■ Australia
Outback murder trial to start
An Australian mechanic was ordered yesterday to stand trial over the outback murder three years ago of British backpacker Peter Falconio. Following a five-week committal hearing, Magistrate Alasdair McGregor told a Darwin courthouse that there was enough evidence to commit Bradley John Murdoch to trial for murdering Falconio and abducting and assaulting his girlfriend, Joanne Lees. Falconio disappeared on lonely stretch of highway north of the central Australian town of Alice Springs in July 2001 and his body has never been found. Prosecutors allege Murdoch flagged down the couple's van before shooting Falconio and abducting Lees, who escaped and hid in the bush.
■ Nepal
Maoists issue death list
Maoist insurgents have issued a "death sentence" to nine local journalists working in western Nepal, newspaper reports said yesterday. The Maoist death order followed the killing last week of Dekendra Raj Thapa, a journalist associated with state-owned Radio Nepal. Among the journalists in the Maoist hit list are two journalists associated with the country's biggest publishing house, Kantipur Publications. The Maoists said it was the verdict of their people's court to eliminate the local journalists, the largest Nepali language daily Kantiupur reported.
■ New Zealand
Storm paralyzes Wellington
A mail delivery woman in rural Wairarapa, north east of Wellington, has gone missing in the violent storm lashing central New Zealand that has cut all air and sea links, Radio New Zealand news reported yesterday. New Zealand Post has since canceled mail deliveries because conditions were too dangerous for workers. The storm, with winds gusting up to 198km an hour, has all but paralyzed New Zealand's capital Wellington. High winds and heavy rain have halted ferries to the South Island, closed the airport, and severed road and rail links both within the Wellington area and to the rest of the North Island.
■ Myanmar
Release Suu Kyi: Annan
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the immediate release of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and urged the government to open "a substantive dialogue" with opposition parties and ethnic minorities to demonstrate its commitment to restore democracy. He warned on Tuesday that Myanmar's efforts to draft a new constitution will lack international credibility until the government considers opposition views. On July 9, Myanmar adjourned a constitution-drafting convention after nearly two months of closed-door discussions. It is unclear when it will resume. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party boycotted the convention because the government refuses to release her from house arrest.
■ China
Beijing targets phone sex
China's communist leaders, in a fresh move to eradicate pornography, have targeted the telephone sex industry, ordering severe punishment for anyone offering the service, the official People's Daily said yesterday. The call came within days of the start of a nationwide project to crack down on Internet pornography. "With the rapid development of the paid-call service market in China, some lawbreakers make use of this form to spread obscene information and even conduct prostitution," Minister of the Information Industry Wang Xudong was quoted as saying.
■ United States
FBI inquiries questioned
Several Democratic lawmakers called for a Justice Department investigation on Tuesday into the FBI's questioning of would-be demonstrators about possible violence at the political conventions, saying the questioning may have violated the First Amendment. In a letter to the department's inspector general seeking an investigation, the lawmakers said the FBI inquiries appeared to represent "systematic political harassment and intimidation of legitimate anti-war protesters." Officials at the Justice Department and the FBI said they had not seen the letter and could not comment on its specific points but defended the recent efforts by the bureau to question demonstrators around the country, saying the inquiries have been aimed solely at detecting and preventing violence at the Republican convention in New York and other major political events.
■ Canada
Big sleep for `The Big Guy'
Montreal underworld boss Frank Cotroni, aka "The Big Guy" who was accused of links with leading New York mobsters, has died at the age of 72, reports said Tuesday. Cotroni, whose late brother Vincent was regarded as the head of the Montreal mafia, died of brain cancer, French language television stations here reported. The Cotroni family was tabbed in a 1976 report by a provincial commission on organized crime as a Canadian wing of the New York Bonanno mob which conducted a reign of fear in the 1960s. Frank Cotroni spent several years in prison. He was last released in 2002 after serving part of a seven-year sentence for conspiring to import 180kg of cocaine into Canada. He had originally been freed conditionally in 2001, but was rearrested after police spotted him at a Montreal restaurant with suspected underworld figures with whom he had promised not to associate.
■ United States
Costco's new line
A US discount warehouse chain known for piling 'em high, and selling 'em cheap, is offering cut-price coffins along with the buckets of ketchup and two-gallon tubs of ice-cream under a new pilot program. Costco Wholesale Corp. began selling the US$800 caskets in two of its Chicago stores this week and has already taken some orders, spokesman Bob Nelson said. The Universal Casket Company caskets come in six models in a variety of colors and 18-gauge steel. Consumers place an order electronically and their coffin is delivered to their home within 48 hours. The chain is watching the experiment closely and could put caskets on the shopping list of all its warehouses stores if it's a success. "This is not something we have a lot of experience with," said Nelson, "but we felt it was an area where we could offer a value."
■ United States
Shark victim found
The Coast Guard has recovered the headless body of a diver who was killed by a shark off the coast of Mendocino County in California. Randy Fry, 50, was attacked on Sunday afternoon in shallow water near Westport while diving for abalone with a companion. His body was recovered on Monday, while his companion escaped injury. A friend of Fry's estimated that the shark was between 5m and 5.4m long. "It was over in five seconds," said Red Bartley, who witnessed the attack. It was the state's first shark fatality since last August.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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