VIETNAM
Trump wants better ties: PM
US president-elect Donald Trump told Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc he wanted to further strengthen fast-warming ties between the two nations, the Hanoi government said yesterday. Vietnam has advanced ties with the US to a new level under US President Barack Obama’s administration as it faces down fellow communist neighbor China’s challenge to its territorial claims in the South China Sea. During the phone call on Wednesday the prime minister congratulated Trump on his election win and stressed the importance of maintaining friendship and cooperation. Trump “asserted his wish to cooperate with Vietnam to accelerate the relationship between the two countries,” the government said on its news Web site.
UNITED STATES
Teachers to carry arms
A rural Colorado school district on Wednesday night decided to allow its teachers and other school staff to carry guns on campus to protect students. The Hanover School District 28 board voted 3-2 to allow school employees to volunteer to be armed on the job after undergoing training. The district’s two schools serve about 270 students about 48km southeast of Colorado Springs, and it takes law enforcement an average of 20 minutes to get there. The district shares an armed school resource officer with four other school districts. School board president Mark McPherson said a survey showed the community was split on the issue.
UNITED STATES
Woman deserted sick dog
A Southern California woman who allegedly abandoned a dog with a 19kg cancerous tumor has been charged with life-threatening animal abuse and neglect. Sherri Haughton of Newport Coast on Wednesday was charged with four misdemeanors that carry a potential two-year jail sentence. A call to a woman of that name was not answered on Wednesday night. Orange County prosecutors say Haughton dropped off her seven-year-old golden retriever, Henry, at an animal hospital in May and claimed she had found him on a beach. Before it was removed, Henry’s stomach tumor had nearly doubled his body weight. He is now living with a foster family and receiving cancer treatment.
UNITED STATES
Uber self-drive test closed
California shut down Uber’s testing of self-driving cars shortly after the ride-sharing service launched its pilot in San Francisco, citing a lack of permit and threatening to sue. Uber launched the test without a permit as required by the state. Twenty firms have been approved to test a total of 130 vehicles, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said. In a letter to Uber, DMV counsel Brian Soublet said the permit is required in part to protect public safety. “If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action,” he wrote.
UNITED STATES
Deer roams Manhattan
For the past two weeks, an adult male white-tailed deer has been seen roaming a strip of steep, rocky woods in Jackie Robinson Park in Harlem, New York. He seems to spend a lot of his time around the corner of 145th Street and Edgecombe Avenue, near a bodega and a block from a subway entrance. The carrots and celery that people slip through the fence there could have something to do with it. No one is sure how the deer got here. The city’s Parks Department said it intends to keep an eye on the deer right where it is, “unless and until it is gravely injured or presenting a risk to humans.”
AUSTRALIA
Omura’s whale sighted
A rarely seen Omura’s whale has been spotted on the Great Barrier Reef, officials said yesterday, one of the few sightings globally of a species that scientists know little about. The whale was seen and photographed by a snorkeling boat operator, who submitted the images to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. They were then sent to an expert in Madagascar, who confirmed it was an Omura’s whale. “This is the first recorded sighting of an Omura whale in the Great Barrier Reef,” the marine park authority’s sightings network manager Chris Jones said. “The species is rarely seen — it’s so rare we needed to track down an expert to confirm the identity of this enigmatic whale.”
JAPAN
Japan finds capsized boat
Rescuers yesterday spotted a boat that capsized a day earlier, leaving one dead, but have yet to find the eight men still missing after the accident, officials said. The 76-tonne fishing boat Daifukumaru capsized in the Sea of Japan just off Shimane Prefecture on the western coast early on Wednesday morning, leaving one dead and eight missing. Two coast guard divers spotted the boat about 45m below the surface near the site of the accident after a sonar and an underwater camera found a fishnet, a coast guard spokesman said.
INDIA
Rebels kill two policemen
Heavily armed rebels yesterday killed two police officers in an ambush on a highway they were guarding hours before the visit of the top elected official of an insurgency-wracked northeastern state, police said. Another five officers were wounded in the attack in Lokchao area in Manipur state close to the border with Myanmar, according to the police control room. Manipur State Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh postponed his visit to the region following the attack. Last month, Singh escaped unhurt after shots were fired at him and his entourage as he was getting out of his helicopter at the Ukhrul helipad in a nearby district. The militants opened fire on the police patrol with assault rifles, killing one officer on the spot. Another officer died in a hospital, police said.
HONG KONG
Rules on timber to be tested
Campaigners said new international rules to protect endangered tree species will be a test for the territory, already grappling to deal with its role as a conduit for illegal timber flooding into China to meet demand for fancy furniture. China and the territory’s government have until Jan. 2 to implement a UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species rule set in October requiring a permit for the vast majority of international rosewood species. The rule comes as demand in China for antique-style furniture booms, fed by a state-supported furniture industry on the look-out for wood from around the world.
SOUTH KOREA
Moon to run for president
The former leader of the main opposition party yesterday said he would run for president, while adding that the issue of deploying a US anti-missile system should be pushed back to the next presidential administration. “It would be a great honor for me to run for president,” Moon Jae-in, former leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, told a news conference. The next presidential election is due in 2018, but one could be held sooner if a Constitutional Court upholds a parliamentary vote to impeach President Park Geun-hye.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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