■ Indonesia
Official caught buying drug
A top Indonesian religious affairs official was arrested for alleged possession of crystal methamphetamine, police said yesterday. Burhanuddin Mamasta, head of the religious affairs bureau at the ministerial-level state secretariat, was nabbed on Monday for allegedly buying the drug at a Jakarta nightspot, a city police spokesman said. Mamasta was travelling in a car with his 26-year-old date and a male friend when he slammed the vehicle into a police patrol car after trying to elude anti-narcotics policemen, the spokesman said.
■ China
Schooling receives boost
China will spend 218 billion yuan (US$27 billion) on rural education over the next five years, part of a drive to improve schooling in the countryside and narrow the gap with booming coast areas. The fund would be jointly provided by central and local governments, after the decision by China's State Council, a report said. Currently, rural schools owe their teachers more than 10 billion yuan in back pay, and failure to pay teachers salaries has resulted in a severe shortage of qualified teachers in the countryside.
■ South Korea
Indicted by phone
Prosecutors will start telling people they have been indicted via text messages, an official said on Monday. In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young-pyo, an administrative official. The indictments by text messages are not intended to take people by surprise. "People will receive a text message of a legal notice only after they apply for the service," he said.
■ Italy
Man sues train company
A commuter who says that repeated delays on the Italian rail network are making his life a misery is planning to sue the train company for allegedly causing him "existential damage." Mauro Brunetti, a teacher who travels by rail every day to his job in a school in Savona, says he is so exasperated by the constant uncertainty of whether his train will arrive on time that he sometimes wonders if his life has any value or meaning. The failings of local train services have been making his life impossible and affecting his sense of self, he said. While researching recent court cases, he found references to people sustaining "existential damage" as a result of the behavior of another person or legal entity and he decided he could apply the same arguments to Trenitalia, the national rail group.
■ Germany
Thief busted at police party
Police in Berlin made their easiest arrest of the year at their annual Christmas party, after spotting a man rummaging through the pockets of their coats in the cloakroom. Officers of the Federal Police criminal investigations unit said the unlucky pickpocket had not known that the revelers in a Berlin brewery were law enforcers. "He was definitely surprised," said a police spokesman in Berlin. "He did not realize who he was dealing with." Confronted with 35 officers, the 45-year-old Albanian, who police said held a forged passport and was wanted for other offences, offered no resistance.
■ United Kingdom
Ambassador goofs again
The US embassy in London was forced to issue a correction on Monday to an interview given by the ambassador, Robert Tuttle, in which he claimed the US would not fly suspected terrorists to Syria, which has one of the worst torture records in the Middle East. A statement acknowledged media reports of a suspect taken from the US to Syria. Torture is banned in the US but the CIA has been engaged in a policy of rendition, flying terrorist suspects to countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world where torture is commonplace.
■ France
Village inherits fortune
Inhabitants of a small village in northwest France were on Monday debating how to spend a fortune left to it by one of its sons who made his money on the other side of the world. Jean Kerfers died earlier this year at Noumea in the Pacific Ocean archipelago of New Caledonia. He had left the village after World War II to work in Australia. He was 80 and childless and his remains were buried in Noumea. He bequeathed to his native village of Mael-Crahaix, population 1,580, in the middle of Brittany a legacy of 1.4 million euros (US$1.65 million).
■ France
Army faces genocide probe
The French army has been put under official investigation on charges of having taken part in the Rwandan genocide. Despite official attempts to block the move, a military court is to look into claims that soldiers serving as part of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda not only failed to stop the killing but participated in the slaughter of about 800,000 people. Six Rwandans who survived the 1994 genocide have brought the claim of "complicity to genocide and/or crimes against humanity" against French forces. The military court dismissed four of them but is focusing on the cases of two Rwandans.
■ United States
Surfer's punch deters shark
A surfer saved his leg -- and possibly his life -- when he punched a great white shark that had latched onto him in the nose, ABC news reported on Monday. Brian Anderson, 31, was surfing on Saturday off the coast of the northwestern state of Oregon when he felt something grab his leg. Anderson turned around and punched the shark in the nose. "I acted on instinct," Anderson told ABC news. The shark let go, and despite losing blood Anderson made it back to shore, where he tied his wound as he waited for an ambulance. "I wanted to get to shore as soon as I could. The thought crossed my mind that I might not make it back in," he told ABC. Anderson, who is in the hospital and is expected to fully recover, said he learned about sharks from television shows. "I'll go back out, eventually," he said, adding: "It probably will be awhile."
■ United States
Thieves take man for a ride
Two women suspected of shoplifting at a Kmart store had their getaway foiled by a man who clung to their car's windshield wipers as they sped away. Michael Cornwell, 30, his fiancee and his mother were going into a Kmart about 10:30pm on Friday when two women ran from the store chased by employees. Cornwell stepped in front of their car and told the women to stop. After he ignored the driver's demand to move, the driver bumped Cornwell twice with the car before he jumped on the hood and she accelerated, according to police. "I was just hanging on for dear life," Cornwall said. He said he hung on for about 1.6km -- at what he estimated to be 113kph-129 kph -- before the driver pulled into a mobile home park and the women fled. The suspects were arrested and charged with aggravated robbery, felonious assault and theft.
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