■CANADA
Snowboarder, skier killed
Two separate avalanches have claimed the lives of a skier and snowboarder in British Columbia, just days after eight snowmobilers met a similar fate on the perilous slopes of Canada’s westernmost province, the Toronto Star reported on Friday. The 26-year-old snowboarder died on Thursday while snowboarding solo on a part of Whistler Mountain that was closed to the public. Whistler is to host events during the 2010 Winter Olympics. A 37-year-old skier was buried in sliding snow late on Wednesday on nearby Blackcomb Mountain, the newspaper reported. “The problem is you’ve got tempting conditions with fresh snow on the other side of the boundary lines and people are ducking the ropes to go into those areas,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sergeant Steve LeClair was quoted as saying.
■BRAZIL
US winery owner dies
A German-born businessman who owned a New York winery died while swimming in the ocean off Brazil, police said on Friday. Christian Wolffer, 70, suffered two deep cuts on his back while swimming on New Year’s Eve near the colonial town of Paraty, about 150km west of Rio de Janeiro, police investigator Luiz Carlos dos Anjos Batista said. Authorities are investigating whether the cuts were caused by a passing boat. It isn’t clear if Wolffer drowned or died from the cuts.
■UNITED STATES
Filmmaker not dead
Filmmaker George Butler, whose movie Pumping Iron featured a then-unknown bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants his friends to know he’s very much alive, despite a premature obituary on a TV talk show this week. During The Charlie Rose Show’s annual New Year’s Eve tribute on PBS to notable figures who during the year, he included Butler. The screen even flashed a Butler tombstone, 1943-2008. The PBS show had confused him with another George Butler, a longtime jazz record executive who signed Wynton Marsalis, who died on April 9. What is odd about the mistake is that Rose and Butler are old friends through Rose’s first wife, meeting shortly after they graduated from college in North Carolina.
■MEXICO
Alleged killer arrested
Police in western Mexico have arrested a farmworker who allegedly hacked a doctor to death with a machete for refusing to treat his son. Prosecutors in the Pacific coast state of Jalisco say 25-year-old suspect Ricardo Garcia Barajas had confessed to killing Dr Laura Avila, who was found dead in the rural health clinic she was staffing on Dec. 26. In a Friday statement, prosecutors quoted Garcia Barajas as saying his son fell ill and he took the infant to the clinic. He said Avila told him the case wasn’t an emergency and that he should return the next day during normal office hours, which angered him.
■MEXICO
Rebel attends anniversary
Zapatista rebel leader “Subcomandante” Marcos made his first public appearance in more than a year on Friday at an event marking the 15th anniversary of his rebellion. The masked leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which rose up in arms in Chiapas, southeast Mexico, on January 1, 1994, attended an anniversary meeting with leftist politicians and activists from some 20 countries. The anniversary meeting ends today.
■PORTUGAL
World’s oldest person dies
The world’s oldest living person, Maria de Jesus, died on Friday at the age of 115, the Lusa news agency reported. Born Sept. 10, 1893, Maria de Jesus became the world’s oldest living person after the death of American Edna Parker on Nov. 26, also aged 115. A family member told the Lusa news agency that de Jesus died “just after 10am while en route to hospital.” De Jesus was born in a poor area in Urquiera, close to Ourem in the center of the country. She started working in agriculture at the age of 12 and never went to school, remaining unable to write and read for her entire life. After marrying, she moved to the town of Corujo with her husband where she brought up her six children.
■UNITED STATES
Disabled man left for dead
A severely disabled New Yorker was lucky to be alive after being abandoned for 17 hours on an icy bus. Ed Rivera, 22, spent New Year’s Eve night in minus 9°C temperatures strapped into an empty bus after the overseer allegedly decided to leave him behind, police said. Rivera suffers from cerebral palsy and reportedly has the mental capacity of a two year old. Police have charged the bus matron, who was meant to bring Rivera back home from a special school, with reckless endangerment, a police spokesman said.
■SWITZERLAND
Mario Simmel dies in Zug
Austrian-born author Johannes Mario Simmel, whose books are said to have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide, died in the Swiss town where he lived, a local official said on Friday. He was 84. Simmel died in a care home in Zug, near Zurich, on Thursday, town clerk Irene Schwendimann said, without giving the cause of death or any further details. Simmel’s books regularly topped German-language best-seller lists before Nobel laureates such as Heinrich Boell and Guenter Grass. His works include the World War II spy novel It can’t always be caviar and the Cold War thriller Dear Fatherland. Many of his books were translated into other languages, and the play The Classmate was adapted for Broadway.
■UNITED STATES
Troopers clear away shoes
State troopers are looking for a charity to take thousands of shoes that were dumped on a Miami expressway, tying up rush hour traffic. Lieutenant Pat Santangelo said the Florida Highway Patrol received a call about the shoes on Friday morning. Santangelo said he was not sure where the shoes came from. There were no signs of a crash and no one stopped to claim them. He said he hopes someone will take them because he doesn’t want to send them to a dump. Workers using a front-end loader and a dump truck were able to quickly clear at least one lane by sweeping all the shoes to the shoulder, but delays were expected until they could all be taken away.
■YEMEN
Tribe kidnaps South African
Tribesmen seeking the release of a jailed fellow clansman kidnapped a South African tourist and her two sons in the southern province of Abyan, police officials said yesterday. The woman, the boys aged 10 and 13, as well as a Yemeni driver were kidnapped late on Friday as they drove on a highway from the southeastern province of Hadhramout to the port city of Aden, the officials said. Armed tribesmen from the al-Maraqisha tribe stopped the South African family’s vehicle near the al-Khubar town, 170km east of Aden.
■CHINA
Blast kills at least five
At least five people were killed in an explosion at a chemical plant, state media reported yesterday. The blast happened in Wucheng County in Shandong Province on Thursday afternoon and killed one person on the spot, injuring 13 others, Xinhua news agency said, quoting government sources in the county. Four others — all migrant workers — died later in hospital, Xinhua said. An investigation has been launched into the cause of the blast. The country’s work safety record is notoriously bad. Thousands of people die every year in mines, factories and on construction sites.
■VIETNAM
Five killed in flooding
Unseasonal floods brought by rains this week have killed at least five people, while 10 others remained missing, the government and state-run media said yesterday. Waters were now receding in main rivers in the region but three including a woman drowned in Quang Nam Province and another 44-year-old man died in floods in Quang Ngai Province, the government said in a disaster report. A 22-year-old man died in Binh Dinh Province while nine fishermen were among the missing after their boats sank, yesterday’s Thanh Nien newspaper quoted provincial disaster reports as saying. Heavy rains since Monday caused by a cold spell have hit the region widely exposed to the sea and raised river waters. The government said more than 5,000 homes were submerged and floods inundated a combined 74,400 hectares of rice in five provinces.
■HONG KONG
Prostitute robber jail
A jobless man who repeatedly slept with prostitutes and then tied them up and robbed them began serving a nine-year jail term yesterday. Chong Kwonk-hung, 24, stole hundreds of dollars from four prostitutes he slept with between October 2006 and June last year, the High Court was told. He tied up his victims with tape, threatening one of them with a knife, and then ordered them to hand over money to him before fleeing the apartments where all four women worked alone. Chong was eventually caught when police identified his DNA on a glass in which one of his victims had given him water to drink before he robbed her, the South China Morning Post reported. Chong admitted four charges of robbery and was jailed for nine years by judge Derek Pang at a hearing on Friday. He denied two further charges of robbery, also on prostitutes, which were left on file. The case brought calls from prostitutes working for greater police protection from attackers. Groups representing sex workers say prostitutes are vulnerable because most work alone. Four prostitutes were murdered in the space of three days last year.
■AUSTRALIA
Speeder caught with drugs
A Thai man who had overstayed his visa for more than a year made a big mistake when he drove his car at 137km an hour in a restricted zone in Sydney shortly after midnight yesterday, police said. Officers who stopped him for speeding found a stash of cash, casino chips and ecstasy tablets in the vehicle. On top of the speeding charge, the 27-year-old, who was driving on a learner’s license, was charged with possessing and supplying drugs and dealing in the proceeds of crime. The car may be confiscated under crime proceeds legislation and immigration officials were alerted that his visa expired in 2007.
■PHILIPPINES
One rebel killed in Quezon
One communist rebel was killed yesterday in a clash with government troops in an eastern town, a military report said. The fighting erupted early yesterday when patrolling troops encountered heavily armed communist guerrillas in Candelaria town in Quezon Province, 120km southeast of Manila. Government troops also recovered one assault rifle from the slain guerrilla, who has yet to be identified.
■AUSTRALIA
Gillard says no to detainees
Canberra has told Washington for a second time that it will not resettle detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the acting prime minister said yesterday. Acting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said US President George W. Bush’s administration was told on Friday that a second request made early last month to resettle an unspecified number of detainees had been rejected. “We advised the United States government that we would not be agreeing to those resettlement requests,” said Gillard, who is filling in for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd while he is on vacation.
■PHILIPPINES
Floods displace thousands
About 5,000 families in the south have been displaced by flash floods and large waves spawned by heavy rains, officials said yesterday. More than 100 houses have been destroyed and many people are fleeing their homes in the face of rising waters in the northern part of the southern island of Mindanao, civil defense officials said. Regional civil defense director Carmelito Lupo said that most of those whose homes were destroyed were from Cagayan de Oro city but officials were still trying to get information on the situation in the surrounding areas.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
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