■ China
Plastic kills lioness
A lioness died in a Chinese entertainment park after eating plastic thrown into her enclosure by visitors, the state Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The three-year-old lioness, named Pingping, died from dehydration in January in the Linping Entertainment Park in eastern Zhejiang province. She had refused food for several days. An autopsy found several pieces of plastic blocking her intestine, Xinhua said. Park officials said the plastic probably came from bottles and bags thrown down by visitors. Irresponsible feeding by visitors was a major cause of death among performing and zoo animals, they said.
■ China
Villagers die in mine
Seventeen villagers were killed and 11 were missing yesterday after they inexplicably entered a deserted coal shaft in northern China, authorities said. The accident happened Wednesday and 17 bodies had been retrieved by yesterday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The 28 people from Huizu, a village near the city of Jingzhong in Shanxi province, entered the shaft Wednesday evening after a villager "claimed that it linked up with another coal mine in a neighboring village," Xinhua said. It said the group was led by the village head, Zhen Yuexiu. China's mines are among the world's deadliest, though most accidents in them happen to coal miners who have a reason for being there.
■ Australia
US marines misbehave
Australia police yesterday were questioning three US marines after two alleged sexual assaults in the Northern Territory city of Darwin. There are 4,500 US troops in Darwin, on leave from a tour of duty in the Middle East. The servicemen were alleged to have sexually assaulted two sisters whom they met in a nightclub. Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin said she was disappointed by the allegations. "By and large, their behavior has been applauded by businesses and our community so I'm disappointed that we've had an incident like this," she told Australia's ABC Radio.
■ Cambodia
Man shot for `black magic'
A 42-year-old Cambodian man was killed by villagers because they suspected he was a practitioner of black magic, police said Saturday. Authorities said Huot Roeun was shot by two men with an AK-47 rifle Friday morning as he was scaling a ladder to tap sugar from a palm tree near his home in Kampong Speu province, about 50km west of Phnom Penh. He died at home of a gunshot wound to the chest soon afterward. Chea Vuth, deputy chief of Kampong Speu provincial police, said that Roeun had been afraid to go out alone without his son, 17, or son-in-law, 20, because he was aware local villagers thought he used black magic. "I'm getting a headache from these black magic cases happening again and again," Vuth said.
■ China
Legislator declines invitation
In an unusual overture, Beijing has invited a leading Hong Kong opposition lawmaker to China for "secret" talks on democratic reforms in this former British colony, the legislator said. But Democratic Party lawmaker Szeto Wah said yesterday he turned down the offer because of the condition that the meeting be kept quiet. He added, however, that he still wants to hold discussions with Beijing soon. "I think it's time we started talking," he said.
■ Great Britain
Majority wants Blair gone
A majority of British people now believe that Prime Minister Tony Blair should resign amid mounting skepticism about his reasons for taking the country into the war in Iraq, according to an opinion poll published Saturday. Asked if it was "now time for Tony Blair to resign and hand over to someone else," 51 percent of respondents said yes, with only 35 percent giving a definite no, the poll for The Independent newspaper showed. The findings end a miserable week for the prime minister, which saw him forced to order an investigation into whether there were failures of intelligence ahead of the war.
■ Haiti
Towns captured
Unrest spread in Haiti Friday as opponents of Jean-Bertrand Aristide claimed to have taken control of two northern towns after seizing Haiti's fourth-largest city Thursday.One day after declaring Gonaives, 160km north of Haiti, "liberated," two towns near Gonaives fell into the hands of the "Anti-Aristide Front," radio Metropole said. The government announced it would restore civil order in Gonaives, a stronghold of anti-Aristide opponents, who have been holding demonstrations since September in an effort to force Aristide from office. They accuse him of corruption and abuse of power.
■ United Nations
US$520 million for Liberia
An international conference here to raise funds to rebuild war-ravaged Liberia ended Friday, with donations of US$520 million exceeding organizers' ambitions.The two-day conference, sponsored by the UN, the US and the World Bank, had set a goal of at least US$488 million, which organizers estimated was needed to meet urgent reconstruction needs over the next two years in a country that emerged last summer from years of relentless war. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said, "We hear a lot these days about donor fatigue, but there was no evidence of donor fatigue here today."
■ Poland
Property given to Jews
The mayor of Warsaw on Friday handed the Jewish community the title to part of a building complex built on the site of the city's synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Several of the apartments in the building opposite the mayor's office are already used by the city to house collections of Jewish memorabilia. Poland's restitution law provides for the return of property held by the Jewish community before 1939, but not private property.
■ Dominican republic
Baby's extra head removed
An international team of doctors in the Dominican Republic on Friday successfully removed an undeveloped second head from a baby girl born with one of the world's rarest birth defects. "The parasitic head has been removed," Dominican surgeon Santiago Hazim told reporters after the team of 18 doctors worked for more than 13 hours on Rebeca Martinez. Martinez was born in mid-December at a hospital in the Dominican capital with the head of an undeveloped twin attached to the top of her skull, facing upward. The infant was otherwise healthy but her brain could not develop normally unless the undeveloped head was removed.
■ Peru
Beauty tells of `slavery pact'
A Peruvian beauty queen who traveled to Gabon to organize a "Miss Humanity" contest claimed on Friday she had been the victim of a "white slavery" plot involving the West African country's President Omar Bongo. Ivette Santa Maria, 22, said she had met Bongo at the presidential palace on Jan. 19, her first day in Gabon, so the president could approve details of the contest. She said he called her over to a door, pressed a button, and, to her horror, a bed appeared. "He got a bed out! I don't know what you'd think. He got a bed out -- I ran away!" Santa Maria said. "I think I was tricked and it's clear that this was a `white slavery' pact, that's crystal clear," she said.
■ United States
Bird flu strikes in Delaware
Delaware officials ordered the destruction of some 12,000 farm chickens on Friday after confirming that the flock was infected by avian influenza. State agriculture secretary Michael Scuse said the flu strain -- H7 -- is different from the one that has spread to the human population in Asia, and that there is no threat to human health. Scuse would not disclose the location of the infected chicken houses or identify the grower, saying only that it was an independent operation in Kent County.
■ United States
Mutilation couple indicted
A Los Angeles couple accused of offering to circumcise young girls for US$8,000 were indicted on federal charges on Friday in what prosecutors say is the first US case of its kind. Todd Cameron Bertrang, 41, and Robyn Faulkinbury, 24, who were arrested in January after agreeing to circumcise the fictional children of undercover FBI agents posing as parents, were also charged with making and possessing child pornography, prosecutors said. An affidavit filed at the time of their arrest said that Bertrang referred to Faulkinbury as his slave and offered to show the FBI agents her circumcised genitalia.
■ United States
Man convicted in 1975 killing
Almost three decades after a member of the American Indian Movement, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, was shot as she begged for her life and prayed along a darkened cliff in South Dakota's Badlands, a fellow member of the movement was convicted for her murder. On Friday evening, a jury in Rapid City, South Dakota, found Arlo Looking Cloud, 50, guilty of murder. John Graham, another former member of the group known as AIM, has been indicted in the killing but is fighting extradition from Canada. Prosecution witnesses said AIM members wanted Pictou Aquash dead because they feared she was a government spy. Law enforcement authorities said they could not solve the 1975 case until now because no one within the movement would talk to them.
■Uunited states
Two fall down elevator shaft
Two men fighting over counterfeit compact discs inside a Midtown Manhattan office building fell through the broken doors of a fourth-floor elevator entrance on Friday afternoon, plummeting three floors and hitting a stopped car, police said. The two men were both still conscious when they were taken to Bellevue Hospital Center with leg, head, neck and back injuries. Shortly before 3pm people in the building heard screams and dialed 911. The police said if one of the men was involved in selling counterfeit CDs, he could be charged.
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