■UNITED STATES
Plea in death by swimming
An Ohio woman has pleaded guilty to reckless homicide for exercising her 73-year-old husband to death in a swimming pool, repeatedly refusing to let him leave the water. Surveillance video showed Christine Newton-John, 41, pulling James Mason around the pool by his arms and legs, Middlefield police Chief Joseph Stehlik said. The chief said he counted 43 times in which Newton-John prevented her husband from leaving the water, and Mason rested his head on the side of the pool several times while gasping for breath. “The video is bone-chilling,” Stehlik said. “The whole case is very sinister.” Mason had a heart attack on June 2 after the extended swim session. An officer who had investigated previous complaints that Mason was being abused pursued the case because he suspected there was more to the death, Stehlik said. Newton-John pleaded guilty on Thursday and faces up to five years in prison. Mason had been a longtime friend of his wife’s family. He knew her as John Vallandingham before she had gender reassignment surgery in 1993. The couple were wed in 2006 in Kentucky.
■UNITED STATES
DWI offender repeats
Police on Long Island say a convicted drunken driver whose car was equipped with anti-drunken driving technology has crashed a rented vehicle while intoxicated. Suffolk County police say Marvin Rice Jr, 27, lost control of his rental car and hit a utility pole on Sunday morning in Brentwood. Rice had agreed after a previous DWI conviction to have his car equipped with a device that tests for alcohol in a driver’s breath before starting the car. Police say Rice is being treated for multiple injuries. He is expected to be arraigned on a DWI charge.
■MEXICO
Cocaine shipment seized
Acting on a tip from the US Coast Guard, the navy has seized 7 tonnes of cocaine from a boat and detained five Mexicans onboard. Navy Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez said the boat and suspects were being transported to the port of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state, where they were expected to arrive yesterday.
■MEXICO
Eight killed outside bar
Eight people were shot to death outside a bar in Coahuila state early on Sunday, and nine other bodies were found after a series of killing sprees in the north of the country, police said. “It appears that the victims were two women and six men. They were killed outside the bar when an armed gang, arriving in three trucks and began shooting at those leaving the bar,” said a police spokesperson who asked not to be identified. No arrests have been made in connection with the killings, which came as nine other bodies were discovered in northern Mexico overnight.
■UNITED STATES
Texans report fireball in sky
What looked like a fireball streaked across the Texas sky on Sunday morning, leading many people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris. “We don’t know what it was,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said. The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office used a helicopter to search after callers said they thought they saw a plane crashing, a spokesman said. “We don’t doubt what people saw” but authorities found nothing, said spokesman John Foster. The US Strategic Command said there was no connection to the sightings over Texas and last Tuesday’s collision of satellites from the US and Russia.
■BELGIUM
New Antarctica base set up
The government opened a new scientific research center in Antarctica on Sunday — 40 years after its last polar base there. About 100 people attended the opening ceremony of “Princess Elisabeth,” the brain child of Belgian explorer Alain Hubert, including government ministers, scientists and business partners. Private investors contributed almost 22 million euros (US$28 million) to build the center, 200km from the King Baudouin base abandoned in 1967. The new base, named after the first in line to the Belgian throne, can accommodate up to about 20 people at a time and is well insulated to prevent any waste of heating. Eight wind turbines and 400m² of solar panels provide the base with hot water and electricity. “To build a polar base which uses only wind and solar energy was an almost impossible task,” Alain Hubert said.
■GAZA STRIP
Recycling blast kills one
Palestinian hospital officials say a 25-year-old Gaza man has been killed and five people have been wounded in a blast along the border with Israel. Palestinian security officials say the explosion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya occurred when people who were melting down scrap metal for recycling inadvertently threw an explosive device into the fire. Residents initially reported yesterday that a shell exploded. In other news, two rockets fired from Gaza in violation of an informal truce landed in Israel. No injuries were reported.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Terror questioning extended
Lancashire police said on Sunday they had been given six more days to question three men arrested under anti-terrorism laws. Police said in a statement they were searching five houses in the northwestern town of Burnley after arresting nine men on a motorway near Preston on Friday. Six were released without charge. The police also seized three vans that were to form part of a 100-vehicle aid convoy headed for Gaza. The convoy had been organized by the pro-Palestinian organization Viva Palestina and left central London on Saturday, the group’s Web site said. It had posted a video on YouTube showing an assortment of vehicles, including one towing a yacht, leaving London on Saturday. Volunteers plan to drive 8,000km through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, where they had hoped to cross the border at Rafah into Gaza on March 2. The group said the vehicles, which include a fire engine and ambulances, were carrying clothes, blankets and children’s toys.
■AUSTRIA
Pastor giving up promotion
A pastor who created a controversy by suggesting that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina because of the city’s sins said he would ask the pope to rescind his promotion. Pope Benedict XVI’s recent appointment of the conservative Reverend Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, to auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria’s third largest city, sparked an outcry among Catholics who warned it could prompt people to leave the Church. Wagner, among other things, also had characterized Harry Potter novels as “Satanism.” “Regarding the fierce criticism, I am in prayer and, after consulting the diocesan bishop, I have decided to ask the Holy Father in Rome to take back my promotion as auxiliary bishop,” Wagner said in a statement released by Linz Diocesan Bishop Ludwig Schwarz on Sunday. Schwarz declined to comment on Wagner’s decision.
■CHINA
Medicine factory closed
A pharmaceutical factory producing herbal medicine was shut down in the northeast when a patient died after being injected with one of its products, state press said on Sunday. Two other patients were taken ill after being injected with the medicine produced by the Wusili River Pharmacy in Heilongjiang Province, Xinhua news agency said. The Ministry of Health on Thursday ordered hospitals and pharmacies to suspend the use and sales of “Shuanghuanglian” produced by the Wusili factory, the report said. The herbal medicine is normally used to treat fevers and coughs caused by the common cold, it said.
■MALAYSIA
Puffer fish kills fisherman
A fisherman died and four others were hospitalized after they consumed a meal of puffer fish when they ran out of food while at sea, a news report said yesterday. Nordin Sulong, 43, and four friends had decided to cook the puffer fish when they ran out of food after being out at sea for several days, the Star daily said. All five fishermen began to feel dizzy and numb from the toxins in the puffer fish, but managed to steer their vessel back to the jetty in the northeastern state of Terengganu early on Sunday, the report said. All five were rushed to the hospital where Nordin was pronounced dead and another fisherman, Khalid Jusoh, was said to be in critical condition.
■AFGHANISTAN
Court upholds sentence
An appeals court upheld 20-year prison sentences for two men who published a translation of the Koran that drove religious leaders to call for their execution. The panel ruled on Sunday that the men were guilty of modifying the Koran — a crime punishable by death. However, the three-judge panel reiterated a lower court ruling giving the men 20 years each. The controversial text is a translation of Islam’s holy book into an Afghan language without the original Arabic verses alongside. Muslims regard the Arabic Koran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Koran itself, and it is believed that a mistranslation could warp God’s word.
■MALAYSIA
Unmarried couples jailed
Authorities arrested 26 unmarried Muslim couples in hotel rooms during Operation Valentine — aimed at curbing illegal premarital sex, an officer said yesterday. The couples, most under 30 years old, were detained for sharing rooms early on Sunday in the beachside town of Kuantan in eastern Pahang state, said Badaruddin Ahmad Bustami, enforcement assistant director with the state’s Islamic department. State authorities carry out raids each year on Valentine’s Day in the Muslim-majority country, where Shariah laws make it illegal for unmarried Muslims to meet behind closed doors, Badaruddin said. Doing so constitutes a crime known as khalwat, or “close proximity,” which carries a maximum fine of 1,000 ringgit (US$280) and up to six months in prison.
■INDIA
Cells banned in schools
A state banned teachers from chatting on their cellphones during class as it distracts pupils, a report said. Maharashtra state’s education minister Patangrao Kadam told the Press Trust of India news agency that he had taken the step to prevent “a lot of disturbance while teaching.” He said his department had received complaints from parents concerned about teachers who disrupted lessons by holding conversions on their telephones. “Precious education hours get wasted and students are distracted,” Kadam said.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
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