■ PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Dog team exhausts search
An Australian search and rescue team sent to a mining exploration camp hit by a devastating landslide had found no more dead bodies after the initial 10 dead, a government aid official said yesterday. All the local people affected by the landslide in Eastern Highlands Province in the vicinity of a gold mine had been accounted for, the official, who did not want to be named, said. Dozens of people were earlier feared to have been trapped after the landslide struck on Thursday. The Australia Broadcasting Corp quoted an AusAid spokesman a saying that headcounts done in nearby villages had indicated everyone was accounted for. The emergency team of around five, including dog handlers with search dogs, was sent in on Saturday at the request of the government in Port Moresby.
■CHINA
Court sentences swindler
A court has given a suspended death sentence to a man accused of swindling investors out of 98 million yuan (US$14 million) through a get-rich-quick clover-growing scheme, state media reported on Saturday. Xi Hongyu was the mastermind behind the Fengtian Ecological Agriculture Technology Development Co, which from 2005 took money from thousands of people eager for a slice of the fast-growing economy, Xinhua news agency reported. Xi’s sentence, passed by a court the city of Shijiazhuang, means he faces a long prison sentence and could be executed if he misbehaves in the next two years. Ten of his associates were sentenced to jail terms of up to 15 years. Clover is a commercial crop used for livestock feed and healthcare products.
■AUSTRALIA
Surveillance beefed up
Authorities plan to increase surveillance of northern waters to catch human traffickers after a boat carrying 47 people was intercepted off the coast yesterday, a minister said. The boat with three crew and 44 passengers was intercepted by a navy warship in waters off the northwest coast, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said in a statement. It is the sixth boatload of suspected asylum seekers to enter territorial waters in two months. Most people who arrive in local waters this way are asylum seekers. But Debus said he did not yet know the nationalities of the latest arrivals nor whether they intended to apply for refugee visas. Debus said an additional navy patrol boat and surveillance plane will be deployed to the north because people smuggling is becoming more prevalent. The additions will bring the border protection force to 13 aircraft and 17 patrol boats. The latest arrivals will be taken to an immigration detention camp on Christmas Island.
■ NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam plans cleanup
Amsterdam unveiled plans on Saturday to close brothels, sex shops and marijuana cafes in its ancient city center as part of a major effort to drive organized crime out of the tourist haven. The city is targeting businesses that “generate criminality,” including gambling parlors and “coffeeshops” where marijuana is sold openly. Also targeted are peep shows, massage parlors and souvenir shops used by drug dealers for money-laundering. “I think that the new reality will be more in line with our image as a tolerant and crazy place, rather than a free zone for criminals” said Lodewijk Asscher, a city council member. The measures announced on Saturday would affect about 36 coffee shops in the center itself — a little less than 20 percent of the city total. Asscher underlined that the city center will remain true to its freewheeling reputation. It’ll be a place with 200 windows [for prostitutes] and 30 coffee shops, which you can’t find anywhere else in the world — very exciting, but also with cultural attractions,” Asscher said. “And you won’t have to be embarrassed to say you came.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Downturn hurts relationships
Couples are struggling to stay together as they face money worries and the threat of redundancy in the economic downturn, said counseling service Relate, which has seen its workload soar. Relate on Saturday reported a rise of almost 60 percent in the number of couples seeking help with their relationships in October and last month as compared with last year. Relate said it had received more than 7,500 calls in October and last month, compared with about 5,000 in the same period last year.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown to Mugabe: ‘Enough’
Prime Minister Gordon Brown branded the Zimbabwean government a “blood-stained regime” on Saturday and urged the international community to tell Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe “enough is enough.” Brown said food shortages and a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that has killed hundreds of people had become an “international rather than a national emergency” that demanded a coordinated response. “We must stand together to defend human rights and democracy, to say firmly to Mugabe that enough is enough,” he said in a statement. Brown did not explicitly say Mugabe should step down, but in comments later on TV he said the world should speak with one voice “to say that this must be brought to an end. The whole world is angry because they see avoidable deaths — of children, mothers and families affected by a disease that could have been avoided. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. This is a breakdown in civil society. It is a blood-stained regime that is letting down its own people.”
■ SWEDEN
Le Clezio urges tolerance
The winner of this year’s Nobel prize in literature, French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, urged respect for often overlooked cultures on Saturday ahead of his acceptance speech. “All cultures must communicate between themselves,” the author, who is known for his work exploring a wide range of cultures, told journalists. “There must not be a dominant culture when it comes to that. There are many cultures in the world that are reduced to silence.” Le Clezio, 68, whose novels include La Guerre (War), Mondo and Desert, was set to give his lecture yesterday and will receive the prize on Wednesday.
■UNITED STATES
Police nab dumb robbers
In the annals of great crime getaways, the two men who beat and robbed a 70-year-old woman at a housing project in the Bronx on Wednesday afternoon are unlikely to earn a mention. The robbers followed the woman into an elevator at the Baychester Houses at 1891 Schieffelin Place just after 4pm and attacked her, the police said. They punched and kicked her, pushed her to the ground, and stole her wallet, which contained US$149. Then they ran outside and flagged down what they thought was a livery cab, police said. But the three men inside the Crown Victoria they hailed had other business: They were plainclothes officers responding to reports of the robbery. When the officers asked the men for identification, one of them pulled out the victim’s wallet instead, the police said.
■UNITED STATES
FedEx plotters arrested
New York police on Friday announced the arrest of 12 men in plots to hijack Federal Express trucks, including one believed to be carrying millions of dollars in diamonds. The armed gang allegedly seized a truck believed to contain the gems last December after posing as police officers, but abandoned the vehicle after failing to get into the cargo. Police said they pounced on the alleged robbers late on Thursday as they gathered in Manhattan in preparation for a new FedEx truck heist. “The city of New York announced the arrests of 12 persons for conspiracy to hijack Federal Express tractor-trailer trucks which they believed contained high-value items, including millions of dollars worth of diamonds,” the federal prosecutor’s office said.
■CANADA
Feet are matched
A coroner has matched a pair of dismembered female feet that mysteriously washed up on the shores of British Columbia. The British Columbia coroner said on Friday it had matched a female right foot discovered on the West coast last month with a left foot discovered in May. Both were encased in New Balance running shoes. They were among five feet that have mysteriously floated ashore along the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland since August last year. A sixth foot was found on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula about 48km west of Port Angeles in August. The peninsula is separated from BC’s Vancouver Island by the Strait of Juan de Fuca. All six feet were found in athletic shoes.
■MEXICO
Kidnap victim feared dead
The country’s best known kidnap victim, the teenage daughter of a former sports commissioner, has been murdered more than a year after she was abducted, the country’s top prosecutor said on Friday. Silvia Vargas was snatched on her way to college in September last year and became a symbol of the hundreds of people kidnapped every year. The office of Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said in a statement police were searching a house on the south side of Mexico City where “witnesses” said she had been killed. But the statement gave no further details, and did not say whether the young woman’s body was found. Her father Nelson Vargas, who was head of the federal sports commission during the previous government, said he was still waiting for proof of his daughter’s death. More than 750 people were kidnapped in the country last year.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
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