■UNITED STATES
Identity theft arrest made
State and federal authorities said they arrested nearly two dozen people, many with ties to Eastern Europe, in a credit card fraud and identity theft scheme that cost Las Vegas businesses and consumers about US$1.5 million. Greg Brower, US attorney for Nevada, said on Tuesday that 13 people were arrested on federal charges on Monday in southern Nevada and Los Angeles. Las Vegas police said 10 were arrested on state charges, including forgery, credit card fraud and weapons and drug possession. In five indictments unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors describe an operation using “skimming equipment” at restaurants, smoke shops and convenience stores to obtain credit card numbers and personal identification numbers.
■UNITED STATES
Fourth arrested over teen
A fourth person is in police custody in the case of a teenager who showed up emaciated and shackled at a Northern California gym. Police in Tracy, California, say 29-year-old Anthony Waiters was arrested on Tuesday at his workplace in Pleasanton. He was booked at San Joaquin County Jail on charges of torture, conspiracy, child endangerment, corporal injury to a child and false imprisonment. Police did not release further details, citing a judge’s gag order. Three other people face torture, kidnapping and child abuse charges in the case. Authorities say the boy had been kept chained in a fireplace, choked with a belt and denied food for days at a time during more than a year in captivity.
■MEXICO
Corpses dressed up
Seventeen bodies were found near the northern border areas on Tuesday, including a male corpse wearing a diaper and another dressed in women’s clothes in the city of Tijuana, officials said. “One had a pacifier hanging around his neck and was only wearing a diaper, while the second was dressed as a woman,” said Jose Manuel Yepiz, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office of northwestern Baja California state. Police found a total of five bodies in the border city across from San Diego in the US, and 12 others in the violent state of Chihuahua, including one decapitated body and three that had been tortured.
■UNITED STATES
Thief purloins star’s pups
A grinch has stolen a couple of puppies that actor John Schneider, who starred in the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, intended to give his children as an early Christmas gift. Car thieves swiped Schneider’s sport utility vehicle at a suburban Los Angeles mall last week. The SUV has since been found — but no dogs. Schneider himself searched the neighborhood for the Yorkie and Yorkie-Poodle mix. He says he’s certain whoever took the SUV is caring for the dogs, or even re-gifting them.
■UNITED STATES
Deer crashes class
A fourth-grade class in Michigan learned firsthand about animal behavior when a deer crashed through a window and into its classroom. The six-point buck sent chairs, desks, books and shards of glass flying. A boy suffered a small cut to his head, but there were no serious injuries. Marty Alexander, the principal of Coopersville East Elementary School, says the unexpected guest dropped by on Monday afternoon. He said the teacher stayed cool, instructing her 23 startled students to drop to the floor as the deer bounded across the room. She then led the children into the hallway. After a twitchy, 30-second visit, the buck jumped back through the window and ran away.
■GERMANY
Railcar makes mystery tour
A railcar proceeded nearly 40km with nobody on board, railway company Deutsche Bahn said on Tuesday in Leipzig. The passenger unit moved away from a station at 7am on Monday in the town of Merseburg with no driver, passed a series of level crossings over roads, and did not stop until it had nearly reached the town of Querfurt, nearly 40km away.
■FRANCE
Insurer offers reward
Lloyds of London offered a reward of up to US$1 million on Tuesday for information leading to the recovery of diamond rings, necklaces and watches stolen in a US$108 million robbery from the Harry Winston boutique in Paris last week. S.W. Associates, a company working with Lloyds, said the exact compensation would be calculated according to the value of the jewelry recovered. A spokeswoman for the New York-based jeweler, Rhonda Barnat, declined to comment on the reward. Four gunmen — including three dressed as women — made off with the jewelry at the luxury boutique on one of Paris’ ritziest streets, the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, just as night fell and before the store closed.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Puppeteer Postgate dies
Oliver Postgate, creator of cuddly stuffed cat Bagpuss and other beloved children’s TV characters, has died at the age of 83, his family said on Tuesday. Postgate’s partner, Naomi Linnell, said the artist and puppeteer died on Monday at a nursing home in Broadstairs, 120km east of London. Both surreal and warmhearted, Postgate’s productions were a staple of children’s TV for three decades, beginning in the 1950s. They included musical Welsh locomotive Ivor the Engine, Norse prince Noggin the Nog and The Clangers, a family of mouselike pink knitted aliens who spoke in whistles. His best-loved creation was Bagpuss, a pink “saggy old cloth cat” who appeared in a 1970s series and has topped several polls of Britain’s favorite children’s shows.
■IRAN
Egypt recalls envoy
Egypt has recalled its diplomatic envoy from Tehran after a protest was held in front of its interest section, Fars news agency reported yesterday. Hundreds of Islamist students staged a gathering on Monday in front of the Egyptian embassy’s interest section in Tehran in protest against Egypt’s continued cooperation with political arch-foe Israel over the ongoing siege of the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip. Local political analysts believe the recall of Cairo’s envoy will further delay the normalization process toward bilateral diplomatic relations, which were severed following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution due to Egypt’s Camp David Accord with Israel in 1978.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Afghan refugees checked
The Home Office says asylum seekers who say they are from Afghanistan will get tough interviews to check whether their claims are genuine. Officials estimate that 250 applicants per year fraudulently claim to be from Afghanistan. Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said border controls were being tightened and asylum seekers who say they’re from Afghanistan will be tested on local dialects, customs and traditions. Woolas said in a statement on Tuesday that officials would also check fingerprints of asylum seekers claiming to be from North Korea. Some South Koreans have tried posing as citizens of their northern neighbor to get into the country.
■INDIA
Bus fire kills 63
Police say the death toll after a speeding bus caught fire in the north has risen to 63. Senior police official Navneet Kumar said yesterday that the dead from Tuesday’s accident include eight children. Police say the 52-seat bus was crammed with more than 100 people when it caught fire, overturned and slid for several hundred meters down a highway. The accident happened near the town of Firozabad, 200km southwest of Lucknow.
■SOUTH KOREA
Sailors jailed for oil spill
A court yesterday jailed the Indian captain and chief officer of a Hong Kong supertanker after ruling they were partly to blame for the country’s worst oil spill, court officials said. The appeal court, overturning a lower court ruling, found the Hebei Spirit’s owner and top officers partly to blame for the spillage on Dec. 7 last year that fouled kilometers of beaches. Captain Jasprit Chawla was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 20 million won (US$14,000) while chief officer Syam Chetan was sentenced to eight months and fined 10 million won, the officials said.
■INDONESIA
Troops sent to Maluku
Hundreds of troops were deployed to a tense province in the Maluku islands after sectarian violence left two churches and 50 other buildings in flames, police said yesterday. Local police chief Brigadier General Muji Waluyo said the violence erupted on Tuesday in Masohi, a town on Seram island in Central Maluku Province, after a Christian elementary schoolteacher made a comment about religion that offended a Muslim student. He complained to his parents, and within hours mobs were throwing stones at each other and torching churches, houses and other buildings.
■HONG KONG
‘Peace’ panda bites keeper
An investigation was under way yesterday into why a giant panda bit the female keeper who had been looking after him for seven years. The keeper was hospitalized after being bitten on the leg by giant panda An-An (安安), whose name means “Peace” in Chinese, in his enclosure at the Ocean Park theme park in Hong Kong on Nov. 30. The attack by the 22-year-old panda only came to light after a video of it taken with a mobile phone camera by a park visitor was circulated on the Internet video channel YouTube. Footage of the incident shows the 100kg panda rushing back to its enclosure while the park worker, who has not been identified, lies on the ground with an injured left leg. The woman is understood to have breached safety protocols by refilling a supply of bamboo while the panda was out of its den.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Texas’ education board on Friday voted to allow Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools, joining other Republican-led US states that pushed this year to give religion a larger presence in public classrooms. The curriculum adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools to adopt, but they would receive additional funding if they do so. The materials could appear in classrooms as early as next school year. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has voiced support for the lesson plans, which were provided by the state’s education agency that oversees the more than
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
CONSPIRACIES: Kano suspended polio immunization in 2003 and 2004 following claims that polio vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile Zuwaira Muhammad sat beside her emaciated 10-month-old twins on a clinic bed in northern Nigeria, caring for them as they battled malnutrition and malaria. She would have her babies vaccinated if they regain their strength, but for many in Kano — a hotbed of anti-vaccine sentiment — the choice is not an obvious one. The infants have been admitted to the 75-bed clinic in the Unguwa Uku neighbourhood, one of only two in the city of 4.5 million run by French aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Kano has the highest malaria burden in Nigeria, but the city has long
RSS