■ 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.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said
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