■AUSTRALIA
Thief stuck on rooftop
A man who got stuck on the roof of a factory he was allegedly trying to rob has been rescued by police after a three-hour operation. New South Wales state police said they were called early yesterday to a joinery factory, where a 53-year-old man was on the roof. He was apparently unable to move because of the wet weather and steep angle. Numerous rescue attempts were made, and emergency crews eventually used a fire truck with a tall ladder to retrieve the man while a helicopter illuminated the rooftop. Police said he was charged with trespassing, possession of housebreaking implements and attempted breaking-and-entering. He was carrying a helmet with a light, bolt cutters, a small ladder, backpack, tarpaulin, ropes and harnesses.
■NEPAL
Army chief sacked
Ruling Maoists fired the army chief yesterday, accusing him of disobeying instructions not to hire new recruits, a move that could jeopardize a landmark peace process that ended a bloody civil war three years ago. “The Cabinet has relieved General Rookmangud Katawal of his position,” Information and Communications Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara told reporters. In sacking the army chief, the Maoists ignored objections from opposition parties and some allies within the ruling coalition. Katawal was scheduled to retire in four months. The Maoists accuse him of hiring 2,800 new recruits and reinstating eight generals without consulting the government.
■CHINA
Fireworks blast kills 13
State media say an explosion in an illegal fireworks factory has killed 13 people and injured two. Saturday’s blast flattened three rooms in a rented house in Shandong Province. Xinhua news agency said the blast shook the earth and damaged neighboring homes. Some residents mistook it for an earthquake. Xinhua said police were hunting for the house’s tenant. Neighbors did not know that the house was being used to make fireworks. Fireworks are big business in the country, but safety is often lax. In February, a Beijing hotel still under construction was gutted in a fire started by an unlicensed fireworks display.
■JAPAN
PM Aso heads for Europe
Prime Minister Taro Aso headed to Europe yesterday for visits to the Czech Republic and Germany expected to focus on the global economic crisis and climate change, officials said. Aso was to arrive in Prague later yesterday for talks with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, the government said in a statement. The Czech Republic currently holds the rotating EU presidency. The leader will meet Czech President Vaclav Klaus and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso today before traveling to Berlin. In Germany, he will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and deliver a policy speech on Japan-EU relations.
■LAOS
Woman faces death penalty
Britain said on Saturday it would raise the case of a pregnant British woman who faces the death penalty in Laos if convicted of drug smuggling, when its foreign minister meets the Laotian deputy prime minister this week. Britain would do what it could to ensure Samantha Orobator, 20, would not face the death penalty if found guilty at the upcoming trial and provide consular help so she received good legal assistance, British Foreign Minister Bill Rammell said. “The British government is opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances,” Rammell said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sachs thanks harassers
A British newspaper says actor Andrew Sachs has thanked talk show host Jonathan Ross and comedian Russell Brand for raising his profile as a result of a radio skit that involved leaving lewd messages on the actor’s answering machine. The BBC apologized and was fined after Ross and Brand left sexually explicit messages about Sachs’ granddaughter. Sachs told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Saturday that his profile rose as a result of the prank. As he put it, “they did me good.” Sachs is best known for playing Spanish waiter Manuel in the 1970s program, Fawlty Towers. He is now about to take a role in a British soap opera. Brand quit his BBC radio show after the scandal and Ross was suspended for 12 weeks without pay.
■GERMANY
Police injured on May Day
More than 270 police officers were injured in this year’s May Day riots in the German capital, prompting criticism on Saturday of Berlin security officials and calls for more officers. Though the majority of the 273 officers suffered only minor injuries on Friday, 14 were badly enough hurt that they will need to take time off work, said Berlin police chief Dieter Glietsch. In all, 5,800 police officers were on hand. They used tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons as some of the roughly 5,000 leftist demonstrators, marching under the motto “capitalism is war and crisis,” threw stones and bottles.
■JORDAN
Jail torture continues: report
A report released on Saturday by the state-funded National Center for Human Rights (NCHR) found “torture” still continued at jails and a retreat in public freedoms. Anti-torture efforts in Jordan are still “modest and hesitant,” the report said. “There are drawbacks in the national campaign for ensuring the physical safety and preventing torture due to inadequate legislations, which most of the time enable those who commit the crime of torture to escape unpunished,” the report said.
■RUSSIA
Gas explosion kills seven
Seven people died and seven were injured when a gas tank exploded yesterday in a wooden apartment building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk and fire engulfed the building, Russian news agencies reported. “The rubble is being sorted through. It’s now established that seven people died in the fire. Another seven were hospitalized with burns,” a spokesman said.
■IRAN
Woman executed for murder
Iran has hanged a young woman who was convicted of murder when she was a minor, her lawyer said on Saturday, drawing condemnation from international human rights groups who have sought to end capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman on Friday in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003. Iran executes more juvenile offenders than any other nation — eight last year and 42 since 1990, according to Amnesty International. Delara Darabi initially pleaded guilty to killing her father’s cousin, but later retracted her confession and said her boyfriend carried out the killing. She told a judge that she had initially confessed because her boyfriend told her that, as a minor, she would not be executed and she could save him from being put to death, her lawyer said. Her boyfriend, 19 at the time of the killing, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Mystery donor strikes again
The University of Alaska Anchorage has been given US$7 million by a mystery donor who has now given at least US$81.5 million in total to 15 colleges run by women, school chancellor Fran Ulmer said on Friday. School officials said US$6 million would be used for scholarships targeting women and minorities and the rest for a science learning center opening next fall. The anonymous donor has been giving the money over the past two months.
■UNITED STATES
Police fine drunken cowboy
A man in a cowboy hat who rode a horse through a Denver, Colorado, suburb has been cited for riding an animal under the influence. Police say Brian Drone was given a US$25 traffic violation ticket in a strip mall parking lot Friday. Drone told KUSA-TV that he was out for a “joyride” in Arvada with his horse, Cricket. Police said deciding what to do with the horse was a “tricky call” because “you can tow a car” in typical drunk driving cases. A stable owner offered Drone and his horse a ride home.
■UNITED STATES
Police find suspect’s Jeep
Police say they have found a vehicle that belongs to a former University of Georgia professor suspected of killing his wife and two other people outside a community theater last week. Athens-Clarke police said on Friday morning that they found George Zinkhan’s vehicle overnight in Clarke County, where the university is located. Police have not yet found Zinkhan, who was last seen driving a red Jeep after dropping his children off with a neighbor. The 57-year-old former business professor is wanted in the April 25 shooting of his wife and two members of her community theater group.
■UNITED STATES
Company recalls Hola Pops
A food distribution company in Calexico, California, is recalling candy imported from Mexico because it contains high levels of lead. King Midas Inc said on Friday it was warning stores to stop selling Hola Pop, a caramel lollipop with a salted apricot in the center. The company says recent analysis of Hola Pop by the California Department of Public Health found that the candy contained a high level of lead.
■UNITED STATES
Porta-potties cushion crash
A small airplane dropping from the sky after its engine failed wound up on a cushioning bunch of portable toilets — and the pilot was able to walk away apparently unhurt. Gary Mayor of the Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna 182 crashed on Friday afternoon in Washington state after taking off from Thun Field, an airfield owned by Pierce County southeast of Tacoma. Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said the plane was about 45m in the air when the engine quit and that the pilot tried to turn around to land but didn’t make it. The plane hit a fence, flipped over and landed upside down on top of the portable toilets in a storage yard.
■UNITED STATES
Jack Kemp dies of cancer
Jack Kemp, a star football quarterback who became a congressman, Cabinet secretary and Republican vice presidential nominee, died on Saturday at age 73. Kemp died of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, his son Jimmy Kemp said. He served 18 years as a congressman from Buffalo, New York, after starring with the Buffalo Bills. As a Representative, he championed tax cuts, free trade and a return to the gold standard. Kemp was Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole’s running mate in the 1996 election.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
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