■ PHILIPPINES
Suspected kidnappers killed
Four suspected kidnappers were killed in a shootout with police yesterday, a police report said. The suspects were allegedly on their way to kidnap a child in the Manila suburban city of San Juan when they were intercepted by police. The police report said the kidnappers opened fire at police officers at a checkpoint in Valenzuela City, triggering the firefight.
■CHINA
Hackers may face jail time
Hackers could face up to seven years in jail according to a draft law, as the country moves to fight rampant computer data theft, state media said yesterday. Those who provide intruders with software or tools for stealing data or illegally manipulating computers would face similar penalties, the China Daily reported, citing the proposed amendment to the Criminal Law. Legislators on the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, or parliament, carried out the second reading of the draft on Monday, it said. If passed, the clauses will be the first legal tools to crack down on increasing data theft from non-official computers in China, the report said. The public security ministry first raised the request to make the amendment because of rampant stealing of account numbers and passwords, it said. More than 20,000 online gaming accounts with a market value of around 200,000 yuan (US$29,200) are stolen every day in Hunan Province alone, official figures show.
■SOUTH KOREA
Korean War summit mulled
Seoul is considering hosting a summit in 2010 involving 21 nations that took part in the Korean War to mark the 60th anniversary of the start of the conflict, officials said yesterday. The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs said it plans to invite leaders from the 21 nations as part of events to mark the anniversary. During the three-year war, which erupted in 1950 with a North Korean invasion, troops from 16 countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, France and the US fought for South Korea under a UN flag. Yonhap news agency said another proposal would include leaders from South Korea’s enemies during the war — North Korea, China and Russia.
■CHINA
Wolf seen near Great Wall
A wolf has been spotted near a popular tourist spot along the Great Wall of China, with officials rushing to catch it before it attacks anyone, state media said yesterday. The wolf was spotted last week near the Badaling section of the wall, a destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, the Beijing News reported. It said experts had concluded beyond doubt that it was a wolf. It is rare for a wolf to appear in the area, which is only 50km northwest of Beijing.
■CHINA
Academics call for release
More than 150 academics and rights activists sent an open letter yesterday to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) urging the release of a writer who helped draft a statement calling for greater freedoms in the country. Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a former university professor who spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, has not been heard from since being taken from his home by police on Dec. 8. The letter was signed by prominent Chinese academics, human rights advocates and writers from around the world, including Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka and the board of International PEN. It asked Hu to ensure the civil rights of citizens and stand by the “rule of law” that the leadership says governs China.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
‘Hallelujah’ tops charts
Fourteen years after his biggest sleeper hit was shaken from its slumber by Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen saw Hallelujah claim the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 36 spots in the UK’s Christmas top 40 on Sunday. As expected, Alexandra Burke, winner of this year’s X Factor reality TV talent contest, stormed into the top spot after selling 576,000 copies of her cover of Hallelujah in the last week. In second place — a mere 495,000 copies behind Burke — was the late Buckley’s interpretation of the song, which was propelled past Leona Lewis’ cover of Snow Patrol’s Run by an Internet campaign masterminded by music fans who feared that Burke would desecrate Cohen’s 1984 anthem. Thirty-four places behind Buckley, at an appropriately elder-statesman-like pace, marched Cohen with his original, at No. 36 in the charts.
■FINLAND
DNA solves car theft
Police believe they have caught a car-thief thanks to a DNA sample taken from a sample of his blood found inside a mosquito. In June a car was stolen in Lapua, some 380km north of Helsinki. It was soon found near a railway station in Seinaejoki, about 25km from where it was stolen. “A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers,” inspector Sakari Palomaeki said.
■GERMANY
Woman’s nose sewn back
Doctors have sewn on a 62-year-old woman’s nose after it was bitten off by a robber. The woman was delivering newspapers on Sunday morning to homes in the town of Neumuenster, north of Hamburg, when the unidentified assailant demanded one for free, then attacked her. Police said she cycled to a daughter’s home with the tip of her nose missing. Hospital doctors appealed to police and firefighters to search the road and gardens for the spat-out nose. The piece was rushed to a hospital, where surgeons put it back in place.
■EGYPT
Six killed in bus accident
Six Russian tourists died when their bus flipped over late on Monday night along the winding mountain roads north of the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, a medical official said. Chief of Emergency Services for southern Sinai Peninsula Ibrahim Ali said another 15 tourists of various nationalities were wounded. The bus was 15km south of the resort town of Dahab on its way from Sharm el-Sheik when it crashed. Five of the dead were women. The rugged Sinai coast along the Red Sea is dotted with resorts and is a popular vacation destination for tourists from all over the world.
■NETHERLANDS
Cops get new tools
Police in Rotterdam are to be given mobile phone cameras and mini-cameras in their official helmets and police hats to film suspects, a spokesman said on Monday. Police have already tested capturing images on some 30 mobile phones during soccer matches, police spokesman Huub Veeneman said. Some 700 officers will ultimately get the new technology, he said. For New Year’s Eve, there are also plans to equip police — particularly those on bicycles — with about 40 mini-cameras attached to their helmets to better identify potential troublemakers.
■UNITED STATES
EPA issues soot-watch list
More than 100 million people living in 46 metropolitan areas are breathing air that has become fouled with too much soot on some days, and now those cities have to clean up their air by 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Monday. The EPA added 15 cities to the sooty air list, mostly in states not usually thought of as pollution-prone, such as Alaska, Utah, Idaho and Wisconsin. The EPA notified elected officials in 211 counties in 25 states that their air violated newly tightened daily standards for fine particles of pollution. Regions that have air that is too sooty must develop plans by 2012 to show they plan to clean it, and then do so by 2014.
■UNITED STATES
‘Mockingbird’ director dies
Robert Mulligan, the director of the movie classic To Kill a Mockingbird, which brought the issue of entrenched racism in the US South to the screen, has died aged 83. Mulligan died Friday of heart disease at his Connecticut home, his family said on Monday. Though he never won an Oscar himself, he directed five actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gregory Peck and Mary Badham in Mockingbird, Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger, Ruth Gordon in Inside Daisy Clover and Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year. His 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird was named the No. 25 film of all time by the American Film Institute.
■UNITED STATES
Couple share surgery
An Indiana couple who together topped the scales at more than 320kg have undergone weight-loss surgery together. Lorie and Todd Richmond both had surgery last week at the University of Chicago Medical Center. They made the decision after years of failed diets and 10 months of preparation. Dr Vivek Prachand performed operations on both the 138kg husband and 182kg wife. Prachand says it was the first time he has performed surgeries on a husband and wife in the same day.
■UNITED STATES
Texas police hunt gunman
Police in Texas are looking for a gunman who killed at least two people in a shooting spree on highways in and around Dallas. Four separate shootings in less than an hour paralyzed traffic during the evening rush hour on Monday, police said. A motorist was killed in Garland as his car was stopped at a traffic light. The gunman, reported to have been in a pick-up truck, then sped away. Minutes later, there were three shootings on a major freeway leading into Dallas, leaving a truck driver dead.
■UNITED STATES
Woman pleads guilty
A suburban Kansas City, Missouri, woman pleaded guilty on Monday to killing a woman whose sexual torture and suffocation were videotaped. In a deal with prosecutors that allowed her to avoid the death penalty, Dena Riley, 42, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the May 2006 death of Marsha Spicer, 41. Riley also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and assault of Michelle Huff-Ricci, 36, of Kansas City, whose remains were found in nearby Clay County, where Riley and her boyfriend, Richard Davis, are charged with capital murder. Riley was sentenced to life without parole for the murder charge and to eight additional life sentences and 239 years in prison for 25 other counts. Davis was convicted and sentenced to death earlier this year for Spicer’s slaying.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
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