■CHINA
Political prisoner released
One of the country’s longest-held political prisoners was released yesterday after serving 16 years of a 20-year jail sentence for setting up an opposition party. Hu Shigen (胡石根), 53, was greeted by family members when he emerged from a Beijing prison, his brother said. Hu’s family had traveled from their hometown in Jiangxi Province for his release. Hu could not be interviewed because he is still deprived of his political rights for four more years.
■JAPAN
Serial bag snatcher nabbed
Police have caught a serial handbag snatcher who was dubbed “the chameleon” after eluding arrest for at least four years by stripping off as he fled the scenes of his crimes by bicycle. Hiroshi Ishihara, a 42-year-old Osaka resident, would wear three to five extra T-shirts or sweaters and take them off as he fled, a police official said yesterday. “By the time we radioed in that the culprit was wearing black clothes, he was wearing white or red.” Police caught Ishihara earlier this month as he cycled to his car after being identified on security cameras. He has confessed to snatching more than 60 purses, but police believe he was responsible for 200 to 300 thefts.
■NEW ZEALAND
Patients’ drugs stolen
Christchurch Hospital called in police yesterday after discovering that someone had stolen patients’ pain relief medication and replaced it with water, news reports said. No details were given about the thefts, but Radio New Zealand said morphine or another synthetic narcotic was probably involved.
■INDONESIA
‘Tree Man’ goes home
A man dubbed the “tree man” because of gnarled growths on his body has returned from hospital after 6kg of warts were surgically removed from his body, a doctor said yesterday. Dede, 37, first noticed the warts after cutting his knee as a teen. Over time, he was fired from his job, deserted by his wife and shunned by neighbors as the horn-like extensions covered most of his body. “He cannot be 100 percent cured, but his life quality has improved,” one of Dede’s doctors said. A US doctor said previously that the warts were a result of severe Human Papilloma Virus infection.
■AUSTRALIA
Pickpockets flying in
Teams of professional pickpockets from as far away as Brazil were arriving on fly-in fly-out missions that last just a couple of weeks, the Sydney Morning Herald said yesterday. The theft sprees were organized by a local crime boss who takes a percentage of the loot, a police spokesman said.
■VENEZUELA
Python kills keeper
A 3m Burmese Python killed a student zookeeper in Caracas on the weekend and was caught trying to swallow its dead prey when horrified coworkers arrived, Venezuela’s El Universal newspaper reported on Monday. The other employees of the Caracas zoo had to beat the serpent to make it release the body of 29-year-old Erick Arrieta, whose head it was swallowing. The daily reported that Arrieta had been working the nightshift alone on Saturday. The university biology student had broken the park’s rules by entering the cage holding the snake, zoo management said. A snake bite on his arm indicated the python had attacked Arrieta before wrapping itself around him and crushing him to death.
■CANADA
Singer survives plane crash
The lead singer of the pop band Barenaked Ladies and three other people survived a plane crash in rural southeastern Ontario, authorities said on Monday. Ed Robertson’s Cessna 206 float plane crashed in a wooded area near Bancroft, Ontario, on Sunday afternoon as he was trying to take off from Baptiste Lake, Ontario Provincial Police Sergeant Bruce Quigg said. Quigg said no one in the plane was injured. Robertson’s friend Gord Peel told the Belleville Intelligencer newspaper that the other passengers were Robertson’s wife, Natalie, and their friends. The four had to get out through the windows, but did not have a scratch, he said.
■UNITED STATES
Tuskegee Airman dies
Lieutenant Colonel Howard Lee Baugh, who flew scores of World War II combat missions as one of the original members of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen, died on Saturday. He was 88. Baugh died at a suburban Richmond, Virginia, hospital after a brief illness. “He fought for this country and helped open some doors,” said a son, Howard Layne Baugh. “He helped show people the idea of black people as second-class citizens ... was wrong.” Baugh enlisted in the Army in 1942 and joined the all-black fighter group that trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He flew 135 combat missions as part of a fighter squadron in Sicily, Italy. Tuskegee Airmen Inc said that fewer than 140 of the unit’s pilots are estimated to be still living.
■BRAZIL
Rapporteur calls for rights
A UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights on Monday urged the government to do more to overturn “critical” health and educational deficiencies and combat economic woes suffered by its native population. James Anaya, a US legal scholar descended from Apache Indians, spent nearly two weeks visiting indigenous areas. “The health and educational situation is critical for many indigenous peoples,” he told reporters in Brasilia. He questioned whether many social programs implemented, in fact, reached the Aboriginal population, and said that a government scheme to boost infrastructure projects appeared to run roughshod over opposition from affected indigenous communities.
■CANADA
Six prisoners escape
Five prisoners described by police as dangerous and possibly armed have escaped from the Regina Correctional Center in Saskatchewan. Police said on Monday that six prisoners escaped on Sunday night, but one was apprehended shortly before midnight. Police say no one was injured during the escape. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Regina Police Service are investigating.
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary