■PAKISTAN
Mentally ill woman freed
The High Court has ordered the release of a mentally ill women accused of blasphemy who has been held without trial for 14 years, a court official and her lawyer said on Thursday. Police arrested Zaibun Nisa, now 55, in 1996 outside Islamabad after a Muslim cleric registered a complaint about the desecration of a copy of the Koran. She has been held in the prison section of a mental hospital in Lahore ever since because no one pursued her case. Nisa will be put in a shelter for homeless people until her family is found, her lawyer said. Human rights activists have long called for the repeal of the blasphemy law, which they say discriminates against non-Muslim religious minorities and is also used to settle personal scores.
■THAILAND
Conductor’s visa canceled
The government has cancelled the visa of Russian conductor Mikhail Pletnev, who was accused of child molestation earlier this month. Pletnev, who owns a home in Pattaya, now faces deportation even if charges against him are dropped. “The Thai immigration bureau has blacklisted [Pletnev] on the grounds that his behavior is detrimental to Thailand,” Major General Pansak Kasamsan said. Pletnev has been accused of raping a 14-year-old and could serve up to 20 years in jail. He has denied the charges and is out on bail.
■THAILAND
Culture chief wants letters
Facebook and Twitter are being blamed for students’ poor language skills — and the Culture Ministry is suggesting a return to the bygone tradition of writing letters. A survey by the ministry found that four out of 10 youths think “proper Thai” should only be used at formal occasions. Roughly a third of are not concerned about the misspellings, abbreviations and grammatical mistakes that are common in text messaging and social media conversations. “We must preserve our national language. If nobody sees its importance, then we’re doomed,” Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombut said on Thursday, while announcing the results of the nationwide survey, which polled 6,500 youths over the age of 13.
■SOUTH KOREA
Matchmaking firms eyed
The government will set up a task force to reform the international matchmaking business following the fatal stabbing of a Vietnamese woman by her mentally ill husband, officials said yesterday. The task force will be manned by officials from the ministries of justice, gender equality, culture and foreign affairs. It will discuss measures ranging from changing how international marriage brokerage businesses are run to helping foreign spouses settle in the country. Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc, 20, was beaten and stabbed to death by her 47-year-old husband on July 8, eight days after she arrived in Busan. He had been treated 57 times for schizophrenia since July 2005, police said. Ngoc’s family will receive 30 million won (US$25,000) in compensation, newspaper reports said.
■AUSTRALIA
Bloom marries model Kerr
Actor Orlando Bloom and model Miranda Kerr have married, her employer said yesterday. Upscale department store David Jones, which employs the 27-year-old Kerr as a fashion ambassador, said she will not attend a Spring season launch on Aug. 3 because she was honeymooning with the 33-year-old British star of Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. The statement did not say where or when they had married.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Inequalities still rising
Inequalities in early deaths between different parts of Britain have nearly surpassed those seen shortly before the economic crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression, a new study said yesterday. “Inequalities continued to rise steadily during the first decade of the 21st century ... and could become worse,” said the study, published in the British Medical Journal’s online edition. The study said the divide had “persisted over many years and recent government efforts to reduce them have not had any great impact as yet.” The study found that the poorest people were 1.6 times more likely to die prematurely than the most affluent people in 1990-1991.
■France
Army acts against al-Qaeda
The government said yesterday it had taken part in a military operation against al-Qaeda’s north African wing with Mauritanian troops after receiving no signs of life of one of its citizens held by the group. “The terrorist group targeted by the Mauritanian army is the one that executed a British hostage a year ago and has refused to give a proof of life or engage in negotiations to release our compatriot Michel Germaneau,” a statement from the Ministry of Defense said. Germaneau was taken hostage in April and a deadline set by the Islamic group for killing the 78-year-old expires next week.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Queen takes back invitation
Buckingham Palace has revoked a party invitation to far-right leader Nick Griffin, saying he had politicized the event. Griffin leads the British National Party, a far-right, anti-immigrant group. Because he was elected to the European Parliament last year, Griffin is automatically eligible to attend one of the three annual garden parties held at Buckingham Palace. The prospect of Griffin meeting the queen over cucumber sandwiches outraged many Britons, who called on the monarch to revoke the invite. The palace says Griffin’s invitation was canceled because he tried to “blatantly politicize” his attendance by boasting about it in the media.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Stiffer penalties endorsed
Conservationists are pressing for tougher laws to combat wildlife crime on Scottish grouse moors after a rise in poisoning cases against birds of prey such as golden eagles and red kites last year. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Scotland said ministers should make grouse moor owners legally responsible for attacks on birds of prey on their estates because existing laws and voluntary codes had failed. The conservation charity said the latest official figures showed there were 46 proven poisoning incidents targeting birds of prey last year, the most in two decades. Some gamekeepers target birds of prey because they eat game birds kept for commercial and private shooting.
■Kenya
Guards defect to Shabab
Somali officials acknowledged on Thursday that members of the presidential guard had defected to the Shabab, the radical Islamist insurgent group that claimed responsibility for the recent bombings in Uganda that killed more than 70 people watching the final game of the World Cup. The defection of some of the president’s best-trained men is the latest setback for the country’s beleaguered transitional government, which has lost important pieces of territory in the past few days. Insurgents are now 274m — a rifle shot away — from the presidential palace.
■SURINAME
Former dictator elected
A former dictator and convicted drug trafficker who has been elected president of Suriname has promised not to interfere in his trial for allegedly murdering opponents during his military rule. Desi Bouterse, a one-time pariah who has made a remarkable political comeback, said he would respect democratic norms and judicial independence. Parliament elected him president earlier this week after months of negotiations. Bouterse’s coalition, called the Mega Combination, needed a small party’s backing to clinch his return to power. Bouterse seized power in 1980 soon after independence from the Netherlands. He was accused of human rights violations, notably the December 1982 massacre of 15 politicians, journalists and other regime critics.
■UNITED STATES
Crane rigger acquitted
The lone person criminally charged in a construction crane collapse in Manhattan that killed seven people was acquitted on Thursday after challenging the conclusion prosecutors, federal regulators and city officials had all reached about what caused the accident. Crane rigger William Rapetti’s acquittal shifts the debate over responsibility for the March 2008 collapse into civil court, where some of the roster of lawsuits against Rapetti and others are scheduled to start going to trial next month. His criminal trial — which offered competing accounts of bad crane parts and poor judgment — is likely to help shape the civil cases, attorneys said. A red-eyed Rapetti hugged his sobbing wife, Audrey, after Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Roger Hayes cleared him and his company of manslaughter and other charges that could have sent him to prison for up to 15 years.
■MEXICO
Eight die in gun battle
Eight suspected drug gang gunmen died in a battle with Mexican soldiers in the remote mountains of northern Chihuahua State, the federal Public Safety Department said on Thursday. The department cited an internal army report saying the clash occurred near the rural town of Madera, about 230km south of the US border. The gunmen apparently opened fire on an army patrol, but the Defense Department did not offer any information on the attack. The area is frequently used by gangs to produce and traffic drugs.
■UNITED STATES
Thief steals wrong iPhone
A man accused of swiping an Apple iPhone out of a woman’s hand in San Francisco may have been shocked when police found him only nine minutes later. It turns out the phone had been tracking his every move. The iPhone was being used to test a new, real-time GPS tracking application and the woman holding it was an intern for the software’s maker, Mountain View-based Covia Labs. Covia chief executive David Kahn had sent the intern into the street to demonstrate the software. Police said Horatio Toure snatched it and sped away on a bicycle.
■UNITED STATES
Family sues to void marriage
The family of a southeast Texas firefighter killed in a July 4 blaze is suing to void his marriage to his transgender widow. The family of Thomas Araguz III wants to prevent his widow, Nikki Araguz, from collecting any of his death benefits because she was born a man and Texas doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages, but the widow said on Thursday her marriage was not a fraud. The Wharton Volunteer Fire Department captain died while fighting a blaze at an egg farm southwest of Houston.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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