■INDIA
Granny gives birth to twins
Twins born to a 70-year-old grandmother in northern Uttar Pradesh state last month are doing well and could be discharged in a day or two, hospital officials said on Monday. Omkari Panwar gave birth to a girl and a boy in Muzaffarnagar, about 160km northwest of the capital Delhi, on June 24 after undergoing in-vitro fertilization. Panwar and her husband, Charan Singh, have two adult daughters and six grandchildren. “We have plenty of agricultural land but we did not have any heir to look after us,” Singh said.
■AUSTRALIA
Scorn heaped on Kidman
Australians, peeved at golden girl Nicole Kidman choosing to give birth in the US, yesterday heaped scorn on the name that the Hollywood actor and her country singer husband picked for their firstborn. The daughter born to Kidman and fellow Aussie Keith Urban on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, has been dubbed Sunday Rose Kidman Urban. “She just wants to fit in with the rest of the morons who choose horrible names for their children,” a reader identified only as Sam wrote to Melbourne’s Sun Herald newspaper. A reader called Harry mused that with Sunday Rose, the glamour couple had begun a brood of diary entries: “When they have a boy they can call it Friday Night Drinks.”
■MALAYSIA
Bank robbed near police
Police and news reports say robbers fled with 1 million ringgit (US$300,000) in a brazen bank heist just 100m from a police station. The four men armed with pistols pulled up in a car outside the bank on Monday and forced two security guards who were loading bags of cash into an armored van to hand them the money. The New Straits Times newspaper quoted a witness as saying the robbers “were so confident and quick, we thought they were filming a movie.”
■JAPAN
Woman gives robber tea
A woman and her six-month-old baby escaped unhurt from a knife-wielding thief this week after the mother calmed him down with a cup of tea and a chat. The 30-year-old Tokyo woman was walking along a corridor in her apartment building with her daughter on Monday when a man brandishing a knife demanded money, the Asahi newspaper said. When the housewife told him she had none, the man barged into her apartment. Hoping to calm him, the woman made the thief a cup of tea, whereupon he put his knife away and began a 20-minute monologue about his life. The woman then gave the man ¥10,000 (US$93) and ran outside to call the police from a pay phone.
■MYANMAR
Junta allows aid workers
Myanmar’s military regime approved visas for more than 1,500 international aid workers to help victims of Cyclone Nargis, with half of them involved in relief operations in storm-hit regions, state media said yesterday. Foreign aid staffers were initially barred from cyclone-affected areas and the junta was criticized for its sluggish response to the May disaster, which killed 84,500 people and left nearly 54,000 missing.
■JAPAN
Okinawa shaken by quake
An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 6.0 jolted Okinawa yesterday, a government agency said, but there was no risk of a tsunami. The focus of the tremor was in the ocean 50km below the surface off Okinawa, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. Public broadcaster NHK said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
■CROATIA
Ex-policeman jailed
A former policeman was jailed on Monday for 20 years after being convicted of a triple murder that many believe helped fuel the outbreak of the country’s 1991 to 1995 war. The court in the eastern town of Osijek found Antun Gudelj guilty of killing the local police chief Josip Reihl-Kir and two ethnic Serb politicians in July 1991, a court spokesman said. The three were shot dead in an ambush while heading for talks with Serb rebels who opposed the country’s proclamation of independence from the former Yugoslavia. Gudelj was also convicted of the attempted murder of another ethnic Serb local official in the group, who survived the attack but was seriously injured.
■RUSSIA
‘Faith healer’ gets jail
A court on Monday handed an 11-year jail term to faith healer Grigory Grabovoi for promising followers he could resurrect their dead relatives, media reported. Grabovoi defrauded his victims “using methods of psychological pressure,” the judge at Moscow’s Tagansky district court said while reading the verdict, Interfax news agency reported. In addition to his jail sentence, Grabovoi was fined US$43,000. Grabovoi first came to prosecutors’ attention after he was approached by mothers of children killed in the 2004 Beslan hostage crisis, in which more than 300 hostages, many of them children, were killed at a school in the Caucasus region.
■USSIA
Painters in zero gravity
A group of British artists were set to take a giant leap for art when they attempted to produce masterpieces in zero gravity conditions on board a plane in Russia yesterday. Ten people, including five artists, were to take-off from Star City — a military training facility near Moscow. The artists, who like to experiment with different environments, want to see the effect space-like conditions will have on their work. The trip was paid for and led by Nasser Azam, artist-in-residence at County Hall, the former seat of London’s government. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of my painting to the limit,” Azam said.
■FRANCE
Patissier sentenced to jail
The former owner of one of Paris’ best-loved patisseries has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of his pastry chef. Xavier Philippe, whose courteous and helpful manner behind the counter of L’Avion Delices endeared him to his well-heeled clientele in the Marais district, burst into tears as he was found guilty of killing Christophe Belle. “It’s not possible, it wasn’t me,” cried Philippe, who has protested his innocence since Belle’s body was discovered, with three bullet wounds to the head, in a wood in May 2005.
■CZECH REPUBLIC
Retrial for fake nuke artists
An appeals court ordered a retrial for a group of artists who hacked into a national TV weather broadcast to show a fake nuclear explosion in the mountains, an official said on Monday. Members of the Prague-based Ztohoven art group admitted tampering with equipment at the public broadcaster Czech Television so viewers watching a live panoramic shot of the Krkonose, or Giant Mountains, in June last year saw a flash of bright light and a fiery mushroom cloud rising on the horizon. Seven artists were acquitted of spreading false information in March but the state prosecutor appealed the verdict.
■ COLOMBIA
Plane kills two on ranch
A rose-laden US cargo plane headed for Miami crashed near Bogota before dawn on Monday, killing a father and son in their home on the ground, Colombian aviation officials said. None of the plane’s eight US crew members was reported dead, although a hospital director said one was in serious condition. The crew of the Boeing 747, operated by Ypsilanti, Michigan-based Kalitta Air, told air traffic controllers early on Monday that one of its engines had caught fire and radio contact was lost seconds later, said Donald Tascon, deputy director of Colombia’s civil aviation agency. The jet attempted an emergency landing and crashed onto a ranch about 25km northwest of Bogota, aviation officials said. The plane split apart and its tail smashed into a ranch home, killing Pedro Suarez, 50, and his 13-year-old son Edwin.
■ CHILE
Nazi hunters track ‘Dr Death’
Nazi hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Center arrived in Santiago on Monday to search for notorious German war criminal Aribert Heim, 94, known as “Dr Death,” believed to be hiding in Chile or Argentina. The delegation is headed by the center’s Israel office chief and top Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, and its ongoing “Operation Last Chance” will take them to Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, and Bariloche, in southeastern Argentina, a center official said. Puerto Montt is home to Heim’s daughter Waltraud and could be where he is currently staying. The second-most wanted Nazi criminal on the center’s list, Heim is wanted for the murder of hundreds of inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II.
■ UNITED STATES
Bush sewage plan submitted
With President George W. Bush’s term in office headed for history, some residents in San Francisco are preparing a parting gift of sorts for him. A group submitted a proposal on Monday to rename a civic structure the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. Supporters hoping to put the issue on the November ballot turned in more than 10,000 signatures to election officials, organizer Brian McConnell said. Proponents of the renaming plan see it as fitting tribute to a president they contend has plumbed the depths of incompetence.
■ MEXICO
Nine million trees planted
More than 9 million trees were planted countrywide as part of a day-long campaign against deforestation, the environment minister said on Monday. The day of tree-planting took place on Saturday and aimed to compensate for the 316,000 hectares of forest that are lost annually to illegal exploitation, Environment Minister Juan Elvira said, adding that 507,000 people had participated across the country.
■ UNITED STATES
Car-climbing goat caught
The goat was arrested, the Mercedes-Benz was assaulted and the dog came along for the ride. It happened on Sunday when a woman driving the Mercedes saw a goat and dog playing on a highway in northern Alabama, Sheriff Mike Blakely said. She stopped, afraid they would get hit, but the goat jumped on the car and wouldn’t come down. Fearing scratches and dents in the paint job, she called the Limestone County Sheriff’s Department. A deputy got the goat down and put it in his patrol car, but then the dog jumped into his back seat too. The deputy took the dog to a veterinarian and the goat to the home of another deputy. “If anybody is missing a goat and dog, they need to let us know,” Blakely said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
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