Month: September 2009

Kuala Lampur, September 02: French climber Alain Robert, known as “Spiderman” for his death-defying antics, was fined by a Malaysian court on Wednesday for scaling the nation’s tallest building.

Robert scrambled up the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers with his bare hands in less than two hours on Tuesday, finally reaching its peak after two unsuccessful attempts over the past decade.

“Climbing is my passion, climbing is my life,” the daredevil said outside court when asked why he had scaled the towers, which were for a time the world’s tallest buildings.

Taipei, September 02: A court has sentenced Taiwan’s former first lady to a year in jail for giving false testimony in a wide-ranging corruption case involving her and her husband, a preliminary verdict in a major trial expected to wrap up later this month.

Wu Shu-chen, wife of former President Chen Shui-bian, was convicted on charges of asking her children to lie during a probe into the graft case, the Taipei District Court said in a verdict handed out late Tuesday. It said that Chen’s son, daughter and son-in-law each were sentenced to six months in jail for perjury.

Tripoli, September 02: Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi marked the 40th anniversary of the bloodless coup that brought him to power, with celebrations attended by African, Arab and Latin American leaders but largely ignored by the West.

At the end of a two-hour show late Tuesday retracing the 40 years since Kadhafi ousted King Idriss in 1969, a brief video clip showed the return to Libya last month of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, but the western delegations present did not react.

Mexico City, September 02: Heavy winds, battering waves and intense rain pummelled residents and tourists in this vacation resort as Hurricane Jimena, one of the largest hurricanes this year, raked the coast late Tuesday.

Baja California prepared shelters to hold up to 29,000 people as Jimena, which weakened to a still threatening Category 3, churned northward offshore. But the state’s biggest resort, Los Cabos, appeared to escape major damage from the storm beyond power outages and mud-choked roads.

Beijing, September 02: A Chinese dissident who tried to organize a national meeting of the banned China Democracy Party has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for subverting state power, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Xie Changfa, 57, was tried in April and sentenced Tuesday by the Changsha Municipal Intermediate Court in southern China’s Hunan province, his lawyer Ma Gangquan said in a telephone interview. He plans to appeal, Ma said.

Los Angeles, September 02: Firefighters reported progress Tuesday against a gigantic blaze on the edge of Los Angeles that might be just a preview of even greater dangers ahead. The peak Southern California fire season hasn’t even started yet.

The worst fires typically flare up in the fall, when ferocious Santa Ana winds can drive fires out of wilderness areas and into suburbs. As a result, Southern California could be in for a long wildfire season.

San Francisco, September 02: Two US journalists jailed for illegally entering North Korea spoke about their ordeal for the first time on Tuesday, claiming they were forcibly dragged back into the Stalinist state from China by soldiers.

Television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years hard labor by North Korea before being freed following a diplomatic mission spearheaded by former US President Bill Clinton last month.