■ Vietnam
US may resettle Hmong
The US, still dealing with one of the legacies of the Vietnam War, said on Thursday it may accept thousands of ethnic Hmong refugees from Laos for resettlement. More than 15,000 Hmong people have been living for years around a Buddhist temple in Thailand after fleeing Laos following the communist takeover of the country in 1975. The CIA had enlisted the Hmong -- tough tribal people from the harsh countryside -- to spearhead US efforts to subdue Laotian communists during the conflict in neighboring Vietnam. Many Hmong, fearing retribution, fled after the communists took over Laos.
■ Hong Kong
Haircut leads to stabbing
An image-conscious prisoner stabbed his cellmate more than 20 times for cutting his hair badly then joking about it. Chan Ka-chun, 27, pleaded guilty to wounding with intent for using a pair of lawn trimmers to stab Fung Shing-hong in the head, back and hands to retaliate for the haircut he got a few hours earlier, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. Chan entered his plea on Wednesday in the District Court, the newspaper said, and Judge Peter Line delayed sentencing until he can get a psychiatric report. Fung suffered wounds to his neck, left eyebrow, left forearm and right wrist, but has since recovered and been released from prison, the report said.
■ New Zealand
Mates make own coffins
Builder Tom Pinfold and his friend Roy Booth, of Rotorua, had time on their hands when they retired and did not fancy filling it with golf, bowls or croquet. So, over a few drinks one day, and being capable "do-it-yourself" handymen, they came up with a novel idea: To build their own coffins. With Pinfold's building skills and his friend's assistance, they knocked up a couple of made-to-measure final resting places. Two friends were so impressed with their handiwork that they ordered individually tailored coffins for themselves, but the pair said their production line was stopping there.
"Four mates, four coffins," Pinfold told the local Daily Post. "And we've all had a bit of a laugh about it."
■ Japan
Corpse on street for months
Osaka police said yesterday that a dead body was ignored by crowds on a busy downtown corner for two months before a taxi driver finally alerted authorities. The partially decomposed body, believed to be that of a homeless man in his late 60s or early 70s, was found in front of a popular department store. A police official said the corner is among the busiest in the city, with about 1 million people passing through the area each day. The official said the cause of death had not been determined, but foul play was not suspected.
■ Hong Kong
Education chief plays games
The territory's education chief has admitted to playing computer games during a legislative meeting, a newspaper reported yesterday. Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li came under intense criticism over reports two weeks ago that he played the games during a Legislative Council debate over school funding cuts. Li was quoted as saying he felt out of place in a room full of people opposed to the cutbacks the government is considering -- so he withdrew into cyberspace. "I felt very lonely in the Legislative Council. That's why I played games," Li told an audience of school principals on Wednesday, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
■ Sweden
Lindh suspect tied by DNA
DNA from the man sus-pected of stabbing foreign minister Anna Lindh matches traces found on his clothes and the knife used to kill her, a Swedish prose-cutor said yesterday. "Taken together, the existing evi-dence is good," prosecutor Agneta Blidberg said in an interview with Swedish radio. Swedish police said on Wednesday that they had finished their initial inves-tigation in the Sept. 10 stabbing of Lindh and are ready to try Mijailo Mijai-lovic for murder. The report will be given this week to Mijailovic lawyer, who has three weeks to read the report before prosecutors can file charges. Mijailovic says he is innocent.
■ Rwanda
Genocide witnesses targets
Witnesses to Rwanda's genocide are being intimi-dated and killed to stop them testifying in court against those who took part in the 1994 slaughter of up to 1 million people, it was claimed Wednesday. Geno-cide suspects who fear prosecution are behind a spate of recent murders intended to deter people from cooperating with the courts, according to Ibuka, an umbrella organization for genocide survivors. One or two survivors are being killed on average each month, but recently three were killed in Gikongoro Province, it said. All were potential witnesses.
■ Iran
Inspection pact to be inked
Iran was scheduled to sign an agreement yesterday to allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh told reporters on Wednesday. Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said signing the agreement would demonstrate Iran's commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear power. "Signing the protocol will also end the propaganda campaign against the nuclear program," he said. On Oct. 21, Iran agreed to sign the additional protocol to the non-proliferation treaty. During a visit by the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France, Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment pro-gram and allow unfettered inspections but demanded technical cooperation for its peaceful nuclear program.
■ United States
Oft-weds fall for each other
A man and a woman who allegedly worked together in several sham green card marriages to illegal immi-grants apparently are in love and want to get married again -- this time to each other. Luis Narvaez, 40, already married seven times, and Evelyn Rivera, 48, who has been married eight times, applied for a marriage license to marry each other while they were jailed at Rikers Island in New York. The pair have been charged with perjury for lying on licenses for the bogus marriages from 1996 through last month. Narvaez and Rivera met when she stood as a witness in at least two of his weddings, an official said.
■ United States
Human smuggler convicted
A Thai man was convicted on Wednesday of smuggling Thai women into the US to work as prostitutes and of plotting to have a hit man kill an FBI agent investi-gating the brothels. Nanta-wat Naovasaisri, 34, was convicted on all five charges he faced following 90 minutes of deliberations in New Jersey, officials said. Sentencing was set for April 2. He faces up to 20 years in prison for the attempted murder of a federal agent and terms of five to 10 years on the other charges.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the