■HONG KONG
Lawyer’s conviction quashed
The High Court yesterday quashed the conviction of one of the city’s most high-profile lawyers, who had been jailed for disclosing the identity of a protected witness to a journalist. The Court of Appeal freed Kevin Egan, who was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 2006 for leaking the identity of Becky Wong to a South China Morning Post reporter. Wong was a witness in a financial criminal case and being held in protective custody of the city’s anti-graft body, the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The lawyer’s conviction was overturned yesterday by Judge Robert Tang, who said the trial judge’s finding that Egan knew Wong was on the witness protection program when he spoke to the journalist could not be supported.
■NEW ZEALAND
Kiwi arrested in Pakistan
Wellington said yesterday it was making urgent inquiries into the arrest of a 35-year-old New Zealander by Pakistani security forces as he tried to enter an al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold on the Afghan border. The man, identified on his passport as Mark Taylor, was reportedly detained at a paramilitary checkpoint near the town of Tank, about 280km southwest of Islamabad. Dressed in local clothing and wearing a beard that he did not have when his passport photograph was taken, he was traveling in a bus headed for a tribal region that is off-limits to foreigners, where he said he was going to get married.
■THAILAND
Bombing kills three
Three policemen were killed and one was seriously injured in a bomb attack in the latest violence in a five-year separatist rebellion in the south of the country, police said yesterday. The 20kg bomb was buried along a rural road in Nongjik in Pattani, one of three southern provinces where more than 3,000 people have been killed since the violence erupted in 2004.
■AUSTRALIA
Diver loses hand to shark
A diver who fought off a shark in a rare attack in Sydney Harbour was in high spirits despite losing a hand and facing the prospect of losing a leg, his family said yesterday. Able Seaman Paul de Gelder, 31, was taking part in a defense exercise near an upmarket residential area of the harbor in Australia’s largest city when he was attacked on Wednesday. “As a result of the attack Paul has lost his right hand above the wrist and may lose his right leg, however he is in high spirits,” de Gelder’s family said in a brief statement issued through the Australian Defense Force. The attack took place near the Garden Island Naval Base in Woolloomooloo Bay, which is lined with seafood restaurants and celebrity apartments. Experts said no one had been bitten by a shark in Sydney Harbour for more than a decade and the last fatal attack was in 1963.
■HONG KONG
Infection halts transplants
A top hospital yesterday suspended bone marrow transplant operations after a rare infection killed a six-year-old boy and sickened two other patients. Three other patients at the Queen Mary Hospital are also being tested for the infection, which doctors have identified as a rare intestinal disease called gastrointestinal mucormycosis. The boy died 23 days after contracting the infection in November and two other leukemia patients — a boy aged 11 and a man aged 38 — were found to be infected last month and this month. After the third infection was confirmed Wednesday, the hospital decided to suspend bone marrow transplants for a week.
■SPAIN
Contestant’s past revealed
Blue-eyed, curly-haired Cyril Jacquet was the perfect reality show participant. Young, attractive, outgoing and ambitious, he and his girlfriend, Paola Alberdi, were determined to win a new reality TV show called Around the World. It promised adventure, a 200,000 euro (US$257,000) prize and, inevitably, fame. Jacquet did not seem to realize, however, that fans of the show would inevitably start putting his name into their Internet search engines and find out a little bit more about him. So it was that, on Sunday night, he abandoned the show after program-makers questioned him about Internet rumors that as a 15-year-old he had murdered his mother and father. Antena 3 said it had no idea that one of its contestants was a parricide. “The program did not know,” a presenter said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Queen’s Web site revamped
Queen Elizabeth II is offering Internet-savvy subjects the option of applying for a job at the palace through her newly revamped Web site, royal officials said yesterday. First launched in 1997, the British queen’s purple-toned site provides pictures, news and background on the monarch and her family. Officials said the improved site would now have a direct link to the videos carried on YouTube’s royal channel, integration with Google Maps and a new section on the queen’s pets. Those interested in seeing her majesty up close will have the chance to submit their job applications to Buckingham Palace and book interviews over the Internet.
■EGYPT
Document sparks bust furor
Egypt will demand Germany return an ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti if a document suggesting it was fraudulently spirited out of the country is authentic, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Wednesday. British newspaper the Times reported this week that a document found in the archives of the German Oriental Institute showed that a German archeologist swindled an inspector in Egypt into allowing him to take the bust. The archeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, wrapped the 3,400-year-old bust and put in a dimly lit room to fool the inspector into thinking it was a banal find.
■RUSSIA
Medvedev orders jail reform
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday ordered his officials to reform a prison system that is chronically overcrowded with inmates who are mostly ill or serving harsh sentences for minor offenses. Decades after the Soviet Union’s Gulag prison camps were abolished, Russia still has a vast network of penal institutions housing nearly 900,000 prisoners — the world’s second highest rate relative to the population after the US. Medvedev is a former corporate lawyer who has spoken often about the need to respect human rights, though campaigners say they have yet to see real change.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Parliament sees painter row
In their weekly debate on Wednesday in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron clashed over — of all things — how old the Renaissance painter Titian was when he died. Titian came up at Prime Minister’s Question Time as Cameron asserted that Brown never got his facts right. “You told us the other day you were like Titian aged 90. The fact is Titian died at 86,” the leader of the Conservative Party told the Labour prime minister. Academics are unsure at what age Titian died; most believe he was born between 1486 and 1490 and died in 1576.
■UNITED STATES
Wrong city on transit cards
Philadelphia’s primary mass transit agency is embarrassed about a discount pass it sold that features a picture of New York City. The pass is marked with the logo for Philly Beer Week, a festival celebrating local breweries and taverns. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority is selling the pass to discourage people from driving from one event to another during the festival. A spokeswoman for the agency said officials didn’t realize the photo was of the wrong city. New passes are being printed.
■UNITED STATES
Eight-year-old drove van
Police in southwest Florida arrested a man they say let his eight-year-old son drive a van. Police in Bradenton arrested 34-year-old Mark Belanger just before midnight on Sunday on charges of child abuse and permitting an unlicensed driver to drive. A police report said the boy hit two trees and nearly hit two people in a parking lot. Belanger told police he had taken Xanax, used to treat anxiety and panic attacks, and was “feeling woozy and didn’t want to drive.” The boy told police his father took “liquid medicine” to feel better, pointing to an empty whiskey bottle in the vehicle.
■MEXICO
Seven arrested in murders
Seven members of the drug cartel hit squad Los Zeta have been arrested in connection with the torture and murder of three people, including a retired general, in Cancun, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday. The arrests include Los Zeta leader Octavio Almanza, “who along with his brother Ricardo took part in the execution of general Mauro Enrique Tello,” as well as an army lieutenant and a civilian, Attorney General Special Investigations chief Marisela Morales said. The murders were carried out with complicity of Cancun municipal police chief Francisco Velasco Delgado, she told a press conference.
■UNITED STATES
Doctor ordered to stand trial
A doctor who is the son of Bermuda’s leader was ordered to stand trial on Wednesday on 33 counts of molesting female patients at Los Angeles medical clinics where he practiced. The decision by Superior Court Judge William Hollingsworth came after a week of testimony from 12 women, including an undercover vice officer and a 15-year-old girl. They testified that Kevin Antario Brown, the 37-year-old son of Bermudan Premier Ewart Brown, touched them inappropriately. One woman said he raped her. Brown is charged with 33 felony sex counts involving 12 alleged victims over five years. Last year, he pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
■BRAZIL
Legalizing drug proposed
Three former Latin American presidents said on Wednesday that regional policymakers should consider decriminalizing marijuana because long-standing attempts to curb the production and trafficking of illicit drugs have failed. In a report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, former presidents Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil said “we are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs.” The report was posted on the commission’s Web site following its release in Rio de Janeiro. Writers Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and Paulo Coelho of Brazil, are also members of the drug commission, which comprises politicians, academics and writers.
‘SHARP COMPETITION’: Australia is to partner with US-based Lockheed Martin to make guided multiple launch rocket systems, an Australian defense official said Australia is to ramp up missile manufacturing under a plan unveiled yesterday by a top defense official, who said bolstering weapons stockpiles would help keep would-be foes at bay. Australian Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said the nation would establish a homegrown industry to produce long-range guided missiles and other much-needed munitions. “Why do we need more missiles? Strategic competition between the United States and China is a primary feature of Australia’s security environment,” Conroy said in a speech. “That competition is at its sharpest in our region, the Indo-Pacific.” Australia is to partner with US-based weapons giant Lockheed Martin to make
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
TIGHT CAMPAIGN: Although Harris got a boost from an Iowa poll, neither candidate had a margin greater than three points in any of the US’ seven battleground states US Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the final days before the election, as she and former US president and Republican presidential nominees make a frantic last push to win over voters in a historically close campaign. The first lines Harris spoke as she sat across from Maya Rudolph, their outfits identical, was drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters
Pets are not forgotten during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, when even Fido and Tiger get a place at the altars Mexican families set up to honor their deceased loved ones, complete with flowers, candles and photographs. Although the human dead usually get their favorite food or drink placed on altars, the nature of pet food can make things a little different. The holiday has roots in Mexican pre-Hispanic customs, as does the reverence for animals. The small, hairless dogs that Mexicans kept before the Spanish conquest were believed to help guide their owners to the afterlife, and were sometimes given
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