■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.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
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