■ 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.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
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