■CHINA
Pro-Iran hackers hit Baidu
Internet search engine Baidu was hacked yesterday in what state media said was an attack by a pro-Iranian government group that replaced the usual home page with an Iranian flag. Internet users found a message saying “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,” the People’s Daily reported on its Web site. Below a sentence in Farsi read, “In reaction to the US authorities’ intervention in Iran’s internal affairs. This is a warning,” the report said. “The Iranian Cyber Army” was the name used by hackers who briefly shut down Twitter last month. The reason for the attack was not clear.
■CHINA
Tibet’s governor resigns
The governor of Tibet has tendered his resignation, state-owned media said yesterday, as Beijing convened a meeting to spur economic growth and quell dissatisfaction in the region. Qiangba Pingcuo, an ethnic Tibetan, was governor during demonstrations by Tibetans in Lhasa that turned deadly on March 14, 2008. Xinhua did not give a reason for his resignation, say whether the resignation would be accepted or who his replacement would be. He is 62, three years shy of China’s mandatory retirement age.
■AUSTRALIA
TV can kill: research
People who spend more than four hours in front of the TV each day have a far higher risk of dying early than those who limit their viewing, researchers in an Australian study said yesterday in a report published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “Compared to people who watch less than two hours of television per day, people who watch more than four hours per day have a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes,” researcher David Dunstan said. They also have an 80 percent increased risk from cardiovascular disease, he said. The findings come from a six-year study into the viewing habits of some 8,800 Australians.
■HONG KONG
‘Milkshake’ killer appeals
A 45-year-old American woman dubbed the “milkshake murderer” for the killing of her high-flying banker husband launched her final appeal yesterday in the Court of Final Appeal. Nancy Kissel was convicted of murdering her husband in 2003 by lacing a strawberry milkshake with a cocktail of sedatives and bludgeoning him to death with a lead ornament. She was sentenced to life in prison in 2005. Kissel claimed she was acting in self-defense after her husband attacked her with a baseball bat. Her defense team is challenging the conviction on the grounds that prosecutors breached evidence rules.
■SOUTH KOREA
Cold sparks blackout fears
Unusually icy weather has caused a surge in power demand, sparking concern about possible blackouts. Knowledge Economy Minister Choi Kyung-hwan said the country used a record amount of electricity over the past four days, peaking at 68.56 million kilowatts last Friday morning. This is 5.35 million kilowatts more than recorded during last summer’s peak.
■AUSTRALIA
Eight-year-olds save man
Two eight-year-old boys in a young lifeguards training program rescued a man who was struggling in the ocean off Northcliffe beach, in Queensland. Jake Satherley told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio that he and friend Spencer Jeams saw a middle-aged man saying, “‘Help, help,’ so we went over to him and pulled him on our board.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Court rejects Gurkha case
Gurkha veterans in Nepal expressed disappointment yesterday at a British court’s decision to reject a test case seeking equal pension rights for the former soldiers. Those who retired after July 1, 1997, were granted equal pensions in 2007, but around 24,000 veterans who retired before that date and their dependents receive only a third of what their British counterparts get. The British government defended the High Court challenge, arguing that Gurkha veterans’ pensions are paid over a longer time period than those of their British counterparts.
■NETHERLANDS
Frank diary-keeper dies
The woman who saved Anne Frank’s diary from the Nazis, Miep Gies, died on Monday after a brief illness, her Web site announced. She was 100 years old. Gies was the last surviving and best known of the group who helped Frank and her family hide from the Nazis during World War II. She collected and hid the teenager’s diary after the Nazi secret police discovered their hiding place in an Amsterdam office building. Anne Frank died from disease at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but her father Otto returned from Auschwitz and Gies gave him his daughter’s diary.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Teen conducts symphony
Teenager Alexander Prior, who dislikes being tagged a musical prodigy, has taken up the baton at the Seattle Symphony and been named assistant to guest conductors from this month to July. This is the first professional appointment for 17-year-old Prior, a conductor and composer, who made his British conducting debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in March 2007 and has conducted major orchestras in Europe. British-born Prior, who is the great-great-grandson of renowned Russian actor and theatre director Constantin Stanislavski, started playing the piano aged three and was composing by eight.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Vicar blesses BlackBerrys
Reverend Canon David Parrott blessed a symbolic heap of laptops and smart phones on the altar of London’s 17th-century St Lawrence Jewry church on Monday, an effort, he said, to remind the capital’s busy office workers that God’s grace can reach them in many ways. “It’s the technology that is our daily working tool, and it’s a technology we should bless,” Parrott said. Parishioners took out cell phones as Parrott recited a blessing over them and their electronic devices. Parrott said the blessing ceremony was an update of a traditional back-to-work ceremony called “Plow Monday,” in which villagers gathered to bless a symbolic farming implement dragged to the church’s door. Parrott said that ceremony didn’t have much relevance for his church, which was “nowhere near a field in the middle of London.”
■IRAQ
Baghdad tightens security
Security forces closed off access to large portions of Baghdad yesterday and conducted a vast search operation after receiving information on possible attacks, a military spokesman said. Security forces “have taken preventative security measures as part of a search operation in most of Baghdad’s quarters which has blocked traffic,” said Qassim Atta, spokesman for the city’s military command. The capital was gridlocked with vehicles backed up as several bridges and routes into the city were closed, forcing people to travel on foot as military helicopters circled overhead.
■UNITED STATES
Pang’s death was suicide
The death of California financier Danny Pang (彭日成) was a suicide, Orange County, California, sheriff’s officials and coroner’s investigators said on Monday. Pang, a Taiwanese immigrant, died on Sept. 12 at a hospital while he was facing charges of fraud. Supervising Deputy Coroner Kelly Keyes said Pang’s death was caused by a combination of seven different drugs: Antidepressants, pain relievers, anti-anxiety medication and THC, which is found in marijuana. Pang was indicted in July on charges of illegally structuring financial transactions to evade currency-reporting requirements, just months after the Securities and Exchange Commission seized his assets and those of his two investment companies. The SEC alleged Pang and his companies raised hundreds of millions of US dollars from mostly Taiwanese investors through fraudulent securities.
■CHILE
Museum of Memory opened
The Museum of Memory was inaugurated in Santiago on Monday to make sure the tens of thousands of people who were imprisoned, killed or disappeared during General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship are not forgotten. President Michelle Bachelet, who was herself detained and tortured during Chile’s 1973-1990 military regime, said the museum sends a powerful signal of the country’s “desire to never again suffer a tragedy like the one we are remembering here.” The inauguration stirred angry memories days before Chile’s presidential runoff election. Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who is in charge of creating a similar museum in his homeland, was booed as he gave his speech because of his support for conservative candidate Sebastian Pinera. Pinera’s presidential candidacy is backed by conservative parties, including two that at the time supported the dictatorship.
■CANADA
Pet tiger kills owner
A man who kept exotic cats behind his farmhouse was mauled to death by his 295kg pet tiger, police said on Monday. Norman Buwalda, a 66-year-old collector of wild animals, was found dead in the tiger’s pen on Sunday afternoon at the property in western Ontario. Troy Carlson, a constable for the Ontario Provincial Police who attended to the incident, said Buwalda’s family and officials of nearby Southwold township would decide what to do with the tiger. The cat was found pacing inside the compound in which it was kept when police arrived on the scene.
■UNITED STATES
Underwear thief sentenced
A Salem, Oregon, man caught while wearing his female neighbor’s underwear this summer has pleaded guilty to burglary. Marion County Judge Albin Norblad on Monday sentenced Randall Giesbers, 48, to three years probation. Prosecutor Courtland Geyer sought a four-year prison sentence, as the victim repeatedly had “intimate items” stolen in the year leading to the August arrest. Giesbers was caught in his neighbor’s garage, wearing only the woman’s underwear.
■UNITED STATES
Judge quits ‘American Idol’
American Idol judge Simon Cowell said on Monday he was leaving the top-rated Fox TV show at the end of his contract in May to launch his own show. Cowell told TV reporters in Los Angeles that he would be launching a US version of his own British singing competition show, The X Factor, on News Corp’s Fox in the fall next year.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Texas’ education board on Friday voted to allow Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools, joining other Republican-led US states that pushed this year to give religion a larger presence in public classrooms. The curriculum adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools to adopt, but they would receive additional funding if they do so. The materials could appear in classrooms as early as next school year. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has voiced support for the lesson plans, which were provided by the state’s education agency that oversees the more than
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
CONSPIRACIES: Kano suspended polio immunization in 2003 and 2004 following claims that polio vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile Zuwaira Muhammad sat beside her emaciated 10-month-old twins on a clinic bed in northern Nigeria, caring for them as they battled malnutrition and malaria. She would have her babies vaccinated if they regain their strength, but for many in Kano — a hotbed of anti-vaccine sentiment — the choice is not an obvious one. The infants have been admitted to the 75-bed clinic in the Unguwa Uku neighbourhood, one of only two in the city of 4.5 million run by French aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Kano has the highest malaria burden in Nigeria, but the city has long
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