■ INDONESIA
Earthquake hits near Aceh
An earthquake of magnitude 6 struck off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island, near Aceh, the country's meteorological agency said yesterday, but officials said there was no damage to nearby energy facilities and a tsunami warning was not issued. The quake struck 113km southwest of Banda Aceh in Sumatra and was at a depth of 16km, the agency said in a text message. An official at the country's oil and gas watchdog said that the natural gas production area in Arun operated by US Exxon Mobil had not been affected by the quake. The facility produces between 500 million cubic feet and 600 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and supplies an LNG plant in Arun.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Legislator faces 40 charges
A legislator and former government minister will face 40 charges of bribery and perverting the course of justice, police said yesterday. Taito Phillip Field, who resigned from Prime Minister Helen Clark's ruling Labour Party to become an independent legislator after accusations were made against him in 2005, has been charged with 15 counts of bribery and 25 counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Field is due to appear in an Auckland court on Monday for an initial hearing. The charges related to allegations he offered to help migrants with immigration problems in exchange for thousands of dollars of work on his houses in New Zealand and Samoa. Field's lawyer Simativa Perese said Field wanted to go to trial and clear his name before the national election due by late next year.
■ PHILIPPINES
Twenty-five people missing
Twenty-five Filipinos were missing after their vessel sank in the storm-tossed South China Sea, the Philippine Coast Guard said yesterday. Another 30 crew members were rescued by Chinese fishermen, said Vice Admiral Danilo Abinoja, the Filipino coast guard chief. Philippine authorities are trying to establish the identity, type, and registry of the vessel, and a coastguard patrol craft was en route to help search for the missing, Abinoja said. The incident occurred on Thursday amid turbulent weather in the area of the disputed Spratly islands. Tropical storm Hagibis is currently whipping the Spratlys after killing 13 people in the southern and central Philippines, the weather office in Manila said.
■ BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Thief caught snoozing
A would-be thief took a nap while burgling a house in Bosnia -- and the owner found him sound asleep on the couch, police said on Thursday. The man, identified only as Edin M., 21, managed to snatch two bracelets and an earring before falling asleep, police in the central Bosnian town of Maglaj said. He confessed to breaking into the house. "He saw the couch and just sat to down to rest for a while and fell asleep," police said in a statement.
■ RUSSIA
Bus bomb kills five
A bomb ripped through a bus in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus region on Thursday, killing at least five people, including a schoolgirl, and injuring 13. About 19 people were on the bus when the explosion took place, near the Bratsk police checkpoint at the internal border between North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Police sources said the blast was caused by about 300g to 400g of explosives packed with nails and pieces of metal. The bus was traveling to North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, from the southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk.
■ GERMANY
Police protest border plans
Hundreds of police officers marched through the center of the eastern town of Frankfurt on Oder on the Polish frontier on Thursday to protest plans to lift border controls next month. Carrying a banner reading "No free travel for terrorists and criminals," many of the police wore their duty uniforms. Some blew whistles and plastic horns, while others carried picket signs protesting an EU move to extend the bloc's border-free zone to nine more states on Dec. 21 and urged German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to reconsider. The unusual protest by police reflects fears in Germany about a possible increase in crime or an influx of illegal immigrants with the border opening.
■ GERMANY
Oldest trapeze artist dies
A man widely thought to be the world's oldest active trapeze artist has died, a spokeswoman for his regular variety-show venue said on Thursday. He was 98. Konrad Thurano was with his family in Denmark, where he has been living, when he died of natural causes on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman. Thurano was born in Duesseldorf in 1909 and began his entertainment career with the variety show in 1924. In his 83-year career he performed around the world, rubbing elbows with celebrities including Charlie Chaplin. Each April for his birthday he would return to Duesseldorf to perform and this year was no exception, the spokeswoman said.
■ ITALY
`Pornoprof' suspended
A teacher has been suspended because of her extra-curricular activities as a porn star, local authorities announced on Thursday. The after-hours behavior of Anna Ciriani, who calls herself "Madameweb" in hardcore videos on the Internet and at erotic shows, was "not compatible with educational activity," the head of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia education authority said. Ciriani, dubbed the "pornoprof" by Italy's main newspapers, said she never let her hobby get in the way of her teaching. "My behavior at school has always been professional and irreproachable," she was quoted as saying by the AGI agency. She taught evening classes to foreign adult students near Pordenone.
■ UNITED STATES
Veteran asked to repay Army
A soldier whose injuries in Iraq forced him to leave the military early "inadvertently" received a letter from the US Army asking him to repay a portion of his sign-up bonus, the military said. In October Former private first class Jordan Fox got a letter asking him to repay US$2,800 of his US$7,500 enlistment bonus and officials were checking to see if other injured soldiers were sent similar notices, the Army said on Wednesday. Soldiers who are injured or become ill while on active duty can keep all sign-up bonuses due them, the Army said. Fox was partially blinded in one eye and sustained a back injury in May. After returning home, he got a letter seeking repayment of part of his enlistment bonus and a followup warning he could be charged interest if he didn't make a payment.
■ UNITED STATES
Bidder names butterfly
An anonymous bidder paid US$40,800 for the naming rights of a new butterfly to honor a woman who died in 1972. The butterfly's common name will be the Minerva owl butterfly, named after the late Margery Minerva Blythe Kitzmiller of Ohio. While the bidder's name was not disclosed, the payment was made on behalf of Kitzmiller's grandchildren. The scientific name will be Opsiphanes blythekitzmillerae. University of Florida researchers discovered the new species while looking through a collection at the Florida Museum of Natural History earlier this year. They found it was misidentified as another species.
■ CANADA
Taser deaths under scrutiny
Police are taking a closer look at the use of stun guns after two recent deaths, including one in which a man died about 30 hours after being shocked. While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was asked to investigate the circumstances of Thursday's jailhouse death, a parliamentary public safety committee launched its own probe of last month's death of a Polish man who was shocked by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport. The manufacturer of Taser guns has said they have never been conclusively linked to deaths in Canada.
■ BRAZIL
Police fight prison crime ring
Police on Thursday arrested the new wife of the country's most notorious drug baron and 10 others on suspicion of being members of a crime ring he ran from his cell in a maximum-security federal prison. Police said Luiz Fernando da Costa, also known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar or Freddy Seashore, continued to deal in drug trafficking, assassinations, arms smuggling and money laundering from behind bars. Beira-Mar was married eight weeks ago in the Campo Grande prison. His wife, Jaqueline, a lawyer whom he met years ago, was arrested in Rio with US$200,000, a police source said.
■ ISRAEL
Police arrested over attack
Five Israeli police officers are under arrest on suspicion of carrying out gangland style revenge attacks against a suspected organized crime family in the northern town of Nahariya, a police spokesman said on Thursday. The arrests were made last month but information was released only after a gag order was lifted. The officers allegedly planted a pipe bomb under the car of one of the country's biggest crime chiefs and lobbed a grenade into his house. They are also accused of breaking into the homes of suspects and damaging property. A police commissioner expressed outrage over the officers' behavior but said no external investigation will be launched.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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