■ NEW ZEALAND
60 beached whales dead
Nearly 60 pilot whales have died after becoming stranded on a beach in the far north yesterday, conservation officials said. The mass stranding of a pod of 73 whales was discovered mid-morning and Carolyn Smith from the Department of Conservation said the whales probably beached overnight, which was why so many died before a rescue operation was launched. The area around Kaitaia beach was experiencing heavy rain and wind, which Smith said helped the surviving whales by ensuring they did not dry out but made it difficult for rescuers preparing to refloat the mammals.
■ CHINA
Boat capsizes, four missing
Four people were missing after a fishing boat rented by students capsized yesterday in the northeast in strong winds, Xinhua news agency reported. The incident happened just before 8am on the Songhua river in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, Xinhua said, citing local officials. Four people had so far been saved, and rescue operations were under way, the report said. , noting that the water was fast-flowing.Xinhua had previously said the vessel was a passenger ferry, but later revised its report to say it was a fishing boat rented by six students from a couple, who were apparently also on board.
■ THAILAND
Australian to be freed
An Australian man arrested for joining violent street protests against the government was to be freed after pleading guilty yesterday to breaching the kingdom’s emergency laws, a court ruled. Conor David Purcell, 30, was to be released because he has already served his sentence of three months, reduced to six weeks because he admitted the charges. “After consideration of his action the court found that he is guilty, but because he is a foreigner he may not have understood the law,” Judge Somchart Lertlikhitworakul said. Purcell was to be taken from prison to an immigration facility and was expected to be deported to Australia. “I feel wonderful really as it is over,” he said after the hearing.
■ CHINA
Internet access widespread
Access to the Internet is as widespread in the country, home to the world’s largest online population, as it is in developed nations, according to a study cited yesterday by state media. About a quarter of the nation’s 420 million web users live in rural areas where Internet access exists in 91.5 percent of communities, the People’s Daily said, citing the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences study. Across the nation, 70 percent of high schools, more than 60 percent of vocational schools, about 40 percent of middle schools and 12 percent of primary schools have Internet access, the study said. The government said in a white paper on the Internet issued in June that it hoped to make the Internet available to 45 percent of its 1.3 billion-strong population in the next five years.
■ INDIA
Russia-leased sub sets sail
Russia has reportedly leased a nuclear-powered submarine to India. The RIA Novosti and Interfax news agencies said yesterday the Nerpa submarine manned by an Indian crew has sailed to India. The sub had an accident that killed 20 Russian seamen during sea trials in 2008. Its fire-extinguishing system activated in error, spewing Freon gas that suffocated the victims and injured 21 others. Officials have blamed the accident on human error, but details of the official investigation have been kept under wraps.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Ex-soldier jailed over eggs
A former special forces soldier was jailed on Thursday for attempting to sneak out of Britain with a stash of 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs strapped to his body. Jeffrey Lendrum, 48, was trying to get to Dubai, where such eggs can fetch £5,000 (US$11,000) each on the black market. He was caught when a cleaner spotted him behaving suspiciously at Birmingham International Airport in May. Judge Christopher Hodson sentenced him to 30 months in jail. Lendrum, a former member of the special forces of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before its independence, put his military training to use — sometimes rappelling down a cliff or lowering himself from a helicopter to reach remote nests.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Broadcaster in hot water
A veteran broadcaster was due to be told yesterday that he faces charges of wasting police time after claiming in a TV documentary that he killed an ex-lover who had AIDS, a report said. Ray Gosling was arrested for murder in February after making the on-screen confession. The BBC presenter, 71, said he smothered the unnamed man as he lay seriously ill in hospital “in the early period of AIDS” — likely to be the 1980s. However, the Times newspaper reported yesterday that after several months of investigation detectives had not found any evidence to support the claim.
■ NETHERLANDS
Holocaust cartoon earns fine
A Muslim group was fined 2,500 euros (US$3,200) for publishing a cartoon which suggested the Holocaust was made up or exaggerated by Jews, an appeals court ruled on Thursday. The court in Arnhem said the cartoon, published on the Web site of the Arab European League, was “unnecessarily hurtful.” The cartoon shows two men in Auschwitz looking at several dead bodies. “I don’t think they are Jews,” says one man. The other man replies: “We have to get to the 6,000,000 [figure] somehow.” The group says it had no intention of disputing the Holocaust, but wanted to highlight what it described as double standards in free speech.
■ ROMANIA
Bank denies anti-Semitism
The central bank on Thursday said it would not withdraw from circulation a coin featuring an image of a prime minister who stripped Jews of their citizenship before World War II, stressing it had not intended to send an anti-Semitic message. The coin depicts the late patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1925 to 1939 and was prime minister from 1938 to 1939. A commission set up by the National Bank to reconsider it said it was minted only as one of five to commemorate Romania’s five patriarchs. The bank said in a statement that the set of coins were “decisively and intrinsically linked ... to an institution which had an essential role in defining and developing the national and cultural identity of Romania.”
■SPAIN
Bull leaves 40 injured
Forty people, including a 10-year-old, were injured when a bull leapt over barriers at a bullring and ran among the spectators. The child was reported to be in intensive care with abdominal injuries in hospital and three people were in the emergency ward. The bull escaped from the ring in Tafalla, in the Navarra region on Wednesday. Video footage showed the bull landing in the stands after clearing two 1.5m barriers around the ring and a narrow alley where bullfighters and officials stand. The bull was eventually cornered in the stands and then killed.
■ UNITED STATES
Iran needs a year for nukes
Washington officials have convinced Israel that Iran needs at least a year to develop a nuclear weapon, dimming prospects of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the New York Times reported late on Thursday. Israeli officials thought Iran could develop nuclear weapons within months. However, President Barack Obama’s top adviser on nuclear issues, Gary Samore, told the Times he thinks it would take Tehran “roughly a year” to turn low-enriched uranium into weapons-grade material. “A year is a very long period of time,” Samore was quoted by the newspaper in a report posted on its Web site. The assessment is based on US intelligence and international inspectors’ reports. Israeli officials have indicated that if they thought Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, they would probably take military action.
■ FRANCE
Radical imam expelled
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux says that a radical Muslim imam and a “preacher of hate” has been expelled to his Egyptian homeland on Thursday. A statement says that Ali Ibrahim El Soudany, a former prayer leader at a mosque in Pantin, just northeast of Paris, was expelled in January, then showed up again. Hortefeux said El Soudany repeatedly spoke in a “violently hostile” manner against the West.
■ MEXICO
Caracas press ban criticized
The UN Human Rights Council’s investigator on freedom of expression says a Venezuelan court’s ban on publishing information and photos about violence is a form of prior censorship and should be changed. UN investigator Frank La Rue and colleague Catalina Botero of the Organization of American States are visiting Mexico to investigate violence against journalists. They said in a statement on Thursday that Venezuela’s court order “imposes limits that are so vague and imprecise that they prevent the written press from publishing any information that could upset or bother the government.” The court ruled on Tuesday after the newspaper El Nacional published photos of bodies accumulating at a morgue.
■ ISRAEL
Radical rabbi released
A court has ordered the release of a settler rabbi detained after he outlined in a book cases in which he said it is permissible to kill non-Jews, including babies, an ultra-nationalist legal watchdog group said yesterday. Yosef Elitzur, a resident of the hardline Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of incitement to violence. A court in Rishon LeZion, near Tel Aviv, ordered him released the same day saying police had failed to call him in first for questioning, according to the Honenu group. The King’s Torah, written by Elitzur and another rabbi, claims that babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us,” the Haaretz newspaper said.
■UNITED STATES
Fugitive, fiancee caught
An escaped prison inmate and his fiancee, who have been on the run for weeks amid a nationwide manhunt, were captured on Thursday evening in Arizona after being spotted at a campground by Forest Service workers. Sergeant Richard Guinn of the Apache County Sheriff’s Office said a team of officers arrested John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch without incident. McCluskey was among three prisoners who escaped July 30 from a privately operated state prison in Kingman.
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