■ THAILAND
PM backs foreign minister
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday strongly defended his foreign minister over reported comments that the occupation of Bangkok’s airports by protesters was “a lot of fun.” Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya apologized, but said remarks quoted by the UK’s Daily Telegraph about the week-long siege by demonstrators trying to bring down the previous government had been taken out of context. Kasit played a key role in the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which ended the airport blockade after a court disbanded the ruling party loyal to ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, paving the way for Abhisit’s rise. “His comments were made before the royal command appointed him as minister. He later explained to me what he had said and that what appeared in media was inaccurate,” Abhisit told reporters.
■AUSTRALIA
Cat falls 34 floors, survives
A lucky cat used up one of its lives when it survived a 34-story plunge from an apartment building window, a report said yesterday. The seven-year-old moggy Voodoo vanished from her high-rise flat on the Gold Coast of Queensland state on Monday and reappeared on the ground where his fall was apparently broken by some well-placed bushes. The cat’s owner, Sheree Washington, said that Voodoo was fond of standing on a small ledge outside the 34th-floor flat and looking down on the world. “Obviously he was looking over too far and went. So he fell 34 floors and was lucky enough to land in some bushes, which I think have saved him,” she said.
■HONG KONG
Fraudster gets seven years
A swindler who used fake resumes and documents to scam his way into 12 jobs and steal HK$3.62 million (US$460,000) has been jailed for seven years, reports said yesterday. Lam Chun-fai, dubbed by local media as Hong Kong’s version of the fraudster in Hollywood drama Catch Me if You Can, used false documents to win jobs as a psychologist, accounting clerk and marketing boss, the Standard reported. The 33-year-old was jailed on Tuesday for six years by a district court on 27 charges of fraud, deception and theft, the paper said. Another year was added for a previous sentence where Lam had skipped bail.
■CHINA
Talk shows targeted
The broadcasting watchdog has ordered a crackdown on low-brow confessional talk shows as part of a campaign against base entertainment and because such programs often fake their content, reports said yesterday. The country has seen a plethora of these TV shows, mainly on regional stations, with names like Real Love, Here Comes the Litigant and Say It Like It Is, where people come on to talk about family disputes or appeal for money. But many of them have resorted to faking their content to get higher ratings, the Xian Evening News said.
■CHINA
Tallest Santa sculpted
The city of Harbin is building what organizers say is the world’s largest Santa Claus ice sculpture. The giant Father Christmas, 160m long and 24m high, centers on an enormous face of Father Christmas, complete with flowing beard and hat. Its huge size and unseasonably warm temperatures have made the job challenging, said Tang Guangjun, one of the sculptors. “It is even bigger and higher than last year’s, and more difficult. The weather swings between warm and cold, so it becomes very wet and slippery on the ice. It is very dangerous for us,” he said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Senior citizen in drug case
A 72-year-old has been arrested for supplying cannabis along with morning pints of milk to pensioners on his rounds in northern England, press reports said on Tuesday. Robert Holding, pleaded guilty at Burnley Crown Court to supplying cannabis resin, which he kept in an egg box, the Press Association said. Cannabis is a class C drug under British law, which carries up to two years in prison for possession and up to 14 years for dealing. Holding is due to be sentenced on Feb. 6.
■IRAN
Octogenarian union blocked
After a life of spinsterhood, Setareh, an 80-year-old woman, assumed she was fated to see out her remaining days alone. Then the boy-next-door from her youth reappeared and proposed. But the law requires a father to grant permission to his daughter to marry. Setareh asked a court in Tehran to establish whether her father, who abandoned her when she was two, is dead or alive so that her wedding can go ahead. The elderly couple were childhood sweethearts but were forced to scrap plans to wed after Setareh’s mother protested that it would lead to her being left alone. If the father is found to have died, the court is expected to permit Setareh to marry.
■TURKEY
Dam project halted
Insurers delivered a victory for environmentalists and dealt a body blow to the government’s economic regeneration plans on Tuesday by pulling the plug on a bitterly contested dam project that critics said would wreck habitats, displace people and drown archeological treasures. A consortium of German, Austrian and Swiss insurance firms ordered a halt to the Ilisu dam after concluding that it failed to meet standards set by their governments and the World Bank. The decision means suppliers underwritten by the insurers will have to stop work on the dam, located by the banks of the Tigris near the borders with Iraq and Syria, for 180 days and casts doubts on its long-term viability.
■ISRAEL
Bethlehem church online
For the first time this year, Christmas celebrations in Christ’s birthplace will be streamed live on the Internet — and if you’re busy feasting on turkey, you can revisit the scene a couple of days later when it is repeated. The online broadcaster IPrayTV.com, which says it wants to strengthen Christian ties with “Israel and the Holy Sites,” has mounted a permanent camera in the Franciscan section of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
■IRELAND
Kidnapped family okay
The director of a security company was forced on Tuesday to steal US$1.7 million from his own company and deliver it to an armed gang that had kidnapped his wife and daughter, police said. The police press office was unwilling to release much information about the raid. A detective said on condition of anonymity that the targeted man was director of GLS, a security company in west Dublin. He said masked, armed men stormed into the family’s home about 1:30am and warned the man his wife and daughter would be killed if he didn’t deliver as much cash as he could carry to a rendezvous point. Gang members took away the two women and left them tied up in the County Wicklow hills south of Dublin. The women worked themselves free from the ropes and raised the alarm — more than an hour after the man had already handed over the cash.
■CANADA
Lost woman rescued
An Ontario woman who went missing when her car stalled during a blizzard on Friday has been found alive, buried in 580mm of snow and just a few hundred meters from her SUV. Rescuers were stunned to find 55-year-old Donna Molnar alive on Monday after she spent four days outside in freezing temperatures. She was found by a police search dog and its handler Ray Lau. “When I came up to her she was covered in snow, just her face and her neckline was exposed,” Ray Lau said. “I was surprised she was alive.”
■UNITED STATES
Santa helps Arizona drivers
Santa has delivered an early gift to drivers in Tempe, Arizona. A new video on YouTube shows a gang of Santas sabotaging three speed and red light cameras in Tempe by wrapping them in gift paper, covering them with boxes or draping them in a festive red sheet. The two-minute video shows the Santas waving at passing drivers as the Jackson 5’s Santa Claus is Coming to Town plays. The video ends with a message that reads: “Ho Ho Ho! Death to the surveillance state! Free movement for all people! No controls on movement.”
■UNITED STATES
GETOSAMA plates delivered
A man in New York state was excited to receive his “GETOSAMA” license plates in time for Christmas. Retired New York City Police Department officer Arno Herwerth said on Tuesday that he ordered the vanity plates last year as a reminder that Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden remains at large. The plates were delivered, but the Department of Motor Vehicles ordered them returned, saying the plates could be considered objectionable. Herwerth filed a federal complaint, and the DMV relented in February. Herwerth initially rejected the offer because the DMV wouldn’t pay attorney’s fees, but he eventually decided to settle the case.
■MEXICO
Beauty queen arrested
A beauty queen from Sinaloa state has been arrested, along with six companions, carrying weapons and US$100,000 in cash in two vehicles, Jalisco state authorities said on Tuesday. Laura Zuniga, 23, was crowned “Miss Sinaloa” in July and also won the Queen of Hispanic America contest last month in Bolivia.
■UNITED STATES
Boy hostage shot, rescued
A camouflaged gunman was killed and his six-year-old hostage was shot in the leg during a two-hour standoff with police on Tuesday that began when the man snatched the child off a sidewalk and barricaded himself in a Chinese restaurant in El Monte, California, east of Los Angeles. The man was declared dead soon after he exchanged gunfire with police. El Monte police Detective Ralph Batres said authorities believe the gunman was the father of the boy and was wanted by the FBI for the murder of his girlfriend four years ago. The boy suffered a gunshot wound to the thigh and was in critical but stable condition at a trauma center.
■UNITED STATES
Wal-Mart must pay
Wal-Mart Stores said on Tuesday it will pay as much as US$640 million to settle 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, ending years of dispute. The discount retailer said the amount it pays will depend on how many claims are submitted by eligible workers and could range from US$352 million to US$640 million. Each settlement must still be approved by a trial court.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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