MALAYSIA
Smoking orangutan to quit
A wildlife official says a captive orangutan often spotted smoking cigarettes given to her by zoo visitors is being forced to kick the habit. Government authorities seized the adult ape named Shirley from a state-run zoo in Johor State last week after she and several other animals there were deemed to be living in poor conditions. Shirley is now being quarantined at another zoo in a neighboring state and is expected to be sent to a wildlife center on Borneo Island within weeks. Melaka Zoo director Ahmad Azhar Mohammed said yesterday that Shirley is not being provided with any more cigarettes because “smoking is not normal behavior for orangutans.”
CAMBODIA
Cow boy doing well
An 18-month-old boy who has suckled milk directly from a cow daily for more than a month is in fine health, the child’s grandfather said on Sunday. The boy, Tha Sophat, made international headlines after his grandfather revealed he had been feeding himself directly from a cow since July when a storm destroyed his home and his parents left for Thailand to find work. After he stopped breastfeeding from his mother, the boy became ill, said the 46-year-old grandfather. The boy watched a calf nurse from its mother, and began to do the same thing, feeding directly from the cow each day, Um Oeung added. When the grandfather pulled him away, the boy cried, so he let him continue, Um Oeung said.
NEPAL
Young Tibetans arrested
Twenty Tibetan teenagers were detained for entering the country illegally from China, police said yesterday, weeks after the government assured Beijing that it would crack down on anti-China activity. The 15 boys and five girls, aged 16 to 18, were held at a remote western Himalayan village after crossing into the country on foot from China. “They were arrested by the local police on Sunday morning,” police spokesman Binod Singh said. They are expected to be given safe passage through the country under an informal agreement with the UN, which will help them to travel on to India, where the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama lives in exile.
BANGLADESH
Border guards jailed
A court jailed 182 border guards yesterday for their role in a bloody 2009 military mutiny, bringing the total number of soldiers imprisoned for the unrest to more than 3,000. Scores of senior army officers were killed during an uprising that began when soldiers at the Bangladeshi Rifles headquarters in Dhaka went on a killing spree. The special military court in Dhaka read out the sentences against 187 border guards, handing 182 of them prison terms of up to seven years, state prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain said. “Among the convicted guards, 20 were sentenced to the maximum seven years in prison. Five were found not guilty,” he said. The mutiny spread from Dhaka to border posts across the country in the worst military rebellion in the nation’s 40-year history. Dozens of special courts — run by the military using a mix of martial and civilian law — were set up to prosecute mutineers, with the first verdict convicting 29 soldiers being handed down in April last year. The courts do not allow defendants to have lawyers, and there is no right of appeal. Seven years in jail is the maximum penalty they can impose. Soldiers accused of more serious offences — including murder — are being tried separately in civilian courts, and could face the death penalty if convicted.
SPAIN
Raging bull draws thousands
A 550kg bull drew more than 3,000 fans to the town of Sueca on Sunday after building up a reputation as the biggest killer in the popular summer game of bull-dodging. The bull, called Raton, meaning mouse, was appearing for the first time since it gored a man to death in the nearby town of Xativa on Aug. 15. Debate has raged in newspapers over the exact number of people killed by Raton, which is let loose in bullrings where people are encouraged to jump in and taunt it. It is known to have gored a 30-year-old man to death in Xativa and to have killed another man in Puerto de Sagunto in 2006.
SWITZERLAND
Carrier pigeons abducted
Thieves in the small town of Weiningen near Zurich stole 84 carrier pigeons worth about 12,000 francs (US$13,500), local police reported on Sunday. Sometime between Saturday and Sunday, thieves entered a garden-house breeding station overnight “and stole 84 gray, black and brown carrier pigeons,” the Zurich canton police said in a press release. Witnesses are encouraged to come forward, the police added.
ITALY
Man charged in sex death
Prosecutors have charged a 42-year-old man with killing a female student who suffocated during a sex-game gone wrong, media reported on Sunday. Soter Mule allegedly tied Paola Caputo, 24, to another woman while performing a Japanese sado-masochist technique known as shibari. The engineer was originally held for murder, but authorities in Rome believe Caputo and her friend consented to the game. Investigators have so far established that the three spent the night drinking and using drugs at a club before Caputo, said to be Soter’s long-term girlfriend, suggested going to the car park of the building in a Rome suburb, where she worked as a caretaker. The two women remained clothed while they were tied tightly together with the same rope and suspended 2m off the ground. The balancing act meant that when the unnamed woman fainted, Caputo was suffocated. Caputo’s 23-year-old friend was taken to hospital in a serious, but not life-threatening condition.
IRAN
GLBT Facebook defies ban
The nation’s gay and lesbian community is struggling to win some recognition by coming out in defiance of a regime that criminalizes homosexuality. A group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians have posted videos of themselves on Facebook in a campaign to highlight the discrimination against sexual minorities in a country where homosexuals are put to death. Hundreds of Iranians in and outside the country have joined a Facebook page, called “we are everywhere,” which encourages members to share their personal stories online.
IRAN
Drug traffickers hanged
Five convicted drug traffickers were hanged in prison in the central city of Shahroud, Fars news agency reported. It did not identify those executed. The latest hanging brings to 192 the number of executions reported in the country so far this year, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on media and official reports. Local media reported 179 hangings last year, but international human rights groups say the actual number was much higher, ranking the nation second only to China in the number of people it executed last year.
MEXICO
Dalai Lama draws thousands
Thousands gathered to listen to the Dalai Lama in Mexico City on Sunday, after China complained about President Felipe Calderon’s meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. “We’re all equal, we all want to have a happy life and we all have rights to be happy,” the Dalai Lama told a crowd of about 35,000 people, some carrying banners reading “Mexico loves Tibet.” The speech, made during the spiritual leader’s third visit to the country, was entitled “Finding Happiness in Difficult Times.”
PERU
Kidnap victim released
The son of a South Korean businessman was freed after a gang held him for 19 days demanding a US$1.8 million ransom, police said on Sunday. “Kyoung Kim Hee, 18, was released about midnight in a neighborhood on Lima’s south end and is now with his loved ones,” said General Felix Murga, the police investigating unit chief. Police said they did not believe a ransom was paid. The victim was kidnapped last month when he was being driven to school by abductors who had dressed up as policemen.
CHILE
Coup anniversary marked
The country commemorated on Sunday the 38th anniversary of the coup that launched the 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, remembering the more than 3,000 people killed under the regime. Convened by a group of relatives of disappeared detainees, thousands of people gathered in downtown Santiago for a march to a memorial erected at a cemetery to commemorate the victims of the late general’s bloody 1973 to 1990 dictatorship. The demonstrators marched peacefully through the streets of the capital, unable to approach the presidential palace La Moneda, kept under tight security. It was there that the socialist government of former president Salvador Allende, the first and only Marxist to come to power in the country through a popular vote, died on Sept. 11, 1973, as military forces surrounded the palace. He is believed to have committed suicide. However, the march in his memory and those of the dictatorship’s victims ended with incidents near the cemetery, where a group of hooded men began to confront the police guarding La Moneda.
AUSTRALIA
‘Spartacus’ remake star dies
Andy Whitfield, who played the title role in the hit cable series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, has died at age 39, according to representatives and family. Whitfield died on Sunday in Sydney, 18 months after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, manager Sam Maydew said in Los Angeles. Whitfield — who was born in Wales and moved to Australia in 1999 — was a virtual unknown when he was cast as the legendary Thracian slave in Spartacus, a role made famous by Kirk Douglas in the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film. Whitfield appeared in all 13 episodes of the first season that aired last year and was preparing to shoot the second when he was diagnosed with cancer.
UNITED STATES
Actor Cliff Robertson dies
Oscar-winning actor Cliff Robertson, who rocketed to fame after playing slain former US president John F. Kennedy, died on Saturday at the age of 88, the Los Angeles Times reported. The newspaper said Robertson passed away of natural causes at Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island, New York. In the course of his career, Robertson appeared in about 60 movies, including Charly and Obsession.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
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