UNITED KINGDOM
Sudanese granted asylum
A Sudanese man who was arrested after walking through the 50km Channel Tunnel from France to England has been granted asylum, lawyers said on Monday. Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was detained in August in Folkestone. Police said Haroun had slipped past officers at the tunnel entrance and dodged hundreds of surveillance cameras before being spotted by British security guards. He was charged with obstructing a railway engine or carriage under a 19th-century law — the Malicious Damage Act. Haroun’s caseworker, Sadie Castle of law firm Kent Defence, said the government granted him asylum on Dec. 24. At a court hearing on Monday, a lawyer said prosecutors were considering whether to drop the charge in light of the decision. Haroun, who has been detained since his arrest, was released on bail until a Jan. 18 hearing.
POLAND
Death camp visitors hit high
A record 1.72 million people visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp last year, according to the museum at the site. In 2014, the site drew 1.53 million visitors. Last year, about 425,000 Poles toured the complex, while foreign visitors, included 220,000 Britons, 141,000 Americans and 93,000 Germans, as well as tens of thousands of others from Italy, Spain, Israel, France and elsewhere. There was also a marked increase in the number of visitors from South America and North America last year compared with 2014.
EL SALVADOR
Murders spike 70 percent
Authorities report that murders spiked by nearly 70 percent last year, resulting in a sky-high homicide rate that could make it the world’s most violent nation. National Police director Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde on Monday said that the nation officially registered at least 6,657 homicides last year, up from 3,942 the previous year. The overall homicide rate was 104 per 100,000 inhabitants. That puts the country in a position to take over Honduras’ title of murder capital of the world.
AUSTRIA
Police divers find body
Police divers searching a lake one day after recovering two suitcases containing parts of a woman’s body found the submerged body of a man in the same waters on Monday. Police official Gerhard Haag said the body was retrieved from the bottom of the Traunsee near the lakeside town of Gmunden close to the location where the suitcases were discovered on Sunday. One hand of the male victim was secured to a weighed-down bag, keeping him submerged, Haag said. Police earlier said the remains in the suitcases were of a woman about 70. Local media outlets reported the head of the woman was missing.
UNITED STATES
Police officer bailed
A police officer who shot dead a black motorist in South Carolina has been released on US$500,000 bail, the Post and Courier newspaper reported on Monday. Michael Slager, who was dismissed from the North Charleston police force after the incident, had been held in jail since his arrest in April last year for killing 50-year-old Walter Scott. “The decision was met with gasps from Scott’s family and with tears from Michael Slager’s wife and parents, who appeared together for the first time in the downtown Charleston courtroom,” the report said. Scott was shot in the back five times as he tried to run away from Slager on April 4 after being pulled over, reportedly for a broken brake light.
CHINA
Bus arson suspect arrested
Police arrested a man suspected of starting a bus fire yesterday that killed 17 people, the official People’s Daily said via its microblog. Flames engulfed the bus in front of a furniture store in Helan County in the northern region of Ningxia shortly after 7am. Thirty-two people were injured. Police “surrounded and seized” the suspected arsonist after a manhunt, the paper said.
AFGHANISTAN
Mazar-i-Sharif siege over
A police officer yesterday said that special forces have ended the standoff with three gunmen holed up near an Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed all the attackers after a 24-hour gunbattle. The standoff began on Sunday night when three gunmen tried to storm the consulate, then retreated into an adjacent, four-story building. Sarwar Hussaini, a police spokesman in Balkh Province, said that the standoff ended late on Monday night. Ten people were wounded during the clashes, including five civilians who got caught in the crossfire.
AUSTRALIA
Robert Stigwood dies
Music mogul Robert Stigwood, who managed the BeeGees at the height of their fame and guided musician Eric Clapton’s successful solo career while producing stage musicals and films, has died aged 81, friends said yesterday. The announcement of his death was made on Facebook by Spencer Gibb, a son of BeeGees’ member Robin Gibb. “I would like to share the sad news with you all, that my godfather, and the longtime manager of my family, Robert Stigwood, has passed away,” Spencer Gibb wrote. Further details about his death were not available.
KYRGYZSTAN
Penis-joke Briton expelled
A British employee of the nation biggest gold mine, detained by police after comparing a national dish to a horse penis, was told on Monday to leave the country within 24 hours for working without an official permit. Michael Mcfeat had posted a comment saying that his colleagues were lining for their “special delicacy, the horse’s penis” at New Year celebrations. The dish in question is a sausage made from horse meat and intestines. A court found that Mcfeat had no work permit and ruled that he must be deported within 24 hours.
JAPAN
Final New Year sale held
A sushi boss yesterday paid more than US$117,000 for a giant bluefin tuna as Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market held its last New Year auction ahead of a move to newer quarters. Bidding stopped at a ￥14 million for the enormous 200kg fish, three times higher than last year’s sale, but still far below a record ￥155.4 million paid by a sushi chain operator in 2013. The New Year auction is a traditional feature at Tsukiji, where bidders pay way over the odds for the prestige of buying the first fish of the year. Yesterday’s winner, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said he was “glad to make a winning bid in the last New Year auction at Tsukiji.”
AUSTRALIA
Hoverboard sparks fire
A family’s Melbourne home was gutted when a hoverboard caught fire as it was charging, officials said yesterday. Authorities said the hoverboard — a Christmas gift — was plugged into the wall in a young girl’s bedroom when it ignited. The family were able to escape after a smoke alarm alerted them to the danger, but the house was severely damaged.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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