■ China
Women's dress blamed
Ninety percent of respondents to an online survey of more than 4,000 professionals believe that women who dress "provocatively" are to blame for the widespread sexual harassment that occurs against them in the workplace. The survey, which was conducted by a job-hunting company, also indicates that 43 percent of the respondents think sexual harassment is "widespread" and 54 percent say it happens occasionally. About 45 percent believe perpetrators tend to be bosses.
■ China
Beijing unfit for mentally ill
Tens of thousands of mentally ill people in Beijing have no access to treatment or free medicine, a situation which poses a potential threat to social stability. Seventy percent of the 130,000 severely psychotic patients currently registered in the city get no free medicine and 60 percent never see a doctor, a report says. The head of the Beijing Health Bureau said the number of patients who do not receive the necessary medicine has spun out of control because of a lack of funding and personnel.
■ China
Crash caused by icing
The crash of a Chinese military plane that killed all 40 people on board was caused by the loss of control due to icing, state media reported yesterday. The June 3 crash of what was believed to be a prototype early warning aircraft was the People's Liberation Army Air Force's single worst-known accident. In a brief dispatch, the Xinhua news agency said the plane suffered icing on its surface after flying through frigid air, causing it to lose control and crash and burst into flame in a remote mountain area in Anhui Province.
■ Philippines
Bomb joke backfires
A Philippine national was removed from a domestic flight after making a joke about a bomb to a flight attendant, but was allowed on a next plane after apologizing, a security official said yesterday. The woman was seated on a Cebu Pacific plane on Wednesday when a flight attendant asked her to store her plastic bag in an overhead bin, said the Manila airport assistant general manager for security, Angel Atutubo. He said the woman responded saying, "What do you think? I have a bomb in the bag?" The attendant alerted security personnel and she was removed from the plane, Atutubo said.
■ Sri Lanka
Navy rescues Bangladeshis
The navy rescued 34 Bangladesh nationals yesterday who were aboard a crippled merchant vessel that sank off the island's southern coast, officials said. The cargo carrier, MV Amnet Sha, was being towed by a tugboat when it sank in rough weather off the coast of Koggala, said an official at the Colombo Radio rescue coordinating center. A navy spokesman said the vessel ran into difficulty and was being towed to the port of Galle, 112km south of here, when its hull broke. "We have taken on board 34 Bangladeshi nationals, including two children and two women," the navy spokesman said.
■ Indonesia
Islamic militants sentenced
Judges sentenced two Islamic militants yesterday for involvement in the terrorist attacks on Bali last year, saying they helped make explosives used in the blasts and videotaped confessions of the suicide bombers. Mohammad Cholili and Dwi Widiarto were among four men charged in the attacks on the Indonesian resort island, which killed 20 people and wounded nearly 200 others. The Denpasar District Court sentenced Cholili to 18 years in prison, while Widiarto received eight years.
■ Australia
Irwin to have private funeral
Wildlife TV star Steve Irwin will be given a private funeral attended only by family and close friends, with a public memorial service held later, his father said yesterday. "The family has decided to decline the generous offer from the federal government for a state funeral for Steve," Bob Irwin told reporters. "A private service will be held in the next seven days for family members and close friends only." Because of the outpouring of public grief, however, a full memorial service would be held within two weeks at a venue still to be decided, he said. Irwin, 44, daredevil star of the popular Crocodile Hunter program, was killed on Monday by a stingray while diving.
■ Armenia
Tax official dies in bombing
A senior tax official was killed on Wednesday by a bomb that detonated as he was getting into a car, police said. Shagen Ovasepian, head of the operations department of the State Tax Service, died of blood loss after the blast, which occurred around 9:30am as he sat down in his car, Yerevan city police said in a statement. His driver suffered light shrapnel wounds. In a separate incident, the editor of an opposition newspaper said he was attacked and beaten by unknown assailants near his home on Wednesday. Ovannes Galadzhyan, of the newspaper Iravunk, said he received a phone call a few days earlier from people warning that they would break his legs.
■ United Kingdom
Bombing speeder jailed
A 28-year-old man who blew up a speed camera, hoping to destroy evidence of his speeding, was sentenced to prison for four months on Wednesday. Craig Moore, 28, from Doncaster, said he had seen a flash of light from the camera, indicating that it had detected him speeding on Aug. 14 last year. So, he employed thermite, used in his work as a welder, to destroy it. But images of his speeding survived the explosion, and so did images of him returning to attack the camera. If he hadn't blown up the the device, he may have escaped prosecution altogether. Tameside Council confirmed that the Watchman camera was designed to deter speeders, and that it flashed only as a warning. However, the Watchman does contain cameras which monitor the area, and that's what caught Moore.
■ Iraq
`Terrorist' rapists executed
Authorities said they executed 27 "terrorists" in Baghdad on Wednesday after they were convicted of murder and rape. The convicts came from a number of the nation's 18 provinces, the government said in a brief statement issued late in the day. "The death penalty was carried out on 27 terrorists in Baghdad, they were executed after the criminals were convicted in Iraqi courts for carrying out acts of murder and rape," the statement said.
■ Iraq
Speaker's nephew abducted
The nephew of Sunni parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani has been kidnapped by unknown gunmen, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul Karim Khalaf told reporters yesterday. "Gunmen abducted Ahmed Mashhadani last night from the western Hurriyah neighborhood," Khalaf said, adding the reasons for his kidnapping were unknown. The nation's dominant Shiite community and the minority Kurds had recently demanded Mashhadani's resignation after he strongly criticized the idea of breaking up the country into rival federal regions.
■ Russia
Submariners perish in fire
Two submariners have been killed in a fire aboard a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea belonging to Russia's northern fleet, but the incident posed no risk of radioactive contamination, Russian news agencies said yesterday. The submarine, the Daniil Moskovsky, was on the surface of the sea north of the Rybachy peninsula in the Barents Sea at the time of the fire late on Wednesday. "The fire broke out ... due to a short-circuit in the energy supply system in one of the nose sections," according to a fleet spokesman quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency.
■ Canada
Speeder cites lack of goats
A Swiss driver caught speeding in eastern Ontario explained that he had been taking advantage of the ability to drive fast without hitting a goat, police said on Wednesday. The driver was caught traveling 161kph in a 100kph zone on Sunday. Police said it was the first time they had ever heard of such an excuse. "I've never been to Switzerland but obviously they must have a problem with that there," said police spokesman Joel Doiron, adding that in his 20 years of service he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario.
■ United States
Couple charged with murder
The foster parents of a three-year-old disabled Ohio boy who died after being wrapped in a blanket and packing tape for two days have been indicted on murder and kidnapping charges in Batavia. Liz and David Carroll Jr. are accused of wrapping Marcus Fiesel in the blanket and tape and leaving him in a closet while they went to a family reunion in Kentucky last month. The boy was dead when the Carrolls returned two days later, officials said. The grand jury on Wednesday also indicted the Carrolls on charges of involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and endangering children. David Carroll also was charged with gross abuse of a corpse. Authorities have said the Carrolls took in Fiesel to reap the payments for his foster care.
■ United States
Courier indicted for theft
A former nuclear materials courier with top secret clearance was indicted in Amarillo, Texas, on charges that he used his position to obtain restricted items and sell them over the Internet. Joe Allen Sizemore, 41, was charged with wire fraud, theft of government property and possession of unregistered firearms, US Attorney Richard Roper announced on Wednesday in a news release. Sizemore worked as a nuclear materials courier for the Office of Secure Transportation under the Department of Energy and was assigned to the Pantex Plant, a nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility near Amarillo. Couriers transport nuclear weapons and obtain body armor, night scopes and weaponry restricted to government and law-enforcement officials.
■ United States
Alleged killer kills himself
A California man fatally hacked his mother and two-year-old nephew with an ax before apparently committing suicide by stepping into highway traffic, officials said. Michael Allen Carriker, 37, was killed Monday on Interstate 5, said San Joaquin County sheriff's spokesman Les Garcia. When officials went to Carriker's home in Thornton to notify family members, they found an ax next to the bodies of Janet Jensen, 55, and nephew Keoni Willis. Carriker, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was distraught over the death of his father, who was killed in May, a relative said.
■ United States
Horse on the House menu
The House of Representatives is once again confronting the slaughter of horses for meat. Congress voted last year to stop horse slaughter. But they didn't ban it outright -- they just yanked the salaries of federal inspectors who monitored such slaughter. So the administration started charging slaughter plants for inspections. A vote was planned for yesterday on whether to put an end to horse slaughter. Critics call the industry un-American. US horse meat is sold mostly to Europe and Asia as well as some US zoos.
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