MORROCCO
Politicians caught in the act
Two senior Muslim politicians have been suspended from their party, the group announced on Monday, following media reports that they were arrested in a “sexual position” on a beach. Moulay Omar Benhammad and Fatima Nejjar, both in their 60s and vice presidents of the Unity and Reform Movement, have been “suspended from all structures of the movement,” the party said in a statement issued after an emergency meeting of its leadership. According to private Web site al-Ahdath, police detained Benhammad and Nejjar early on Saturday last week on a beach in Mohammedia, about 60km south of Rabat. They were allegedly found in a “sexual position” inside a car, it said. Nejjar, a 62-year-old widow and mother of six, faces a charge of complicity to adultery. A married 63-year-old father of seven, Benhammad faces charges of “attempted corruption” of the policemen who detained the couple, the Web site said. Some social media in Morocco have reveled in the case, posting videos of Nejjar in full Islamic headdress exhorting female students not to give in to “temptation and vice.”
JAPAN
Father kills son over exam
A father stabbed his 12-year-old son to death after complaining the boy was failing to study for a school entrance exam, media said yesterday. Kengo Satake, the boy’s 48-year-old father, told police that he “argued with his son for not studying” before a test to enter a private junior-high school, public broadcaster NHK reported. The son, named Ryota, was taken to hospital on Sunday after the stabbing, but died from loss of blood, Aichi prefectural police in the central city of Nagoya told reporters. “The father stabbed his son in the chest with a kitchen knife,” a police spokesman said, declining to provide details of the motive. The father was arrested after police received a call from hospital staff, he said. Satake reportedly told police he had stabbed his son “by mistake.”
INDIA
Man swallows 40 knives
Doctors in northern India say they have surgically removed 40 knives from the stomach of a man who had swallowed them over the past two months. The 42-year-old man is recovering in a hospital in Punjab State after undergoing surgery on Friday in which doctors removed the knives — some folded and some with exposed blades up to 18cm long. Jatinder Malhotra, a doctor who was present during the five-hour operation, said yesterday that the man, who works as a police constable, was apparently suffering from a psychiatric disorder and is now being counseled. He said the man could not explain why he swallowed the knives. Malhotra said he had never before heard of a case of a person swallowing knives.
JAPAN
Sea Shepherd deal reached
The Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku, which conduct the nation’s whale hunts, say they reached a mediation agreement with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its founder Paul Watson. Under the terms of the negotiated agreement, Sea Shepherd and Watson are prohibited from “physically attacking” Japan’s whaling vessels or crew, or approaching closer than 457m to the vessels on the high seas. The agreement settles a case brought by the Japanese institutions against Sea Shepherd at a Seattle court in 2011, in which the Japanese institutions sought an injunction from “violent behavior” of protesters which they said endangered the safety of the whaling vessels’ crew.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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