■CHINA
Inmate dies in prison
An inmate at a prison in southern China died last week after apparently being beaten, Chinese media reported yesterday, in the latest in a string of jail deaths that have fueled public anger. Relatives of Liu Yushan (劉玉山), 35, said prison officials told them he died “suddenly” of possible heart problems last week in Foshan city in Guangdong Province, the Beijing News reported. However, family members said after viewing his body that both of his legs were badly bruised and one appeared to be broken, it reported. Prison officials produced a medical certificate dated 2005 claiming that he had heart disease, which family members denied, the paper said. The Ministry of Public Security has announced a probe, apparently in response to mounting public anger over recent prison deaths, which included three teenagers.
■CHINA
Schoolgirl rape gang on trial
Seven people in the southwest, including four government officials, are being tried on charges of raping schoolgirls, allegedly aided by a former prostitute, state media said on Wednesday. The suspects are all accused of raping girls of primary and secondary school age in Guizhou Province from October 2007 to last July, helped by a jobless woman and her two teenage friends, the official Xinhua news agency said. Yuan said the men were allowed to rape the girls for roughly 100 yuan (US$15) each. The two teenage accomplices, who were drug addicts and needed money, helped by abducting schoolgirls from one primary school and three junior high schools in the county, Xinhua reported. In October, police arrested the seven suspects, who include officials in charge of land and resources, social security and legal affairs. One other man was a teacher. Xinhua said rapists in China could be jailed for three to 10 years, but child rapists could be sentenced to life in prison and even death if they knew the victim was under 14.
■AUSTRALIA
Man jailed for lawn death
A man was sentenced yesterday to at least 18 months in jail for fatally beating another man during an argument over Sydney’s water restrictions. Todd Munter, 39, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in December and had faced up to 25 years in jail, but the sentencing judge said the circumstances surrounding the killing called for a lighter penalty and sentenced Munter to three years and three months in prison. He is eligible for parole in 18 months. Ken Proctor, 66, was watering his front lawn in October 2007 when Munter walked by and accused him of breaking the city’s water restrictions. When Munter called him a “stupid old goat,” Proctor turned his hose on the younger man, prosecutors said. Munter then punched, pushed and kicked Proctor until he hit the ground, prosecutors said. Minutes later, Proctor suffered a heart attack and died despite Munter’s attempts to resuscitate him. Munter’s lawyer said his client had been under stress, learning he would have to undergo surgery.
■SINGAPORE
Teen’s seductress jailed
A divorcee has been jailed for 10 months for having sex with a 13-year-old boy after seducing him via mobile phone messages, the Straits Times reported yesterday. The 32-year-old mother knew the boy from his school, where she was working as a canteen helper, the newspaper said. The two swapped mobile phone text messages and started to have sex at her home in May last year. The affair was exposed after the woman’s sister found the boy hiding in a wardrobe.
■ALGERIA
President aims for landslide
Algerians voted yesterday in an election in which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is hoping for a big turnout and a crushing victory over his five rivals. “Vote, even vote against me, but vote,” the 72-year-old head of state urged the 20.6 million electors as he criss-crossed the North African nation in search of a third five-year term. Bouteflika’s re-election appears to be a foregone conclusion, not least because the polls were being boycotted by the traditional opposition. He hoped that a score better than the 84.99 percent he achieved in 2004 will give him an enhanced authority. “A president who is not elected with a crushing majority is not a president,” he said.
■NETHERLANDS
Barendrecht dies aged 43
Independent film producer Wouter Barendrecht, who worked closely with several east Asian directors, has died of a heart attack in Bangkok at the age of 43, his company said on Wednesday. “Fortissimo Films is very shocked and immensely saddened by the sudden death of its founder and co-owner Wouter Barendrecht, who died Sunday April 5 of a heart attack at a house he owned in Bangkok”, it said in a statement. Among the directors with whom Barendrecht worked as producer were Wong Kar-wai (王家衛)of Hong Kong, whose In The Mood For Love he produced, and Zhang Yang (張揚) of China. Barendrecht co-founded Fortissimo Films in 1990 and since 1997 had lived chiefly in Hong Kong where he ran the Asian subsidiary.
■NIGERIA
Cabinet approves graft bill
The Cabinet approved draft legislation on Wednesday that would give security agencies the power to confiscate property from people suspected of corruption, even after a court has acquitted them. The Cabinet of President Umaru Yar’Adua said the bill, which would also apply to Nigerians living abroad, is necessary to deter graft in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. “The bill allows for confiscation where an individual has been tried before a criminal court, but acquitted, perhaps through a questionable verdict or because the conviction ... fell short of the criminal standard of proof,” Information Minister Dora Akunyili said. It was not immediately clear what criteria the security agencies would use in deciding when to confiscate property and it is far from certain that parliament will approve the draft.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Security blunder cop resigns
Britain’s head officer of counter-terrorism resigned yesterday after he was photographed carrying a secret document revealing plans to crack down on a suspected al-Qaeda group plotting attacks in Britain, an official said. “I have this morning with great reluctance and sadness ... accepted Bob Quick’s resignation as head of counter-terrorism,” London Mayor Boris Johnson told BBC radio. Opposition politicians criticized Quick, an assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan police force, after his security blunder was believed to have forced a major operation to be brought forward on Wednesday. Police arrested 12 men in the raids.
■EGYPT
Man beats daughter to death
A man beat his 17-year-old daughter to death after she received a phone call from her boyfriend, a police official said on Wednesday. The 45-year-old farmer identified as Mursi A. from the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh, caught his daughter Nur talking to her boyfriend on the phone and “beat her with a large stick before electrocuting her,” the official said.
■UNITED STATES
‘Dracula’ gets 20 years
A bank robber who masqueraded as Dracula was bitten with a 20-year prison sentence on Wednesday after he robbed the same Georgia bank twice. Nathaniel Little Jr, 43, committed two robberies in 2006 at the same CDC Federal Credit Union bank in Atlanta, Georgia, each time while wearing the same ghoulish mask. The 20-year sentence, said US attorney David Nahmias, “drives a stake into the heart of a simple yet dangerous crime: robbing banks. “This ‘Dracula’ bandit will now spend many nights in the dark and confined cavern of a prison cell,” he added.
■UNITED STATES
Chimps mate for meat
Human females may get offended at dates who expect a little something extra after they buy a steak dinner, but for chimpanzees, the exchange may be a fair one, German researchers said on Tuesday. They found that female chimpanzees mate more frequently with males who often share meat with them. “Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis,” Cristina Gomes of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said in a statement. “Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting.”
■CANADA
Seal kill quota tops 63,000
The second phase of the annual seal hunt began on Wednesday with a kill quota of 63,500 seals set by authorities, amid a down market for their pelts. The commercial hunt resumed along the west coast of Newfoundland province and Quebec’s lower north shore, fisheries department spokesman Phil Jenkins said. But strong winds and freezing rain slowed the hunters, he said. Previously, 19,411 seals were slaughtered in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Local indigenous people also met their full quota of 1,650 animals. The International Fund for Animal Welfare said it welcomed news of fewer sealers taking part in this year’s hunt thanks to a “lack of markets for seal fur.”
■CHILE
Volcano under pressure
The crater of the erupting Llaima volcano is blocked with debris that could prompt a pressure build-up and renewed explosions of lava, experts warned on Wednesday. Llaima, about 700km south of the capital Santiago, began spitting lava in a fresh bout of activity last Friday. It belched ash 7km into the sky during the weekend, prompting the evacuation of 123 people from the surrounding area. Activity died down overnight and there is now a much smaller ash cloud but national emergency office ONEMI said the situation remained critical. “It would be much better if the crater were unobstructed, so it can release energy gradually and slowly,” said volcano expert Jorge Munoz, who works for Sernageomin, adding that the volcano’s eruptive activity was very erratic and could quickly surge.
■MEXICO
Drug tunnel discovered
Authorities found a tunnel that was allegedly used for drug trafficking in the northern town of Agua Prieta on the US border, the Mexican public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. Federal agents found the entrance to the 25m-long tunnel, with a 60cm diameter, on the wall of a drainage pipe. No one was arrested and the tunnel was closed off with cement.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
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
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
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