■ Australia
Baby whale dies in net
A baby humpback whale died yesterday after becoming entangled in a shark net off a tourist beach on the popular Gold Coast, leaving its distressed mother circling the sunken body, a wildlife specialist said. The death has restarted a debate between environmentalists and the Queensland state government over the nets -- environmentalists say they are brutal and unnecessary, while state authorities argue they are needed to protect hundreds of thousands of swimmers each year from shark attacks. Divers were attempting to recover the body for routine medical tests, but the whale's mother was circling around the body and being "very possessive of the calf," an official said.
■ Malaysia
Wife uses acid in payback
A military officer suffered severe burns after his wife splashed acid on him after he told her he would take a second wife, reports said yesterday. Azman Tuan Ludin, 30, was burned on his face and body after his 50-year-old wife attacked him while he was sleeping. Earlier, Azman and his wife got into a heated argument about his plans during which he allegedly hit her, the Malay-language Berita Harian daily said. When the pair returned home, Azman went to bed and was fast asleep when his wife splashed him with the acid.
■ Malaysia
Surgeons replace heart
Surgeons inserted a mechanical device in a 15-year-old boy's chest as temporary replacement for his heart, in what their hospital said yesterday was the first such surgery in the Asia-Oceania region. Fikri Nor Azmi had a six-hour surgery on Saturday to have the mechanical assist device attached to his heart, the National Heart Institute said.
■ China
New dress code enforced
Female civil servants in revealing blouses and their long-haired male colleagues will be barred from entering their workplaces unless they smarten up. The list of directives from Chinese Communist Party rulers' aims to improve the appearance of the civil service before Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics Games. Officials who do not heed warnings will be denied access to government buildings and even to annual performance evaluations. Other fuddy-duddy party no-nos include the wearing of heavy make-up, shorts and sandals.
■ Australia
Crackdown on child brides
Parents who pack their daughters off to the Middle East for forced Muslim marriages could soon be jailed under new Australian laws, Justice Minister Chris Ellison said. He was commenting on a report that 12 girls, all under 18, had sought refuge in the Australian embassy in Beirut after a forced marriage arranged by their parents. One 14-year-old said she was promised a holiday in Lebanon by her father but once there was forced to marry a man who imprisoned her in his home. Ellison said forcing girls overseas and into an unwanted marriage was tantamount to sexual trafficking.
■ China
Theft blamed for train wreck
Theft of electrical wire caused a train crash at the weekend that killed five people and injured 30. The Sunday night crash in which a passenger train smashed into the rear of a cargo train between the cities of Changchun and Dalian happened after the electrical wire was stolen from a switching station. State media have said broken signalling equipment caused the crash. Theft of power lines has become rampant, with the copper wire sold for scrap. Global copper prices are at record highs, thanks to the appetite of China's rapidly developing economy. A survivor of the train crash said it was lucky many people had disembarked in Shenyang before the accident, otherwise more people could have been killed or injured.
■ Australia
CARE sued by ex-employees
Two former employees of CARE Australia are suing the international aid agency for their arrest and imprisonment by Serbian authorities in 1999 on charges of spying. Peter Wallace and Branko Jelen were arrested after information sent to CARE's Canberra headquarters by a colleague was deemed to be military. Wallace was arrested by border guards -- along with his CARE colleague Steve Pratt -- as they attempted to cross into Croatia on March 31, 1999, and held captive for 154 days at various Serbian locations. Wallace and a fellow worker were evacuating when their vehicles were searched and guards found computers, satellite phones and maps, which initially aroused suspicion. Wallace was charged with spying and sentenced to four years in jail, while Jelen was sentenced to six years' jail.
■ New Zealand
Clark's motorcade too fast
A bus carrying schoolchildren was forced to swerve on to the shoulder of a road to avoid a collision with a speeding motorcade taking Prime Minister Helen Clark to a rugby match between New Zealand and Australia, the bus driver told a court yesterday. Five police officers and a civilian driver are facing charges of dangerous and careless driving in July last year. Clark said last year she was too busy doing work in the back of her car to notice the speed.
■ Denmark
Open source brew released
Inspired by the "open source" philosophy used for some software, a group of students have released what they say is the world's first open source recipe for beer. Fifteen students at Copenhagen's Information Technology University produced approximately 100 liters of "Vores Oel [Our Beer], version 1.0," and then made the recipe available on the Internet without charge. The students concocted their brew in the university cafeteria as part of a workshop on intellectual property rights. The recipe was based on ale brewing traditions but added guarana, which has a small amount of caffeine, for an extra kick.
■ Mexico
Prisoner sews lips shut
A man accused of bribing some of Mexico City's most powerful politicians sewed his lips shut to protest the criminal charges against him. Carlos Ahumada, an Argentine nationalized in Mexico, was arrested in Cuba and has been jailed since last year when a TV station broadcast video of him giving bundles of cash to Mexico City politicians, allegedly to win government contracts. The scandal ended the political career of a leading left-wing politician who was his lover at the time. It also hurt the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, whose politicians were shown taking money from him.
■ United States
Wrongfully jailed man freed
A man who spent 19 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit was released from prison after DNA evidence cleared him. Friends and family broke into applause when a county judge dismissed charges against Thomas Doswell. About 30 minutes later, Doswell walked out of the county jail a free man. "I'm thankful to be home," he said. "I'm thankful justice has been served. The court system is not perfect, but it works." Doswell, 46, was convicted in the 1986 rape of a 48-year-old woman at a Pittsburgh hospital. At the time, he was the father of two young children.
■ Germany
Nine baby corpses found
German prosecutors said Monday the bodies of nine newborn babies they suspect were killed by their mother over a 16-year period were discovered in a shed in the east of the country. Authorities said they were seeking an arrest warrant against a 39-year-old woman from Frankfurt-an-der-Oder on the Polish border on suspicion of giving birth to each of the infants and then killing them one by one between 1988 and last year. The suspect, who authorities said lived with her four remaining children, is currently in questioning. "We are faced with a crime whose scope, in my memory, we have never seen in the history of the federal republic" since 1945, said Brandenburg state interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm. "We must ask ourselves how this unbelievable crime remained hidden all these years."
■ United States
Polgar seeks new record
Susan Polgar, a four-time women's world chess champion from Hungary, was out to set a new world record for the most simultaneously played games of chess. By Monday afternoon, Polgar had 326 games going in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida -- enough to break the record of 321 listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. She expected to play 18 hours or more to finish all her games. Lerman and the other opponents sat at long rows of tables set up in a shopping mall.
■ United States
Rights group tackles military
The US military has kept two ethnic Uighur Muslims from a troubled Chinese region at its Guantanamo "war on terror" detention camp even though they have been found not to be "enemy combatants," a rights group said on Monday. Lawyers for Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu al-Hakim went before a federal court in Washington on Monday to seek the release of the pair. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based legal activist group, a Guantanamo review panel ruled in March that Qassim and Hakim should not be considered "enemy combatants" who would face military tribunals. The CCR said the men's lawyers were never told about the finding.
■ United States
NRA up in arms
The National Rifle Association (NRA) began a boycott of ConocoPhillips Co over the energy giant's attempt to block a state law preventing employers from firing workers who keep guns in their cars on company lots. "Across the country, we're going to make ConocoPhillips the example of what happens when a corporation takes away your Second Amendment rights," NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said on Monday. LaPierre was in southeastern Oklahoma for a rally to support employees who were fired by Weyerhaeuser Inc for keeping guns stored in vehicles parked at work.
■ France
Radical Islamists expelled
France has expelled two radical Islamist leaders in the wake of the London bombings and plans to round up and send home up to two dozen more by the end of the month, the interior ministry said on Monday. A ministry spokesman said France had "no problem" deporting speakers accused of inflaming anti-Western feelings. Reda Ameuroud, an Algerian who was in France illegally and delivered "violent and hate-filled" speeches at a radical mosque in Paris, was deported on Friday, the spokesman said. Another "part-time" imam, Abdelhamid Aissaoui, 41, was expelled from France earlier last week for urging youths to join the jihad or holy war, the spokesman said.
■ United Kingdom
Police hunt racist axe killers
British police began an international hunt for two men yesterday over the murder of a teenager bludgeoned to death with an axe in a racist attack in northern England. Anthony Walker, 18, a black local college student described as a devout Christian, was beaten to death by a gang of three to four men on Friday evening in Liverpool, just minutes after he had been taunted with racist abuse while standing with his white girlfriend. Police on Monday arrested two men, aged 26 and 29, on suspicion of murder. Merseyside detectives believe two other suspects, Paul Taylor, 20, and 18-year-old Michael Barton may already be in Amsterdam.
■ Iran
Nuclear decision irreversible
Tehran said yesterday that its decision to resume activities at a sensitive nuclear plant near Isfahan was irreversible. "The political decision has been taken ... The resumption is irreversible," Supreme National Security Council spokesman Ali Aghamoham-madi said. Iran said on Monday that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors began "setting up surveillance cameras and preparing supervision work" at the plant, to prepare to restart work there.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of