■MACAU
HK politicians denied entry
Pro-democracy lawmakers said they have been barred from entering Macau to take part in a protest against a proposed national security bill. Democratic Party Chairman Albert Ho (何俊仁) said immigration officials briefly detained him and seven other lawmakers yesterday upon their arrival in the former Portuguese colony. Ho said officials have cited internal security laws in rejecting their entry, but did not elaborate. Territory government spokeswoman Elena Au declined to comment. Ho said the lawmakers and a dozen activists planned to join a forum and demonstration against an imminent passage of a national security bill on the ninth anniversary of its reversion to Chinese rule.
■CHINA
Face transplant man dies
A man who received a rare face transplant in 2006 has died, his doctor and a government official confirmed yesterday, highlighting the risks of a recent groundbreaking US operation. Li Guoxing, 32, died in July at his rural home in the southwest after forsaking immune-system drugs in favor of herbal medicine, his surgeon Guo Shuzhong said. “His death was not caused by the surgery. Our operation was a success. But we cannot rule out a connection with the immune system drugs,” said Guo, a surgeon at Xijing Hospital in Xian who operated on Li in April 2006. Qiao Guangliang, chief of Li’s village in Yunnan Province, also confirmed the death.
■HONG KONG
Boy dies from methadone
Police yesterday were investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who collapsed after apparently drinking methadone by accident on a visit to his aunt’s flat. The schoolboy fell into a coma and died after consuming the liquid heroin substitute on Friday while staying at the home of his 37-year-old aunt in the city’s Kwai Chung district. The aunt called police when the boy collapsed. An ambulance rushed him to hospital where he was declared dead an hour later, according to a police spokesman. Methadone is used to treat heroin addicts in strictly controlled conditions at government-run health clinics and should not be stored at addicts’ homes.
■CHINA
Boat sinks, 15 killed
Xinhua news agency said an overloaded fishing boat has sunk in an eastern river, killing 15. It said the boat was ferrying 44 people across the Sanjiang River in Jiangxi when it sank on Friday evening. The boat had a capacity to carry only 10 people. Twenty-nine onboard were rescued. Xinhua said all the passengers were employed by private businessmen to cross the river to pick up a type of water chestnut in a village. The businessmen have been detained by police.
■VANUATU
Politicians arrested
Police have arrested two politicians after prisoners torched the country’s main jail and staged a mass breakout, reports said yesterday. The two legislators are accused of harboring some of the prisoners after 26 escaped when the entire prison complex in the capital Port Vila was set on fire on Friday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said. The members of parliament, who were not named, claimed they were trying to negotiate the return of the prisoners, ABC said. The inmates had earlier released a statement complaining of widespread mistreatment and abuse at the prison in the South Pacific island country. Police said they had managed to recapture most of the escaped prisoners and were negotiating with the others to return to custody.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sneezing linked to sex
Thinking about sex or having an orgasm sends some people into an uncontrolled bout of sneezing, and two researchers say the problem may be more common than the medical profession has realized. The doctors who investigated the link, and reported it in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, are not sure why sex and sneezing are linked in some people, but suspect a faulty connection in the autonomic nervous system that exercises unconscious control of heart rate, digestion and pupil dilation. Harold Maxwell, a consultant psychiatrist at West Middlesex University hospital in London, was first alerted to the condition when a middle-aged male patient described uncontrollable fits of sneezing whenever he thought about sex.
■FRANCE
Officials stage attack
Simulated attacks and hostage-taking will take place across Paris tomorrow in order to test French security forces’ handling of attacks like last month’s assault in Mumbai, officials said. Several prominent sites in the capital city will be targeted in a day-long exercise announced by the Interior Ministry shortly after last month’s attacks in the Indian city that left 172 people dead, including nine gunmen. One site in the central city of Lyon will also be hit, an official said.
■SOMALIA
Arms embargo violated
A 16-year arms embargo against the Horn of Africa nation has been constantly violated, with weapons mainly coming from Yemen and financed by Eritrea as well as Arab and Islamic donors, a UN report said on Friday. Restrictions put into place in Yemen since June to limit arms sales have helped cut the flow of weapons. Nevertheless, the illegal trafficking is fueling the bloody armed conflict in the collapsed country, which has been wracked by a civil war since 1991, and is aiding rampant piracy off the coast, the report said.
■GERMANY
Former RAF leader released
A former leader of the Red Army Faction (RAF) — the far left organization that launched attacks across the country in the 1970s and 1980s — has been freed from prison after 26 years. Christian Klar, 56, was released from Bruchsal prison, close to the southern city of Karlsruhe, in the early hours of yesterday to avoid media attention. His lawyer, Heinz-Jurgen Schneider, said Klar had been taken to a secret location. “It’s now up to him to decide what he does and where,” Schneider said. But he said that speculation that Klar would now “do the rounds” of the country’s chatshows was “absurd.”
■GERMANY
Thieves swap cake for data
Two couriers at a package distribution center stole a Christmas cake destined for a newspaper and mailed in its place a package of credit card data, prosecutors said on Friday. The swap triggered an alarm over lost bank customer details. A batch of microfilmed data including names, addresses and card transactions ended up at the Frankfurter Rundschau daily last week — instead of the cake. Police advised credit card customers with Landesbank Berlin to check their accounts for inconsistencies. But the incident turned out to be less sinister than feared. Frankfurt prosecutors said that two couriers stole a Christmas cake at a distribution center in Mainz. In an attempt to cover up the theft, the men instead sent one of several packages of credit card billing details destined for Landesbank Berlin to the newspaper, the cake’s intended recipient.
■UNITED STATES
Man arrested for Iran ties
Authorities charged the president of an Iranian foundation on Friday with obstructing justice in an investigation of a bank accused of helping fund Iran’s nuclear program. Farshid Jahedi, 54, the president of the Alavi Foundation, is accused of trying to throw away documents cited in a subpoena issued on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said. An FBI complaint against Jahedi said he was warned not to destroy documents requested by a grand jury. It said he disobeyed the order when he went home to Ardsley, New York, where he dumped papers in a public trashcan on Thursday.
■CANADA
Beheader convicted
A man convicted of beheading and dismembering a man he picked up in a bar was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years on Friday. Justice Glenn Joyal gave Sydney Teerhuis the maximum sentence for second-degree murder for stabbing, beheading, castrating, dismembering and disemboweling Robin Greene inside a hotel suite after picking him up at a bar in July 2003. The convicted killer never denied killing Greene, but he sought a conviction for manslaughter, arguing he was too intoxicated to have the intent to kill. The prosecution said it was impossible for a person to be so intoxicated that he wouldn’t remember stabbing a man 68 times.
■MEXICO
Calderon nixes negotiation
President Felipe Calderon said on Friday his government “does not and will never negotiate” with drug traffickers, and vowed to press on with a military clampdown that so far has failed to stop spiraling drug violence. Drug-related deaths have doubled this year, to more than 5,300 Mexico’s top prosecutor said, despite the deployment of 36,000 troops.
■UNITED STATES
Volunteers still shock
Some things never change. Scientists said on Friday they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures. Seventy percent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks — or at least they believed so — even after an actor said they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University found.
■UNITED STATES
Gay marriages targetedl
The sponsors of Proposition 8 asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters approved the ballot initiative that outlawed gay unions. The Yes on 8 campaign filed a brief arguing that because the new law holds that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California, the state can no longer recognize the existing same-sex unions.
■UNITED STATES
Palin in-law-to-be arrested
Alaska State Troopers have arrested the mother of Bristol Palin’s boyfriend on drug charges. Sherry Johnston, 42, was arrested on Thursday after troopers served a search warrant on a Wasilla home and has been charged with six felony drug counts. Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said on Friday the charges were in connection to the drug OxyContin, a strong prescription painkiller. Johnston is the mother of 18-year-old Levi Johnston. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, announced in September that her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and Johnston was the father. The couple had planned a summer wedding.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
TESTING BAN: Satellite photos show a facility in the Chinese city of Mianyang that could aid nuclear weapons design and power generation, a US researcher said China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organizations said, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation. Satellite photos show four outlying “arms” that would house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that would hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers would fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organization CNA Corp. It is a similar layout to the US$3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in northern California, which in 2022 generated
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