■Nepal
Peace talks continue
Maoist rebel leaders and government ministers will meet again tomorrow to continue peace talks aimed at ending a seven-year insurgency in Nepal, state-run Radio Nepal said yesterday. It will be the second round of talks between the two sides since they agreed to a ceasefire in January. The government is expected to seek clarification of rebel demands made during the first meeting, including that jailed rebel supporters be released and their cases dismissed. The rebels are also seeking formation of an interim government and election of a special assembly to draft a new Constitution within the next six months.
■ Japan
New ship for stricken school
Hundreds cheered at a port in southwestern Japan yesterday as students of a fisheries school whose training ship was sunk by a US Navy submarine in a fatal accident two years ago took its replacement to sea for the first time. The 499-ton Ehime Maru left the port of Uwajima, about 680 km southwest of Tokyo, for a two-month cruise to Hawaii carrying a crew of 36 teachers and students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School, said vice-principal Hiroshi Miyaoka. It was launched by the school in December as a replacement for a training vessel of the same name that was sunk in a collision with the nuclear-powered submarine USS Greeneville off Oahu in February 2001. Nine people died in the accident.
■ Malaysia
Father jailed for raping girl
A Malaysian contractor with 50 children from four wives has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for raping his 11-year-old daughter last year. Tengku Ismail Tengku Ibrahim, 56, was found guilty of the offence by a court in the northeastern state of Kelantan but was spared an additional punishment of caning as he was above 50. "This thing should not have happened because you look like a religious and pious man. On top of that, you already have four wives to satisfy your desires," Judge Azman Abdullah said before passing sentence. Seven witnesses, including the victim now 12, her elder brother and mother who is Tengku Ismail's fourth wife, testified against him.
■ Australia
Dope phones cause a buzz
Marijuana-scented cell phone covers caused such a buzz in Australia that the company selling them had to pull them out of an technology fair in Sydney yesterday. Local authorities and New South Wales state Premier, Bob Carr, slammed the green, marijuana-motif covers as promoting drug use to young people. "A big over-reaction," said Robert Punch, owner, chief executive and founder of Corporate Phone Covers. "It's a novelty." Made in China and arrayed next to chocolate, strawberry, blueberry, cherry and rose-scented snap-on covers, the marijuana version sold well, though only to the over 18s.
■ Australia
New course is a real drag
An Australian college has introduced a drag queen make-up course to meet rising demand for the skill to hide beard shadows and to enter the glitzy glamour of the drag world. The short course, targeted at occasional drag queens, cross dressers and make-up students, has also sparked wider community interest from those who want to know the basics about the thick, theatrical style make-up. Students will have the opportunity to don wigs and their favourite dresses at the end of the make-up course as they take on their complete drag queen persona.
■Canada
Chretien considers US' NMD
Canada will likely decide next week whether to talk to Washington about joining a controversial US program to build a missile defense shield, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said on Tuesday. After a weekly Cabinet meeting which was dominated by discussions on the US national missile defense (NMD) program, Chretien faced a barrage of questions on the matter in parliament. "It is a different concept from the Star Wars of President Reagan," said Chretien, "and it is why we are looking at a position for Canada when the time comes for us to look into that." Analysts believe there may be deep divisions within Chretien's cabinet over NMD.
■ United Kingdom
Lords discuss can danger
British parliamentarians grappled Tuesday with an enduring household challenge -- the peel-back openings on cans of corned beef. During debate in the House of Lords, Labor peer Lord Harrison called for pressure on food makers to redesign what he called the "inherently unsafe" cans to save thousands of people from injuries each year. "There is a real problem about corned beef cans," agreed junior industry minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville. But he said the number of injuries from corned beef cans was declining, from 8,720 accidents before 1997 to about 3,000 a year today. Sainsbury said the public could not be protected from all household risks: 55 accidents a year were caused by putty, 73 by toothpaste and 823 by letters.
■ Belgium
Surreal painting aids airline
A painting by the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte commissioned in 1965 by his country's national airline, Sabena, has proved of real benefit to the now bankrupt company's 12,000 former employees. The picture, appropriately of a sky bird -- L'Oiseau de Ciel -- has sold at auction for Euros 3.4 million (US$3.8 million) to help the staff that the line was forced to pay off when it went into bankruptcy in November 2001. It is not known how much Sabena paid Magritte, who died two years later, but he was famously reported to have said that it was enough for him to "put butter on my spinach."
■ United States
Tides could provide energy
The powerful ocean tides that surge daily beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge may be tapped to generate electricity. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors have voted unanimously to launch a US$2 million pilot project to study harnessing wave energy to generate enough electricity to light more than 750 homes in this city of 790,000 residents. The tides that ebb and flow through the narrow Golden Gate would be channelled through an underwater concrete passageway with no moving parts, building up pressure and creating a suction effect to spin on-shore generators.
■ South Africa
Man beheads himself
A 31-year-old South African man walked into a supermarket, picked up a saw and decapitated himself in front of shocked shoppers. The incident happened early Tuesday in the port town of Richards Bay. Eyewitnesses said the man had appeared calm as he marched up to the meat counter, where he switched on a meat saw and placed his head under it. Staff and shoppers had no time to react. The man did not leave a suicide note and according to his family he was not suffering from depression.
■Liberia
Warlord dies in shootout
Sam Bockarie, a notorious West African warlord indicted for atrocities in Sierra Leone by a UN-backed court, was killed on Tuesday in a shootout with Liberian soldiers, the government said. The former hairdresser, diamond-miner and disco dance champion had recently been leading fighters helping rebels in Ivory Coast -- the latest war in a regional cycle of bloodletting that found Bockarie in his element. Bockarie, 40, had been indicted by a special court for alleged crimes against humanity in his homeland of Sierra Leone, including mass murder, widespread rape and hacking off the limbs of civilians including even small children.
■ Iraq
Baath commander held
Allied forces are holding a leading Baath Party and militia commander for central Iraq, the US Central Command (Centcom) said yesterday as the hunt for the most wanted Iraqis steps up. Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi was Baath Party Regional Command chairman and Baath militia leader for Wasit governorate, centered on the city of Al-Kut, about 150km south of Baghdad, a statement said. Ubaydi, "now in custody," according to Centcom, was number 32 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis and the two of hearts in the pack of cards issued to assist US troops.
■ Cuba
Dissidents held in solitary
Cuba has placed in solitary confinement most of the 75 people imprisoned in a recent crackdown on dissent that drew international condemnation, a human rights organization said on Tuesday. "The immense majority, 60 in all, are in solitary confinement in the punishment wards of the country's maximum security prisons," said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the illegal, but tolerated, Cuban Human Rights Commission. The dissidents were rounded up in late March, charged with working with the US to overthrow the communist government and sentenced to an average of 19 years in prison after one-day trials closed to foreign diplomats and journalists.
■ Israel
Explosion kills fugutive
A senior Hamas fugitive was killed in a mysterious explosion in the West Bank yesterday, and the Islamic militant group accused Israeli troops of setting off the blast. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. The blast went off at about 8:30am in an apartment in the village of Zawata near the Palestinian city of Nablus. The fugitive, Amin Fadel, 28, was killed. Fadel had rented the apartment four days earlier. He had been wanted by Israel for two years on suspicion of involvement in attacks on Israelis.
■ United Kingdom
MP in limbo over Iraq ties
The British Labour Party suspended controversial anti-war member of parliament George Galloway on Tuesday, a move that may bar him in the autumn from winning the Labour nomination for its safest parliamentary seat in Glasgow. The party's general secretary, David Triesman, suspended an outraged Galloway pending an internal party investigation into whether he has brought the party into disrepute by urging British troops not to fight in an illegal war against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Galloway is facing separate inquiries into his pro-Iraq fund, the Mariam Appeal, by the charity commission and by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
Agencies
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion