■ Afghanistan
US releases 80 prisoners
Some 80 Afghan prisoners held as terrorism suspects have been released from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan's Supreme Court said Sunday. "Around 80 prisoners have been brought from Guantanamo and they will be freed today after Supreme Court officials speak to them," court spokesman Wahid Mozhda told the press. The US had previously released some 200 prisoners from its remote base on the southeastern tip of Cuba where suspects were first taken bound and shackled three years ago in the wake of the US-led war in Afghanistan.
■ Nepal
Maoists kidnap 14 soldiers
Nepal's Maoist rebels have kidnapped 14 Indian soldiers from the Gurkha regiment while they were on their way home on leave, it was reported yesterday. The soldiers were kidnapped Friday from Kailali district, a Maoist stronghold 665km west of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, India's state-run Doordarshan television reported, quoting an army official. "The soldiers are reported to have been kidnapped from the bus they were travelling in," the officer said. The official said there was no word from the Maoists on their demands or why the soldiers had been kidnapped. An official with the Indian embassy in Kathmandu told the Indian Express newspaper that senior officials and others in Nepal had been contacted. He said it could be a case of mistaken identity.
■ Philippines
Gunman kills 7 at festival
At least seven people, including the police chief of the province of Aklan, were killed and 30 wounded yesterday when a gunman opened fire at a religious festival in the central Philippines. The Ati-atihan festival in honor of Santo Nino, one of the most revered Roman Catholic icons in the Philippines, was stopped, turning merrymaking into mourning for the victims. "We're still investigating the motive for the violent shooting," said the national police chief. "We're checking reports that this incident was drug-related, but we can't discount other angles." He said the provincial police chief was walking towards the municipal building after attending mass when a gunman opened fire at his group, sending hundreds scampering for safety. The shooting began during a fireworks display to start the festival in Kalibo town.
■ China
Activist farmers sentenced
A court in northern China's Shaanxi province has sentenced 27 farmers to up to 15 years in prison after convicting them of illegal gatherings and disturbing public order in an anti-government property dispute, state press said Sunday. The Yulin city court also convicted the 27 of involvement in organizing three demonstrations protesting local government tactics in the acquisition of village lands. The protests, involving up to 500 villagers, disrupted a construction project in March last year and led to the blockade of the neighboring Yuyang village government building in April, the report said. Gao Lading, fingered as the main organizer of the protests, was sentenced to 15 years; five others were also sentenced. They also organized a May 23 protest in which government officials and police were illegally detained for 41 hours while around 300 villagers took over the village's Communist Party offices for 133 days, according to the report.
■ United States
Teacher jailed for sex
A former teacher and coach at a church school was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of having sex with a 12-year-old student. Mark Vail, 27, who has insisted he was innocent, pounded his fist on a lawyer's table after the guilty verdict was read Friday. "I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong," he yelled. Vail was removed from the courtroom by two security officers. "You did this to your family," Vail shouted, pointing back at his accuser as he disappeared behind a security door. Vail was arrested in January last year after the girl's parents discovered the relationship through her cell phone records.
■ South Africa
Cleric pardoned for theft
South Africa's flamboyant anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak -- convicted 6 years ago for stealing donor funds -- has been officially pardoned, a spokesman for President Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday. Boesak, a prominent anti-apartheid campaigner during the 1980s, served one year of a three-year prison sentence after being convicted of stealing 1.3 million rand (US$217,000) in donor funds intended to help victims of apartheid. He was released from prison in May 2001 and asked Mbeki for a pardon in 2003.
■ Austria
`Ghost' woman imprisoned
A Polish woman who harbored a grudge against her husband's employer has been sentenced to four months' imprisonment for terrorizing the boss by making ghostly sounds at his castle-like estate. The 42-year-old woman, whose name was not released, was convicted Friday on nuisance charges after she allegedly spent weeks masquerading as a ghost and making mysterious noises, Austrian television reported. Police captured the woman on videotape after the jittery owner, who employed the suspect's husband, begged authorities in the alpine province of South Tyrol to solve the mystery. The haunted owner had complained of hearing footsteps in the hallways and slamming doors late at night at the estate.
■ South Africa
AIDS plagues Mandelas
Nelson Mandela's grandson followed the former president's example by telling thousands of mourners at his father's funeral that his mother had also died of AIDS a year earlier. Mandla Mandela was speaking Saturday at the funeral of his father Makgatho, 54, Nelson Mandela's last surviving son. Hours after Makgatho died in a Johannesburg hospital last week, Mandela announced that his son was HIV positive and had died of AIDS-related complications. Mandela said his announcement was a plea for everyone to be more open about the disease, which kills about 600 South Africans a day.
■ Netherlands
War criminal turns self in
A Bosnian Serb wanted on charges of killing and torture of prisoners in a concentration camp during the 1990s was transferred to The Hague Saturday for trial before a war crimes tribunal after giving himself up. Savo Todovic, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, had turned himself in to the Bosnian Serb interior ministry, and was accompanied to The Hague.
■ Mozambique
UK cancels debt
Britain canceled Mozam-bique's debt of US$150 million and said it would pay a percentage of the impover-ished country's other foreign debt to aid development and fight poverty. "This gesture will contribute to the develop-ment of education and health sectors," Prime Minister Luisa Diogo said on Saturday after talks with Britain's visiting Treasury chief Gordon Brown and outgoing President Joaquim Chissano. Brown, who announced cancellation of the debt to Britain, said his government is also offering to pay 10 percent of Mozam-bique's multilateral debt owed to the World Bank, the IMF and the African Development Bank. The total debt is US$2 billion.
■ Kuwait
Police bust militant cell
Kuwait beefed up security yesterday after police busted a Saudi-style suspected Islamist militant cell in a three-hour shootout that left a Saudi gunman dead and two policemen wounded. Three Kuwaiti militants were arrested in Saturday's gunbattle as security forces hunted several others who fled after special forces backed by armored vehicles and helicopters stormed a house in Umm Al-Haiman, south of the capital. Interior ministry undersecretary General Nasser al-Othman put most of the emirate's security forces on full alert while a security source said that at least two of the militants at large were Saudi nationals.
■ United Kingdom
Fraudster voted best TV MP
When British TV bosses devised an innovative political talent show to find a new would-be MP, Rodney Hylton-Potts was probably not what they had in mind as an eventual winner. The convicted fraudster won the show's public vote with a manifesto promising the mandatory castration of pedophiles, legalizing all drugs and deporting immigrants so as to reduce Britain's population by 20 million. The program, Vote For Me, was intended to boost flagging public interest in politics by subjecting would-be lawmakers to public scrutiny.
■ Croatia
Rival campaigns hard
Croatia's President Stipe Mesic was being challenged yesterday by a determined rival, Cabinet minister Jadranka Kosor, in a runoff election to chose the president that could lead this former Yugoslav country to join the EU. Mesic, 70, praised by many at home and abroad for moving the country closer to the West, missed outright re-election by just one percentage point, receiving about 49 percent of the votes in the first round on Jan. 2. Kosor, 51, the minister in charge of families and war veterans, came in second with 20 percent. She has since waged a fervent campaign t as she seeks to become Croatia's first woman president.
■ United Kingdom
Troops damaging Babylon
The British Museum says US-led coalition forces in Babylon have crushed part of the ancient Iraqi city's 2,600-year-old brick paved streets with their tanks and used soil containing archaeological fragments to fill sand bags. The museum is concerned that US-led troops, including US Marines and the Polish-led force who have occupied the ancient Mesopotamian capit-al, have inflicted widespread damage to the ancient center of civilization, according to a report released on Saturday. "This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," wrote the report's author, John Curtis, the curator of the museum's Near East department.
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
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