■HONG KONG
Stewardess convicted
A former flight attendant who stole 168 items from the plane’s trolleys on a single flight was sentenced to community service yesterday. Kwong Man-fong, 43, purloined biscuits, beer, mineral water, wine, chocolates, a sewing kit, pens, instant noodles and shaving cream on the Cathay Pacific flight from Auckland to the territory on July 27. Two junior colleagues spotted Kwong, who had worked for the Hong Kong airline for 23 years, and reported her to the captain. She resigned and was prosecuted for theft by the airline. Kwong pleaded guilty to theft.
■MALAYSIA
‘Sex party’ plan condemned
Malaysian authorities have condemned rumored plans for a New Year’s Eve sex party at a remote beach, while police warned the “no-underwear” event could be a con job. Newspaper reports said the party for the under-40s, to be held in southern Johor state bordering Singapore, was being advertised through a Web site that asked for 250 ringgit (US$72) as an entrance fee. “A sex party is against our culture and religion and if it went on, it would damage the country’s reputation worldwide,” Tourism Minister Azalina Othman said according to the New Straits Times newspaper yesterday. Johor criminal investigation department chief Amer Awal warned that the sex party was likely to be a fraud designed to cheat potential partygoers out of the ticket price.
■CHINA
Dinosaur fossil site found
Scientists say they have discovered the world’s largest dinosaur fossil site in the eastern province of Shandong, state media reported yesterday. Scientists had recovered some 7,600 fossils from a 300m long pit near Zhucheng city over the past seven months, Xinhua news agency said. The finds included remains of a 20m hadrosaurus, which could be a record size for the duck-billed dinosaur, Xinhua said. Scientists had put down tools for the winter, but said further excavations could yield more fossils. Zhucheng, known locally as the nation’s “Dinosaur City,” has produced dinosaur fossils in some 30 sites, according to local media.
■HONG KONG
UFO group slams university
A UFO group has condemned the city’s largest university for canceling a course on ufology because, it said, of faculty objections to the subject. The course was set to begin last September as an optional subject for University of Hong Kong students in a joint project between the university and the Hong Kong Institute of Ufology, local newspaper Apple Daily reported on Monday. The course was delayed and discussions were held on offering it at a later date after some academics expressed reservations about its content, said Moon Fong (方仲滿), a committee member of the institute.
■AUSTRALIA
Topless sunbathing debated
A Christian lawmaker has proposed legislation that would ban women from sunbathing topless on Sydney’s beaches, where bare breasts have been a common sight for decades. Critics were quick to condemn the measure — first reported yesterday on the front page of the city’s the Daily Telegraph newspaper — as unnecessary and a distraction from real concerns. Leaders of the two major parties in the New South Wales state parliament, where the bill will be introduced in the coming weeks, have effectively killed it by arguing that local governments should be left to decide the boundaries of decent exposure.
■IRAN
Anti-Israel fighters wanted
A group of influential conservative Iranian clerics launched an online registration drive on Monday seeking volunteers to fight against Israel in response to its air assault on the Gaza Strip. About 3,550 people registered on Monday with the Combatant Clergy Society’s Web site. The weeklong online campaign gives volunteers three options on ways they can fight Israel: military, financial and propaganda. The group, which has considerable political and economic power in Iran, did not provide further details on the program, including how it would contact the volunteers or implement the program.
■AUSTRIA
Incest victims leave clinic
A lawyer says Josef Fritzl’s daughter and her children have left the psychiatric clinic where they were recovering from their incest ordeal. Christoph Herbst says the woman and six of the seven children he fathered with her while holding her captive for 24 years have moved into their own home at an undisclosed location. Herbst announced the family’s move in an interview on Monday with the Austria Press Agency. He could not immediately be reached for more details. Last month, prosecutors charged 73-year-old Fritzl with murder for refusing to arrange medical treatment for the seventh child, who died in infancy. He also faces charges of rape, incest, false imprisonment and enslavement and is expected to go on trial in March.
■UNITED STATES
Boy Scout earns 121 badges
A Long Island teenager has earned all 121 merit badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. It’s an accomplishment the local arm of the organization calls “an almost unheard-of feat.” Oceanside resident Shawn Goldsmith earned his final badge — for bugling — in time for his 18th birthday last month. He far surpassed the 21 badges required to achieve the elite rank of Eagle Scout. He said he took about five years to earn his first 62 badges and then nearly doubled that number in a few months.
■UNITED STATES
Soldier alleges bias
An atheist soldier suing over prayers at military formations claims a larger pattern of religious discrimination exists in the military, citing attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and an evangelical bias in a suicide prevention manual. The expanded lawsuit filed Monday by Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in the US District Court in Kansas City also claims the military doesn’t take complaints of religious discrimination seriously enough. The US Defense Department has identified fewer than 50 complaints about alleged violations of religious freedoms during the past three years, with 1.4 million personnel in uniform, spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said. She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit but said that the military has policies against endorsing any religious view.
■UNITED STATES
Pay stub used in robbery
The robber’s threatening note made a Chicago bank job easy to solve: The FBI said the suspect wrote it on his pay stub. An FBI affidavit said the man walked into a Fifth Third Bank on Friday and handed a teller a note that read “Be Quick Be Quit [quiet]. Give your cash or I’ll shoot.” The robber got about US$400 but left half of his note. Investigators found the other half outside the bank’s front doors. Authorities said that part of the man’s October pay stub had his name and address. The suspect was arrested at his Cary home. A judge ordered him held without bond on Monday.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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