■UNITED STATES
Man linked to second killing
A Japanese businessman found dead in his cell after being extradited to the US for the 1981 murder of his wife was also responsible for a second slaying, police said on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Police Department said there was “substantial and compelling evidence” to suggest that Kazuyoshi Miura, 61, also committed the until now unsolved murder of another woman, Chizuko Shiraishi. Shiraishi, an accountant who had a business and personal relationship with Miura, was killed in Los Angeles in 1979. Police were to hold a press conference yesterday to detail their case against Miura, who committed suicide in jail shortly after being extradited to Los Angeles from Saipan last October. Police will “discuss substantial and compelling evidence that lead them to their findings regarding Miura’s responsibility for the murder,” a statement said. “There is sufficient evidence to close the case.” The announcement is likely the final gruesome chapter in a decades-long legal saga that saw Miura dubbed “Japan’s O.J. Simpson.”
■UNITED STATES
New York challenges Vegas
New York City has issued an open challenge to Las Vegas, seeking to become a premier destination for people to get married in what officials hope will boost tourism during uncertain economic times. The new Manhattan Marriage Bureau opened to the public this week following a US$12.3 million renovation, and the 2,230m² space has won enthusiastic reviews from newlyweds.
■UNITED STATES
Court charges circuit-seller
A company executive has been charged in Los Angeles with exporting high-tech computer chips to China for potential military use. William Chai-Wai Tsu, a Beijing resident and vice president of Cheerway Inc, was charged on Monday in federal court with exporting sensitive technology without permission. He was arrested on Saturday and agents seized documents and computers from a California home Tsu allegedly used to receive shipments related to business. Prosecutors say Tsu, a naturalized US citizen, bought at least 200 sophisticated circuits from a US distributor and illegally shipped them to China. The tiny circuits are used in communications and radar systems for both civilian and military purposes. Tsu is being held until a bond hearing today. If convicted Tsu faces up to 20 years in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Syphilis rates rose in 2007
US syphilis rates rose for a seventh year in 2007, driven by gay and bisexual men, while chlamydia reached record numbers and gonorrhea remained at alarming levels — especially among blacks, health officials said on Tuesday. Blacks make up 12 percent of the US population, but account for about 70 percent of gonorrhea cases and almost half of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said. Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, and gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were 19 times higher than for whites, the CDC said. John Douglas, who heads the CDC’s division of sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention, said overall syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea rates are unacceptably high. Cases of these three STDs are reported by US states to the CDC. In 2007, 1.1 million US cases of chlamydia were reported, up from about 1 million in 2006 and the most ever. The rate rose by 7.5 percent from the prior year, the CDC said in a report. Douglas said the figures may reflect that more people are being diagnosed rather than a rise in infections.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Woman attacked in Scotland
A 22-year-old woman who suffered serious facial injuries during an assault in Aberdeen said on Tuesday she was attacked for being English. Lucy Newman was out with friends in the center of the Scottish city in the early hours of Saturday morning when she was punched in the face by a man who had allegedly subjected her to racial abuse, Grampian Police said. “I do have a strong English accent with some of the things I say — and he was shouting: ‘Go back to England,’” she told the Aberdeen Evening Express. “It all happened so quickly, I was so scared. I remember sitting on the ground with blood covering my face and hands.” She was taken to hospital for treatment for a fractured cheekbone, two black eyes and two severed nerve endings at the back of her eye, the paper said. “Whilst this is clearly a despicable act, it is still unfortunately not uncommon for racially motivated incidents to take place,” Sergeant David Forsyth said. Police were searching for a man aged between 27 and 30.
■CZECH REPUBLIC
Havel in stable condition
Former president Vaclav Havel was in “stabilized but serious” condition on Tuesday following surgery, a hospital spokeswoman said, after being treated for an inflammatory disease. “His condition is stabilized but serious,” said Eva Jurinova, spokeswoman for the Prague-Motol hospital. “He is doing breathing exercises. We can’t offer a prognosis now, further steps will be decided tomorrow,” she said. Havel’s secretary said on the www.vaclavhavel.cz Web site earlier that Havel had been admitted to hospital “with an inflammatory disease” and that “he will remain in medical care in the upcoming days.” The 72-year-old hero of the Velvet Revolution, which toppled communist rule in 1989, has been grappling with health problems that are partly due to the five years he spent in communist jails. Part of his right lung was removed in December 1996 after cancer was detected.
■NORWAY
Plane evacuated on threat
An airport spokesman said police have evacuated a Pakistan International Airlines jet because of a bomb threat at Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport. Gardermoen spokesman Jo Kobro said the threat was called in to the information desk in the arrivals hall on Tuesday as the plane was getting ready to take off. It was scheduled to fly to Islamabad with a stop in Copenhagen, Denmark. Kobro said “police evacuated the passengers and are now searching the aircraft.” It was not clear how many passengers were on board. The passengers were waiting inside the airport terminal as police searched the plane.
■GERMANY
Police arrested after brawl
Three elite Frankfurt police officers who were involved in an off-duty brawl at a brothel have been detained by police and are under investigation for assault, a Frankfurt police spokesman said on Tuesday. Confirming a report in the Bild newspaper, the spokesman said the three officers of the elite SEK anti-terrorism unit had been transferred to another department pending the outcome of an investigation by the state prosecutors’ office. The three officers, aged 30, 32 and 35, were in a red-light district of Frankfurt after an office party. They got into a dispute with the brothel’s bouncers that turned violent. Police arriving detained the three off-duty colleagues.
■JAPAN
Father impersonates son
A 54-year-old man was caught impersonating his 20-year-old son to take an exam, even getting a perm to make himself look younger, an official said yesterday. The father, who runs a medication distribution company, sat a test for a license to handle over-the-counter drugs so that his son could work with him, said an official in Nara prefecture in western Japan. An examiner noticed that the man looked unusually old, said local government official Masaaki Nakamori. The father, whose name was not released, earned his own license last year, taking the exam with a photo showing him with straight hair and glasses.
■NEW ZEALAND
Rental company backtracks
A rental car company reversed course yesterday on charging a tourist family for not returning their car after their sons were crushed by glacier ice. Ashish Miranda, 24, an aerospace engineer and his student brother Akshay, 22, were crushed beneath 100 tonnes of falling ice as they posed for photos at the base of Fox Glacier on the South Island west coast last Thursday. Akshay had the keys to the car in his pocket. New Zealand Car Rental Specialists had demanded the brothers’ parents, who were traveling with their sons, pay up to US$1,085 to replace the keys and have the car towed back to Wellington. Prime Minister John Key said the company should have shown more compassion to the family, who live in Melbourne. “Quite frankly they may have a legal point but sometimes businesses should look beyond their legal obligations to recognize that this was a tragic loss of two Australians,” he told reporters. “To be out there effectively charging their families now for the lost keys is crass at best and probably truly bad business practice.”
■INDIA
Show bans pachyderms
Bejewelled elephants that have delighted crowds at every Indian Republic Day since 1950 have been banned from this year’s parade due to their “berserk” behavior, officials said yesterday. An official of the defense ministry, which organizes the event, said elephants would be absent from events on Jan. 26 due to fears for public safety and after pressure from animal rights activists.
■HONG KONG
Edison Chen testifies abroad
The pop star at the center of a sex photo scandal is to testify in Canada against the man accused of downloading pictures from his computer, a news report said yesterday. Edison Chen (陳冠希), 28, has refused to return to Hong Kong for court proceedings surrounding the pictures showing him with a string of naked young starlets that circulated on the Internet early last year. A deal has now been reached for Chen to give evidence instead at a five-day hearing in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Feb. 23, the South China Morning Post reported. The pictures, allegedly stolen from Chen’s laptop when he took it in for repairs, were viewed by millions. Chen’s refusal to return to Hong Kong has stalled the trial of computer technician Sze Ho-chun, 23, who will go on trial in Hong Kong in April, the newspaper reported.
■PHILIPPINES
Prisoners tunnel to freedom
About a dozen prisoners have tunneled out of a provincial jail in the south, local police said yesterday. The prisoners escaped on Tuesday through the tunnel, about 10m long and 1m wide which police found hidden underneath books and praying mats, said Bensali Jabarani, police chief in Muslim Mindanao region.
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,
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
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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