HONG KONG
Court hears yoga ball killing
An anesthetist allegedly gassed his wife and daughter to death using a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide, the High Court heard on Wednesday. Prosecutors told the court that Khaw Kim-sun (許金山) left the inflatable ball in the trunk of a car, where the gas leaked out, according to court reports. Khaw’s wife and 16-year-old daughter were found on a roadside in a locked yellow Mini Cooper in 2015. Police found a deflated yoga ball in the back of the car. Prosecutors said that Khaw, a 53-year-old Malaysian, was having an affair with a student and his wife would not grant him a divorce. Prosecutors said it was likely that Khaw had not intended to kill his daughter, as Khaw had said he had urged his daughter to stay at home and finish her homework on the day of the deaths, Apple Daily reported. Khaw had been seen filling two balls with carbon monoxide at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was an associate professor, reports said.
JAPAN
Typhoon threatens west
Typhoon Cimaron yesterday was expected to make landfall in the west of the nation, raising the risk of more hardship for a region battered by floods and prompting authorities to issue evacuation advisories for more than 60,000 people. Cimaron was likely to cut across the western region yesterday evening, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. “There will be heavy rain in areas that have yet to fully recover,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting at the government’s disaster response headquarters. Shikoku would likely see as much as 800mm of rain in the 24 hours to noon today. At least three municipalities on Shikoku issued evacuation advisories for their 65,000 residents. Meanwhile, Typhoon Soulik has whipped up strong winds, waves and heavy rain in southern South Korea, leaving one person missing and one injured. It is forecast to make landfall at the southwestern town of Seocheon at 3am today, dumping 7cm to 15cm of rain and gusts of up to 160kph.
INDONESIA
Blasphemy ruling criticized
The nation’s largest Muslim organization has criticized the blasphemy conviction and imprisonment of a Buddhist woman who complained that the call to prayer from her neighborhood mosque was too loud. Officials from Nahdlatul Ulama yesterday said that the woman’s complaint about mosque loudspeakers does not constitute blasphemy under the law. The ethnic Chinese woman, Meiliana, on Tuesday was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a court in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra. “We believe that Meiliana did not commit blasphemy,” Nahdlatul Ulama deputy chairman Robikin Emhas said, adding that there was no hatred against any religion in her complaint. Another prominent Nahdlatul Ulama official, Rumadi Ahmad, who was an expert witness Meiliana’s trial, said his testimony was ignored.
UNITED STATES
Airline stops China service
Hawaiian Airlines is to suspend its only route to China after four years of offering the service. The airline on Tuesday announced that the nonstop service that flew three days a week between Honolulu and Beijing is to end in October, citing low demand, Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. Airline spokeswoman Ann Botticelli said the company was optimistic that the number of Chinese visitors would increase, but the market has been slow to mature.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
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