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.
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 plan by Switzerland’s right-wing People’s Party to cap the population at 10 million has the backing of almost half the country, according to a poll before an expected vote next year. The party, which has long campaigned against immigration, argues that too-fast population growth is overwhelming housing, transport and public services. The level of support comes despite the government urging voters to reject it, warning that strict curbs would damage the economy and prosperity, as Swiss companies depend on foreign workers. The poll by newspaper group Tamedia/20 Minuten and released yesterday showed that 48 percent of the population plan to vote
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
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.
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