PAKISTAN
Court issues bizarre order
A special court yesterday issued a bizarre, but apparently symbolic order for former president Pervez Musharraf, saying his corpse should be dragged to parliament and hang for three days if he dies before his execution. The court on Tuesday sentenced Musharraf to death after finding him guilty of high treason for subverting the constitution in 2007. The court directed law enforcers to apprehend Musharraf to ensure the death sentence is carried out, but if found dead beforehand, “his corpse [should] be dragged to D-Chowk, Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for three days,” it said. The chowk, or roundabout, is just outside parliament. Legal experts termed the instructions unconstitutional. There is only one precedent — a court sentenced a serial killer to hanging at a public place and his body to be cut into 100 pieces in front of the families of the victims. The sentence was never carried out.
UNITED KINGDOM
China-HK talks urged
Britain yesterday urged China to open dialogue with Hong Kong protesters and respect the commitments it made 35 years ago in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The treaty signed on Dec. 19, 1984, pledged that Hong Kong’s high-degree of autonomy would be unchanged for 50 years after the former British colony was handed back to China in 1997. However, fears that China might start to clamp down have led to months of often violent street protests. “Hong Kong is experiencing its greatest period of turmoil since the handover,” Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab said. “The agreement between the UK and China made clear that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms would remain unchanged for 50 years.”
CANADA
Scientist makes tiny bauble
There was Tiny Tim and then the Little Drummer Boy — but they had nothing on the microscopic gingerbread house believed to be the smallest in the world unveiled on Wednesday by a researcher. About half the size of one made in France last year, it was cut and etched from silicon, complete with sharply defined bricks and trim, and a Canadian flag for a welcome mat. Images provided by Hamilton, Ontario-based McMaster University’s Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy showed the house sitting atop a cap on the head of tiny winking snowman made from materials used in lithium-ion battery research. The pair of decorations stacked one on top of the other are barely taller than the diameter of a human hair.
MEXICO
Probe targets ex-top official
The head of the federal financial crimes unit on Wednesday said that he is looking into evidence that the country’s former top security official embezzled as much as 2 billion pesos (US$105.1 million at the current exchange rate) in government funds. Financial Intelligence Unit Director Santiago Nieto said that some of the money was transferred to relatives of Genaro Garcia Luna, who served as secretary of public safety from 2006 to 2012. Nieto said that five former officials who worked under Garcia Luna are also under investigation for embezzlement, conflict of interest and money laundering. Garcia Luna, 51, is being held pending trial in the US for allegedly taking bribes from the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel. Garcia Luna was indicted on three counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and a false statements charge in New York.
UNITED STATES
Teen takes plane on joyride
A 17-year-old girl was arrested on Wednesday after authorities said that she sneaked into a small airplane at a central California airport and drove it into a chain-link fence. The teenager climbed a fence topped with barbed wire at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, started up the aircraft and crashed it into a fence, airport Police Chief Drew Bessinger said, adding that she breached the fence about 400m from the commercial terminals and the military area. No passenger airplanes were in danger and no one was injured in the crash, he said. A grainy surveillance video released by airport officials showed the airplane drive in a circle before crashing. Airport and Fresno Police Department officers responding to a 911 call found the teen in the pilot’s seat, wearing a headset, Bessinger said. She “appeared to be disoriented and was uncooperative with police when she was taken into custody,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Wakanda taken off trade list
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday removed the fictional country of Wakanda from an online list of nations that have free-trade agreements with the US. There was no immediate response from the department for comment. A spokesman told the Washington Post that the inclusion of the mythical African nation from the universe of Marvel superheroes was a mistake made as part of a test officials were running. The Kingdom of Wakanda is the home of Marvel superhero Black Panther, and is portrayed in comic books and last year’s blockbuster film as an isolated African nation with the most powerful technology on the planet. There was no department entry for vibranium, the fictional metal from space that is the source of Wakanda’s power.
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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