■ Japan
Repentant thief nabbed
A letter of apology sent to a robbery victim spelled arrest for a man after police investigating the case identified him from the handwriting. NHK television said the man had pushed his way into the house of a 78-year-old woman in the town of Misato, western Japan, and stole ¥15,000 (US$125) after threatening her with a knife. He later wrote the victim a letter saying he was sorry and returning the cash. The handwriting "and other things" led police to the man, a 51-year-old construction worker who lives near the victim, NHK said.
■ Australia
Driver suffers reversal
Police charged a driver with "reversing further than necessary" after he traveled backwards for more than 40km along one of the country's busiest highways. Police said the man was stopped on the Hume Highway -- which runs between Sydney and Melbourne -- at Benalla, about 200km northeast of Melbourne. Police said the man told them reverse was the only gear in the car that worked and that he was traveling home to the small regional town of Numurkah, a further 90km away. He was also charged with unlicensed driving and driving an unregistered car and will appear in court later this year.
■ Pakistan
Child killed during festival
One child was killed and about 70 people injured during an annual spring kite-flying festival, police said yesterday, despite a crackdown against kite-fliers that netted more than 1,400 people over three days. Authorities banned kite-flying during the Basant festival in Lahore and other eastern Punjab provincial cities after seven people were fatally slashed by kite strings reinforced with wire or glass fiber in the days leading up to the event, which culminated on Sunday. There was only a sprinkling of kites over Lahore on Sunday due to the ban, which the mayor said helped prevent the multiple deaths normally associated with the festival.
■ China
Corruption raised at NPC
Corrupt politicians in rural areas are paying tens of thousands of dollars to win local elections, lured by the vast profits they can make afterwards wielding their clout, state media said yesterday. The claim was one of a series of allegations about corruption in the countryside that was raised at the National People's Congress (NPC), the Xinhua news agency said. "It's apparent that what the candidates are actually seeking is the power to control the village's land and mineral resources, which they can trade for cash and other personal benefits," said Liu Xiguang, an NPC delegate. Another NPC deputy, Zhu Huiqiu, called for an amendment to the Criminal Law that would make "sabotaging village elections" a crime.
■ China
Beijing steps up repatriation
Authorities expect a series of high-profile corrupt officials and businessmen who fled abroad to be repatriated, as Beijing steps up efforts to get them back from the countries where they have found refuge, the China Daily reported, citing a former assistant minister of public security. Among the targets is China's most wanted fugitive, Lai Changxing (賴昌星), allegedly the ringmaster of a US$6 billion smuggling ring in Fujian Province and who has been fighting extradition from Canada for several years. Others include two men now in the US who allegedly embezzled almost US$500 million from a Bank of China branch.
■ Algeria
Islamic leader freed
A jailed founder of the Islamic Armed Group was freed on Sunday, witnesses said, in one of the most significant releases yet under a government amnesty aimed at ending more than a decade of civil war. Abdelhak Layada -- also known as Abu Adlane -- was the leader of the group, known by its French initials GIA. He was arrested in 1993 in Morocco and had been sentenced to death. The GIA was responsible for massacres of civilians during a period of strife that began in 1992 when the army cancelled elections that radical Islamists were set to win. The violence cost about 150,000 lives and US$20 billion in economic losses.
■ Germany
Jews protest artwork
Jews blasted a conceptual artist on Sunday for converting a former synagogue into a "gas chamber" in a project he said targeted the "trivialization of the memory of the Holocaust." Spanish artist Santiago Sierra hooked up the exhaust pipes of six cars to tubes that pumped the poisonous gas into a former synagogue in the town of Pulheim near Cologne in a work he called 245 Cubic Meters. Visitors lined up to enter the building for a few minutes accompanied by a firefighter and wearing a protective mask to shield them from the deadly concentration of carbon monoxide inside. Sierra said in a written statement that the shocking project was aimed to stop complacency in the face of the Nazis' mass extermination of the Jews in death camp gas chambers.
■ Germany
Games cause disorder
Playing Internet-based roleplaying games to an excessive degree could lead to multiple personality disorder, according to the Medical University of Hanover. The university pointed to an example where a female patient had played online for several hours a day over three years using the personalities of a number of different characters. "During that time the invented characters gradually took control over the personality which had been neglected. The patient lost control of her own identity and social life," said Bert de Wildt of the university. During psychoanalysis, therapists discovered she had developed multiple personalities. De Wildt went on to explain that online roleplaying games were not the only cause of the disorder but therapists believed they can trigger the condition and could make it more persistent.
■ United Kingdom
Connery has tumor removed
Sean Connery has undergone surgery for a kidney tumor and is now recovering at home, his spokesman said on Sunday. The 75-year-old Scottish actor underwent surgery a few weeks ago and is recuperating at home, spokesman James Barron said. "He's very fit -- he's 100 percent plus," Barron said of the former James Bond actor. Connery told the Sunday Times that he "was opened in five places." His brother, Neil, told the newspaper that "as far as I'm led to believe, the tumor was benign. He [Sean] seems to be quite upbeat about it."
■ Spain
Police nab illegal migrants
Police caught more than 200 Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands after long, dangerous trips in overcrowded boats that set out from Mauritania, officials said on Sunday. At least four boats carrying 208 people reached the islands in the space of 24 hours starting on Saturday, Civil Guard officials said.
■ United States
Spies revealed online
The names of CIA personnel, including covert operatives, internal telephone numbers and locations of two dozen CIA installations, can be found through Internet searches, the Chicago Tribune reported on Sunday. Through online services that provide public, legally obtained information for a fee, a reporter netted a directory of 2,600 CIA employees and 50 internal phone numbers, according to a Tribune investigation. The paper also discovered the identities of CIA operatives at US embassies in Europe. At the request of the CIA, the newspaper did not release the names of the operatives. It did quote an unnamed source saying CIA Director Porter Goss was "horrified" at the discovery. "Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age," chief CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Dyck told the Tribune.
■ Mexico
Kidnapped victims freed
Police on Sunday freed five kidnapped businessmen from a 2m by 2m metal cage where they had been held for ransom for months by the Arellano Felix gang, prosecutors said. Police found the men in Tijuana, where they did business. The men were freed after a firefight, during which one of the kidnappers threatened to kill the hostages if police did not leave, the prosecutors said. The captors demanded sums as large as US$5 million, state prosecutors said. The family of one man, who owns a candy shop, paid part of his ransom while he remained kidnapped for two months. Five kidnappers were captured, according to the prosecutors, who said they were all attached to the Arellano Felix gang.
■ Chile
Bachelet honors her father
President Michelle Bachelet, on her first full day in office on Sunday, paid a moving graveside tribute to her father, who died in prison 32 years ago after being tortured under dictator Augusto Pinochet. Accompanied by her mother Angela Jeria, Bachelet visited a mausoleum where her late father Alberto Bachelet is buried. "Thank you all for having lived," she said as she laid flowers for her father and other family members buried there. Her father was an adviser to Socialist president Salvador Allende, toppled in a 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. He died of a heart attack at the age of 50 after six months in captivity during which he was tortured.
■ United States
Fans buy film stars
About 400 movie fans made bids on Saturday in the "Everything Must Go" auction at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California for wax figures of Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and many other famous movie stars. The museum was closed last year after 43 years and about 500 items were up for auction. Chris Doohan, 46, went to the auction hoping to buy the figure of his dad, James Doohan, who played Scotty in Star Trek and died last year. The bidding, however, reached US$4,200, which was a little too high for Doohan.
■ United States
Workers fall from coaster
Seven carnival workers fell from a roller coaster on Sunday while testing the ride for the upcoming Miami-Dade County Fair, authorities said. "One of the carts seemed to have jumped off the tracks or was derailed," Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue Lieutenant Roman Bas said. "As a result, it looked like the cart kind of tipped over and the individuals fell out." Four of the injured others were hospitalized It wasn't clear how far they fell.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the