■HONG KONG
Chef jailed for diner attack
A chef on Thursday began a 20-month jail sentence for attacking a woman diner with a meat cleaver after she complained about his food. Cheng Chi-wai, 50, hit the 47-year-old woman on the head with the cleaver after she grumbled about the meal she was served in the seafood restaurant in the Wan Chai district. He ran into the kitchen and emerged with two meat cleavers after she remarked on the poor quality of his cooking and hit the woman on the forehead with the blunt side of one of the cleavers. Chan Kwai-chun suffered a fractured skull and a 6cm wound that required 11 stitches in the incident that took place in September, the District Court said.
■THAILAND
Two soldiers beheaded
Suspected separatist insurgents beheaded two soldiers on Friday in the latest violence in the kingdom’s troubled Muslim-majority south, police said. A group of 10 soldiers came under attack as they headed back to base in restive Yala Province after escorting teachers to a local school, they said. The victims became separated from the rest of the party and when police reached the scene they found the soldiers had been decapitated, they said.
■JAPAN
Plane passengers injured
Around 45 people on a US-bound jet were injured yesterday, 10 of them seriously, apparently because of air turbulence on the Manila-Tokyo leg of the flight, airport officials said. Ambulances took the injured to hospitals after the Northwest Airlines Boeing 747-400 jet landed at Narita International Airport near Tokyo at 12:19pm, an airport official said. Among the most seriously injured were three Philippine nationals, two men and one women, Jiji national news agency reported, quoting local police. Northwest Airlines spokesman Masashi Takahashi said: “Air turbulence is believed to be the cause. The turbulence occurred 25 to 30 minutes before landing, when the seat belt light was on.”
■JAPAN
Child abuse at record high
Reported child abuse cases rose to a record high last year and left 45 children dead, while the online spread of child pornography also surged, police said on Thursday. The number of child deaths from abuse jumped 21.6 percent from 2007, the worst figures on record, the National Police Agency said, adding that 307 child abuse crimes had been solved, up 2.3 percent. About half of child pornography crimes were committed through the Internet, police said in a statement. Police said the number of solved cases involving child pornography rose 19.2 percent, while the reported number of victims surged 27.6 percent to 351, the worst since 2000 when the survey started.
■CHINA
Web users to probe death
Beijing has invited skeptical Internet surfers to help investigate the death of a man in custody who police say ran into a wall blindfolded while playing hide-and-seek, state media said yesterday. Li Qiaoming, 24, died from a severe brain injury four days after being sent to hospital from a detention center in the southwestern province of Yunnan, the Beijing News said. He had been arrested for illegally cutting down trees. The cause of death given by police has been widely questioned on the Internet. “We’ve invited Internet users to investigate the case on the spot and hope they can make their own judgment and spread the information they see with their own eyes to as many people as possible,” said Gong Fei, Yunnan’s propaganda chief.
■EUROPEAN UNION
Italy, Spain, Greece defiant
Italy, Spain and Greece are the worst countries in the EU for breaking the bloc’s laws on creating a single market, with Poland catching up fast, a study published by the European Commission in Brussels on Thursday showed. Italy is currently facing legal action — known as “infringement proceedings” — from the commission in no fewer than 112 cases, the highest figure in the bloc, the EU executive’s report said. Spain was second with 103 cases. Greece came in third, with 91 cases, closely followed by Germany, with 90. And Poland, which only joined the EU in 2004, already faces 65 sets of proceedings, more than any other EU newcomer by a factor of 50 percent, the commission said. Of the EU’s longer-standing members, Denmark and Luxembourg have the cleanest records, facing 29 and 30 infringement cases respectively. Of the 10 countries which joined the bloc in 2004, Cyprus was the best performer, with 14 cases recorded. Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007 and have been forced to accept special monitoring because of fears over the level of corruption in both countries, are already into double digits in the number of cases they face, with 13 and 20 respectively.
■LEBANON
Hitchens bruised in Beirut
Professional provocateur and vocal supporter of the war in Iraq Christopher Hitchens was left with a limp, cuts and bruises after being attacked for defacing a political poster in Beirut. Author, journalist and broadcaster Hitchens had been drinking in Beirut’s Hamra Street on Saturday afternoon with two other journalists after attending a rally to commemorate the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. They spotted a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP), a far-right group whose logo bears a resemblance to the Nazi swastika, and Hitchens decided to act. “I couldn’t tear it down, but I got my marker out and wrote on it, effectively telling them to ‘fuck off,’” he said after arriving in the UK. His political statement was witnessed by a group of SSNP activists. He was knocked to the ground, ending up with his shirt covered with blood after he cut his arm in the fall and “skinned” two fingers on one hand before a crowd drove away the assailants.
■EGYPT
Five die in cargo plane blaze
A Ukrainian cargo plane caught fire while about to take off from the airport in Luxor yesterday, killing all five crew, officials said. The Russian-made Antonov 12 had stopped in Luxor to refuel on its way to Ukraine. Firefighters were unable to save the crew from the blaze. The fire did not affect regular flights at Luxor, a major tourist destination 500km south of Cairo.
■MADAGASCAR
Government offices retaken
Police and soldiers helped retake government buildings from an opposition group, Internal Security Minister Desire Rasolofomanana said yesterday. Police spokesman Lala Rakotonirina said 50 people were arrested and no one was hurt. Security forces on Thursday had allowed supporters of Andry Rajoelina, who has challenged the president for power, to enter the offices of Rasolofomanana’s ministry and three others. Rajoelina accuses President Marc Ravalomanana of misspending funds and says the president is responsible for the deaths of at least 25 civilians killed by police fire during a Feb. 7 protest. Late last month, opposition protests sparked deadly riots.
■UNITED STATES
‘NY Post’ apologizes
The New York Post apologized on Thursday to those offended by an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened US President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee. The newspaper acknowledged that the cartoon published on Wednesday had drawn controversy because African-Americans and others saw it as a depiction of Obama. “This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize,” the paper said in an editorial on its Web site headlined “That Cartoon.” “It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period,” the paper said. The cartoon of a policeman shooting an ape played on the real shooting of a pet chimpanzee in Connecticut this week. Critics interpreted the cartoon’s dead chimp as a reference to Obama.
■UNITED STATES
Elderly can end prostate test
Most men over age 75 can safely discontinue screening for prostate cancer with the PSA blood test, although such screening may still benefit some older men, US researchers said yesterday. Use of the prostate-specific antigen blood test to screen for prostate cancer in elderly men has been controversial. A panel of experts called the US Preventive Services Task Force last year urged doctors to stop screening men 75 and older. The new findings involved 849 US men taking part in a study of aging run by the National Institutes of Health. For men over 75, not one died of prostate cancer if they had a PSA reading below 3 nanograms per milliliter. That represents at least two-thirds of the population.
■UNITED STATES
Warship damaged reef
The US Navy says a warship grounded 1km off Honolulu for four days was stuck in coral reef, not rock and sand as previously reported. The finding is the second embarrassing revelation for the Navy, which also failed to notify the state that the USS Port Royal had discharged 26,500 liters of wastewater when it was grounded. Laura Thielen, chairwoman of the state land department, says subsequent surveys show the ship had grounded in coral reef and divers from the state and Navy are working to ensure no further damage occurs.
■UNITED STATES
Barry to receive kidney
Marion Barry, who was famously videotaped smoking crack cocaine while he was mayor of the US capital city of Washington, was scheduled to undergo kidney transplant surgery later yesterday, the Washington Post reported. Barry, 72, suffers diabetes and high blood pressure and has been receiving kidney dialysis treatment since late last year, the newspaper reported early yesterday on its Web site. The flamboyant former mayor won a seat on the Washington City Council in 2006 and was re-elected last year. Barry is receiving the kidney from a 47-year-old woman, a donor whom he found privately.
■UNITED STATES
Tsunami network delayed
Scientists have upgraded Hawaii’s seismic monitors after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami prompted the US government to improve US tsunami warning systems. But some of the upgrades are temporary and haven’t been made to the highest standards. Slow-moving bureaucracy has delayed improvements in some cases. Charles McCreery, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s director, initially thought the upgrades, which started in 2005, would take two or two-and-a-half years.
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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