■ Hong Kong
Arsonist receives life
A 68-year-old man began a life sentence on Thursday after being found guilty of setting fire to a commuter train during rush hour, the South China Morning Post said. The man, Yim Kam-chung, ignited a bottle of solvent in a train carriage in February as it left a busy station in Tsim Sha Tsui, the daily said. The fire was extinguished by a passenger who stamped on the bottle and alerted fellow passengers. Yim later told police he had set out to "cause a tragedy" because the government has confiscated six of his vehicles.
■ Hong Kong
Old food seller arrested
A street hawker has been arrested for selling tins of food out-of-date by up to six years scavenged from trash cans, officials said yesterday. The 47-year-old woman was buying foodstuffs and other items collected from rubbish collection points by scavengers for around a US$1 a bag. She was then selling them on at prices well below the normal market value. They included tea, dried noodles, soy sauce and potato chips. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department was alerted to the case when a woman became ill after eating soup she bought from the hawker that had an expiry date three years earlier.
■ South Korea
Agent Orange makers lose
The Seoul High Court yesterday ordered two US manufacturers of the defoliant Agent Orange to pay US$62 million in medical compensation to South Korean veterans of the Vietnam War and their families. The court ordered Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan, and Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri, to pay the compensation to about 6,800 people. The herbicide was widely used to destroy jungle cover used by communist troops during the war, but South Koreans, Vietnamese and many US veterans later blamed their exposure to the chemical for a variety of illnesses and reproductive disorders, including miscarriages, birth defects, cancers and nervous disorders.
■ Philippines
Rebels battle each other
Fighting broke out between rival factions of the largest Muslim separatist group on Mindanao island on Thursday, highlighting what analysts have said could be a split in the rebels. Hundreds of people have fled a remote village in Maguindanao province after some 200 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) occupied the area following two days of fighting, a rebel spokesman and army officials said. An army spokesman said the fighting was between MILF's radical faction.
■ Egypt
Farmer dumps chicks
A farmer abandoned 10,000 newly hatched chicks to their fate on a desert road east of Cairo fearing they might be infected with the deadly bird flu virus, a police official said on Wednesday. Shocked motorists traveling on the road about 130km east of Cairo contacted police after seeing the chicks running loose on the tarmac on Tuesday, the official added. Health officials gathered the chicks and confirmed after testing that they were not carrying the virus. The farmer has taken back the birds and would not be facing legal proceedings, the official said.
■ Russia
Alleged spies urged to stay
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday said that four British diplomats accused of espionage in Moscow should not be expelled, as their replacements might be cleverer than they were and harder to catch. Putin said he wanted the Russian security services and the foreign ministry to suggest a line of approach to the Kremlin, but questioned the wisdom of expelling the four men. The diplomats were shown on Russian state television on Sunday allegedly retrieving data from a Russian agent, by palmtop computer, via a transmitter hidden in a fake rock. The program claimed that Britain was using spies to fund and communicate with Russian non-governmental organizations.
■ Colombia
Hiccups lead to two deaths
A man accidentally shot his nephew to death while trying to cure his hiccups by pointing a revolver at him to scare him, police in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla said on Tuesday. After shooting 21-year-old university student David Galvan in the neck, his uncle, Rafael Vargas, 35, was so distraught he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide, police said. The incident took place on Sunday night while the two were having drinks with neighbors. Galvan started to hiccup and Vargas, who worked as a security guard, said he would use the home remedy for hiccups of scaring him. He pulled out his gun, pointed it at Galvan and it accidentally went off, witnesses told local TV.
■ Libya
Rights record praised
Tripoli won praise on Wednesday for taking "important steps" to improve human rights but was warned it will have to do more to meet international standards. Despite improvements, including the release of 14 political prisoners, Libya continues to hold other political prisoners, conducts unfair trials and restricts free speech, Human Rights Watch said. Monitors from the New York-based body were allowed to visit Libya for the first time last year, a move it welcomed as a step towards greater transparency. Libyan authorities provided access to top officials as well as police stations, an immigrant detention centre and five prisons, where 32 prisoners were interviewed in private, the report said.
■ Bolivia
Sister appointed first lady
Bolivian President Evo Morales' sister will give up her butcher shop to become Bolivia's first lady, filling the role because the new leader is single, his office said on Wednesday. Esther Morales, 54, is married with three children and owns a grocery shop that sells beef and llama meat in the small town of Oruro. Esther Morales, who raised her younger brother after their mother died, has refused to be referred to as first lady, saying it was contrary to her humble social class.
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