■ Camodia
Dutch pedophile sentenced
The appeals court sentenced a 49-year-old Dutchman to 10 years in jail yesterday for having sex with shoe-shine street children aged between 12 and 15 years old. Rene Paul Martin Aubel was charged with debauchery after being arrested in a Phnom Penh hotel in the company of several young boys in April last year. Several of the children testified against Aubel at yesterday's hearing, saying he paid US$10 to have sex with them. The court also ordered him to pay 1 million riel (or US$256) to each of his six victims.
■ China
Blogger pleads innocent
Dissident writer Zhang Lin (張林) pleaded innocent to charges of subversion yesterday, saying his Internet postings should be protected by his right to freedom of speech. One article cited as evidence of subversive writing included the lyrics to a Chinese punk song, which said: "The Yellow River should run dry, this society should collapse, this system should be destroyed, this race should become extinct, this country should perish."
■ Hong Kong
Naming rights debated
The richest man in the territory has defended the renaming of a local medical school after himself following a 1 billion Hong Kong dollar (US$128 million) donation -- a move that prompted criticism that school officials put naming rights up for sale. Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) gave the money in early May to the University of Hong Kong, which decided weeks later to rename its medical school HKU Li Ka-shing Faculty of Medicine. The University of Hong Kong has said the renaming was an appropriate gesture given the size of Li's donation.
■ Afghanistan
Plot to kill US envoy foiled
Authorities were yesterday investigating an alleged bid to assassinate the US envoy to Afghanistan, who left the country for a new job in Iraq. Officials said three Pakistanis had confessed to planning to kill him. Afghan intelligence officials said on Monday that the Pakistanis had told them they had planned to kill ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad while he was visiting eastern Laghman province at the weekend. The Pakistanis, armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, were arrested on Sunday as Khalilzad toured Laghman to launch reconstruction efforts.
■ China
Chemical plant explodes
Thousands of detonators exploded at a chemicals plant, destroying a row of buildings and killing seven people, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The accident happened in Meishan, Sichuan Province, on Monday, the agency said, adding that eight people were injured and two missing. "Preliminary investigations show the accident was caused by an operation error when workers were fixing detonators," Xinhua said, quoting police. "There were about 13,000 detonators [at the plant] when the accident took place," it said.
■ China
Medicine sickens children
Herbal medicine prescribed to elementary-school students in Yunnan Province to ward off chickenpox killed one and made 151 sick, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The accident happened in Kunming, the capital, when more than 200 children took a homemade herbal concoction, Xinhua said. About 150 children suffered diarrhea, nausea and vomiting after taking the medicine, a mixture of some 15 types of traditional herbs, it said.
■ United Kingdom
Pathologist blacklisted
A Dutch pathologist who took organs from hundreds of dead children at a British hospital without their parents' permission was struck off Britain's medical register. The General Medical Council banned Dick van Velzen, of Oegstgeest, Netherlands, from practicing in Britain, after finding him guilty of serious professional misconduct. In 1999,hundreds of hearts, brains, lungs and other body parts that had been retained by van Velzen were discovered stored in containers. He had removed organs from children who died between 1989 and 1995 at Alder Hey Hospital.
■ United States
Chinese teen to be deported
Texas immigration officials have ruled that a teenage refugee must return to China despite his claims that he will be killed by the smugglers who got him to the US. Officials last week denied a request to reopen the case of Young Zheng, 17. His lawyers say they have new evidence that smugglers have threatened to kill him and his family because they owe the smugglers US$60,000. Zheng said he left China after facing "extreme discrimination" as the second child of a couple who defied China's one-child policy. Zheng came to the US illegally in January 2003 and later attended high school in Akron, Ohio where he lived with an uncle.
■ United States
Car winds up in bed
Rickey May thought a bomb had gone off outside his home. Then he realized a car had crashed through his home's brick wall and landed on top of him in his bed. Devlon Chandler, 34, and his wife were traveling through Pine Bluff, Arkansas after a trip to a casino when Chandler fell asleep at the wheel. The car left the road, hit a telephone pole, ruptured a gas line and went airborne briefly before crashing through May's wall. May was awake when the car crashed into his room because he had answered a telephone call in bed just moments before. As the 1996 Ford Taurus shot across the bed, it rolled May inside his mattress "like a burrito," protecting him from the force of the accident.
■ United Kingdom
Jokers nabbed for squirting
Police arrested four men after Tom Cruise was squirted in the face with water at the London premiere of his latest movie, War of the Worlds. The four men were all released on police bail later Monday. Cruise was outside a movie theater in central London's Leicester Square on Sunday doing press interviews when a man squirted him with a water pistol disguised as a microphone, London's Metropolitan Police said. Cruise initially appeared to laugh at the incident but then asked the prankster: "Why would you do that?" As the man gave a barely audible excuse, Cruise said: "Do you like thinking less of people, is that it?" The prankster tried to walk away but Cruise reached across the metal barrier, held his arm and said: "Don't run away. That's incredibly rude."
■ Russia
Amorous cows trash shop
A cow and bull crashed into a stationery shop on Russia's Baltic coast and demolished the interior during a vigorous bout of mating, local media reported yesterday. Panic ensued when the bull pursued its intended into the store in the town of Pionerskoye near Kaliningrad and staff fled into the street screaming for help. The cattle could only be driven outside after they completed the act, trashing eight windows, police said.
■ United States
Teacher leaves millions
A retired public school teacher who was so frugal that he bought expired meat and secondhand clothing left US$2.1 million for his alma mater, Prairie View A&M -- the school's largest gift from a single donor. Whitlowe Green, 88, died of cancer in 2002. He retired in 1983 from the Houston School District, where he was making US$28,000 a year as an economics teacher. His donation shocked family members and friends alike. "He was a very meager person. I didn't think he had a million," said Beatrice Green, a cousin by marriage. Green's frugality was matched by his belief in education and dedication to young people, she said.
■ Vatican City
Beatification drive begins
The priest leading late Pope John Paul II's sainthood campaign called on Roman Catholics to use the Internet to send any information on the life and virtues of the pontiff that could help his case, Vatican Radio said Monday. An official Web site (vicariatusurbis.org) will publish the testimony sent by regular mail or e-mail to Slawomir Oder, the Polish priest in charge of the beatification process. The information will be filed under several categories such as "my meeting with John Paul II" or "blessings received" with the pope's intercession, the radio said.
■ Morocco
Acquitted `terrorist' deported
A Moroccan acquitted of charges he helped the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers returned home yesterday after Germany ordered him out of the country, his lawyer said. Abdelghani Mzoudi, 32, was acquitted in February last year of charges he helped 9-11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah in their plot to attack the US. While testimony showed he trained at the same al-Qaeda camps as the hijackers and was close friends with them in Hamburg, German judges ruled that it was not proven he knew anything about their plot. After his acquittal was upheld earlier this month, Hamburg's top security official, Udo Nagel, said his office was still ordering him expelled because it "stands by its view that Mzoudi threatens the free democratic order and supports terrorist organizations."
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
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion