
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