■ Australia
Aborigines protest in capital
An angry group of Aboriginal activists besieged the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Canberra yesterday to show solidarity with their kinsmen in Sydney who rioted last weekend to protest what they believed was police involvement in the death of a black teenager. They lit a fire in front of the building in defiance of orders from the police. Spokesman Darren Bloomberg said a demonstration at Parliament House was being organized to protest the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey. "We are calling on Australians to be in Canberra on March 1 to go to the top of the hill and let these politicians know that their enforcements are murdering out in the community," he said.
■ Australia
Drunken pilot gets two years
An Australian pilot looked set to lose his license yesterday after a court in Melbourne found he was so drunk that he had crashed his light plane even before take-off. John Charlesworth, 56, was five times over the legal limit for driving a car when he attempted to get his twin-engine Piper Seneca off the tarmac with six people on board. The plane smashed into large plastic barriers and through a picket fence before he was persuaded to abandon a promised joy ride. "Given the extent of your drunkenness, and the fact you were piloting an aircraft, the result could have been catastrophic," the judge told him when handing out a two-year jail sentence.
■ Malaysia
Rapist cop sentenced
A police officer charged with raping his two daughters and allowing his brother to have sex with another underage daughter was slapped with a 60-year jail term, news reports said yesterday. The 53-year-old man pleaded guilty to incest after raping his two daughters, ages 21 and 12, three times beginning in October. A session's court judge described the man's behavior as "worse than that of an animal" and sentenced him to the maximum jail term of 60 years, the Star daily reported. The man's 39-year-old brother, who was later charged in the same court, pleaded guilty to raping his 15-year-old niece twice last year. The court sentenced him to 16 years in jail and three strokes of the cane.
■ India
Falling MiG kills three
Three people were killed and 11 injured when a Russian-designed MiG-21 fighter aircraft of the Indian air force ploughed into a village in the Indian state of Gujarat yesterday, police said. The jet crashed in Lakha Baval village, about 300km from Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad, a police official said. The casualties occurred when the jet crashed into houses in the village. The pilot bailed out safely, the official said. On February 7, a MiG-23 fighter aircraft crashed in the desert state of Rajasthan, killing the pilot. More than 100 Indian air force pilots have died in the past decade in crashes of MiGs, which are so accident-prone they have been nicknamed "flying coffins" in India.
■ Hong Kong
SARS may be spreading
The SARS virus which killed 299 people in Hong Kong may be spreading secretly in carriers who do not realize they have the disease, a news report said yesterday. Tests on 400 blood donors in Hong Kong found two of them carried the SARS virus even though they had shown no symptoms of the disease, the South China Morning Post reported. University of Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung described the findings as "very perplexing" and a cause for concern, the newspaper said.
■ Guatemala
Former president flees
Former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo has fled the country to avoid prosecution on corruption charges, a newspaper reported on Thursday. According to the Siglo XXI newspaper, Portillo travelled overland to neighboring El Salvador, where he boarded a plane for Mexico City. The report said Portillo left Guatemala on Wednesday, one day after Guatemala's Constitutional Court stripped him of the legal immunity he enjoyed as a member of the Central American Parliament. The former president, whose presidential term ended in January, reportedly travelled to El Salvador with his former private secretary.
■ Israel
Half a victory for objector
The Israeli army decided to exempt Israel's highest-profile conscientious objector from military service, ending his 18 month battle to stay out of uniform. Yonatan Ben-Artzi, nephew of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been pressing for conscientious-objector status since August 2002, and had served a total of 196 days in a military prison. A military committee ruled that he should be ruled unfit for service but did not recognize him as a pacifist.
■ Hungary
Cadet axes classmate
An Azeri officer killed an Armenian classmate with an ax at a Budapest military academy on Thursday, Hungarian and Armenian news agencies said. The Armenian's head was almost severed while he slept as the simmering conflict between the ex-Soviet Caucasus neighbors appeared to take a personal turn during an English-language course run under the auspices of NATO's Partnership for Peace. Police believe the 27-year-old Azeri entered the room of the 26-year-old victim, stabbed him several times with a knife and struck him repeatedly with the ax. The motive was unclear, police said.
■ United Kingdom
Aspirin risk for asthmatics
Asthma sufferers were warned on Thursday against using aspirin as a pain reliever because potentially life-threatening reactions to the drug appear more common than was previously thought. More than one in five adults and one in 20 children with asthma are sensitive to aspirin, a review of studies published in the British Medical Journal suggests. Other recent reviews have suggested aspirin-induced asthma occurs in about 10 percent of asthmatics. Doctors must alert their patients to the dangers while manufacturers should put simple warnings on packets of aspirin and over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs.
■ United States
Utah nears firing squad ban
Utah moved toward eliminating firing squads and executing condemned prisoners only by injection, as the Senate approved a bill banning the controversial punishment. The bill passed Thursday and returns to the House for approval of minor amendments. Democratic Senator Ron Allen said allowing murderers to choose firing squads so that they can "go out in a blaze of glory" perversely made heroes of criminals and caused victims' families unnecessary pain. Arguing in opposition to the bill, however, Senator Dave Thomas, a Republican, said that media circuses are "exactly what we want" in executions. We don't want these sentences to be carried out in the dead of night so no one knows."
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the