Sun, Jan 18, 2009 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■UNITED STATES

  Judge rules on Beverly gate

  The multimillion-dollar battle between the haves and the have-even-mores over who gets to use access gates to enter their celebrity-studded enclave is over — for now. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ruled that “guests and invitees” of South Beverly Park can now use the gates at North Beverly Park, ending an almost three-year dispute. The quarrel erupted in 2006 when residents of 64-home North Beverly Park, who include Denzel Washington, Reba McEntire, Eddie Murphy and media moguls Haim Saban and Sumner Redstone, barred nannies, gardeners and others traveling to adjoining South Beverly Park from using the northern gates, citing security costs and concerns. That meant visitors had to detour 11km to get to the southern 16 homes. The southerners, including Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson and producer Richard Zanuck, sued, saying the policy was arbitrary, capricious and “downright unneighborly.”

  ■CANADA

  Toronto hit by power outage

  A utility company was working on Friday to restore power to a residential district near downtown Toronto after an outage left about 100,000 people without electricity during a bitter cold wave. Toronto Hydro spokesman Paul Reesor said on Friday afternoon that it had restored power to about half of the area after a broken water main flooded a power station on Thursday night. The outage left many scrambling for extra blankets to keep warm as overnight temperatures plummeted to minus 20ºC.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Governor goes barefoot

  It’s tough, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels says, to sound like a chief executive when you’re standing before a gaggle of reporters in your bare feet. At a news conference on Friday, he answered questions about the budget and other important matters — while standing in front of a pile of shoes with his feet au naturel. The point was to raise awareness of Samaritan’s Feet, a group that collects new shoes for needy people around the world. The group aims to collect 1 million pairs of shoes this year.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Man arrested over threat

  A Wisconsin man was arrested on Friday in Mississippi after authorities said he threatened on the Internet to kill US president-elect Barack Obama. Steven Joseph Christopher, 42, was taken into custody by the Secret Service in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and charged with threatening to assassinate Obama for what he claimed was “the country’s own good,” federal prosecutors said. “Threats against the president-elect will be taken very seriously,” said Dunn Lampton, US attorney for the southern district of Mississippi. “Use of Internet chat rooms to express those threats is as much a crime as uttering the words. Threats of this nature will be pursued swiftly and vigorously.” An affidavit from Secret Service Special Agent Kelly Adcox quotes Christopher as saying he has nothing personal against Obama and that he’s not a racist.

  ■NICARAGUA

  Court acquits ex-president

  The Supreme Court acquitted ex-president Arnoldo Aleman of embezzling US$8 million in public money, freeing him of a 20-year sentence he was serving under guard in his lavish hacienda. Judges overturned the 2003 ruling against Aleman, despite the ratification of his sentence by an appeals court in 2007. Judge Sergio Cuarezma said the court did not find proof of fraud, money laundering and embezzlement by Aleman, a right-wing leader, during his 1997 to 2002 term.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Polanski case drags on

  Director Roman Polanski has no right to a hearing on a motion to dismiss his 31-year-old sex case because he refuses to appear in court, a prosecutor said on Friday. Prosecutor David Walgren said in newly filed documents that Polanski flouted the law when he fled to France to avoid sentencing for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. He said that the now-45-year-old victim, who wants to speak at the hearing on Wednesday to urge dismissal, should not be heard unless he appears. Polanski’s lawyer said he had no plans to ever return to the US, but said the case could be heard without him. If Polanski chose to attend the hearing, he would be immediately arrested. Walgren said little has changed legally since the day in 1978 when Polanski failed to appear in a Santa Monica courtroom for sentencing. “The defendant ignored a lawful and valid court order to appear in court and instead chose to flee to the comforts of France,” he said. “It would be a farce for this court to review the case when it has no jurisdiction over the defendant.”

  ■SPAIN

  Nuns recruit on YouTube

  For the 11 remaining “Barefoot Carmelite” nuns at the San Jose convent in Ecija, near the southern city of Seville, the future looked grim. No young novices had joined the convent for three years and, as is happening in convents all over Spain, their numbers were dwindling so fast as the elder ones died that it looked as though it may have to close after almost 400 years. Now the nuns have found salvation by breaking out of their cloistered world with the help of Internet video site YouTube. The convent’s mother superior, Mother Isabel, was persuaded by friends that the best way to recruit new nuns would be to put up a video on YouTube to show how life was lived inside Ecija’s 14th-century Mudejar palace-turned-convent. Thousands of YouTube visits later, not only has the phone been ringing almost continuously, but the first new novice has walked through the doors after seeing the video online. “If the rest of the world is on the Internet, then why shouldn’t we be there, too?” Mother Isabel said. The video shows footage of the nuns praying, sewing and baking cakes, while a series of uplifting messages tell viewers about the joys of a cloistered existence. Silence, solitude and the grilles that allow them to talk to, but not see, visitors, are not so bad, the nuns say. “

  ■UNITED KINGDOM

  ‘Time to realize my crime’

  Former Culture Club frontman Boy George was sentenced on Friday to 15 months in jail after being found guilty last month of falsely imprisoning a Norwegian male escort. Tried under his real name, George O’Dowd, the 47-year-old Briton denied the charge of false imprisonment at his London flat in April, 2007. After his conviction on Dec. 5, judge David Radford had warned him that he faced a prison term.

  ■GREECE

  Wife appeals to kidnappers

  The wife of a shipping magnate kidnapped in Greece said she was willing to take the place of her seriously ill husband. The 74-year-old Periklis Panagopoulos was snatched by gunmen outside his seaside home near Athens last Monday. His wife, Katerina Panagopoulou, said she had received a ransom demand for the release of Panagopoulos, who reportedly suffers from diabetes, but had not heard from the kidnappers for two days. Speaking on private Antenna TV on Friday, she said she was willing to take his place so that he can receive medical treatment. “I offer myself to take his place,” she said.

  ■SINGAPORE

  Tighter protest laws mulled

  The government may further tighten laws against public protests ahead of the APEC meeting in November, whch could attract both local and overseas protesters, the Straits Times quoted Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng (黃根成) as saying yesterday. Wong, who is also the home affairs minister, said the government was reviewing public order laws and may pass legislation to deal more effectively with illegal protests and other acts of civil disobedience, the daily said. Public order laws are already tight in Singapore, where protests require a police permit if held outside a designated free-speech zone and gatherings of five or more people are illegal. Nevertheless, Wong said fresh legislation was needed to deal more effectively with political activities. He said police could be granted power to take action before protesters could gather at specific areas such as parliament, and cited protests by the political opposition, and by Myanmar nationals against their country’s ruling junta. “They make a show of breaking the law,” Wong said of the protesters, adding that “this cannot go on.”

  ■CHINA

  Waters 83% polluted

  Raw sewage and pollution from agricultural runoff polluted 83 percent of the nation’s coastal waters last year, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Coastal waters last year witnessed 68 red tides, or algae blooms, which feed off nutrients found in excess pollution and sap water of oxygen, killing off large amounts of sea life, Xinhua said. The State Oceanic Administration was cited as saying the algae blooms covered 13,700 km², up more than 2,100km² from 2007, the report said. While some experts said the red tides were a result of climate change and heavy rain, environmentalists believe they were largely caused by sewage and agricultural pollutant runoff, it said.

  ■AUSTRALIA

  Two Singaporeans busted

  Two Singaporean men were apprehended in a Sydney taxi with a suitcase containing heroin worth A$4.5 million (US$3 million), Australian authorities said yesterday. The pair, aged 34 and 41, were arrested after police flagged down a taxi in which they were passengers on Friday morning, crime agencies said. “Officers searched the taxi and uncovered a suitcase which had a large quantity of a white powder in plastic resealable bags,” the Joint Asian Crime Group said in a statement. Tests subsequently revealed the powder to be heroin with an estimated street value of A$4.5 million, the statement said. The men have been charged with possessing and supplying a prohibited drug.

  ■AUSTRALIA

  Refugees granted asylum

  The government has granted asylum to 28 people from Afghanistan and Iran, in the first such move since relaxing tough rules on asylum seekers, Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced late on Friday. The group, including 10 children, had been allowed to settle for their own safety, Evans said. “These people clearly demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution or death should they be returned to Afghanistan or Iran,” Evans said in a statement. He said they had been picked up as they sailed toward Australia between September and November last year, and have since been detained on Christmas Island, some 2,600km to the country’s northwest. They are the first people to be granted asylum since the center-left government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd softened the nation’s refugee policy last July.
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