■ AUSTRALIA
Yacht crew still missing
The niece of a captain whose yacht was found drifting off the Great Barrier Reef with its sails up and engine running said yesterday she believes he and his crew may have been kidnapped. Police maintain they probably drowned. Skipper Derek "Des" Batten, 56, and brothers Peter and James Tunstead, aged 69 and 63, were last seen on April 15 leaving the northeastern town of Airlie Beach, the first leg of a two-month trip around the country's north coast. The Kaz II was discovered three days later drifting some 150km offshore. Rescuers who boarded the vessel found food and cutlery laid out for a meal, and the men's clothes folded in neat piles on the rear deck. A laptop computer was charging, the boat's engines were running and navigational equipment was laid out on the table.
■ CHINA
Greenhouse gas giant
China will overtake the US as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases this year, a news report cited the International Energy Agency (IEA) as saying. The country had been forecast to surpass the US in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, IEA chief economist Fatih Birol was quoted as saying in an interview in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. "In the past couple of months, economic growth and related coal consumption has grown at such an unexpected rate," Birol was quoted as saying. China's rising emissions will effectively cancel out other countries' attempts to reduce their own, he said.
■ MALAYSIA
Footage reveals rare rhino
Unprecedented video footage has given a rare look at the life of one of the world's most endangered animals in a coup that could help save it from extinction, wildlife campaigners said yesterday. The pictures from Borneo island are believed to be the first ever moving images showing the Sumatran rhinoceros in the wild. The night time footage showed a rhinoceros eating and peering through jungle foliage, before it walked up to the camera and sniffed the equipment. The rhino shot in the footage is a Bornean subspecies and scientists estimate there are only between 25 and 50 left on the island.
■ CHINA
College scans fingerprints
A college has introduced fingerprint scanners to stop students from playing truant, the China Daily said yesterday, but not everyone is pleased about it. Meiya College of International Studies at Hunan University spent US$32,360 last year on installing the scanners in its classrooms. "Students are now required to `check in' to each class by pressing their thumbs against the scanner," the newspaper said. Attendance has risen to 95 percent since the scanners were introduced, the newspaper said. But some students are not happy. "We are adults. Is it really necessary to control us in this way?" said Gu Yifan, a first-year student.
■ MALAYSIA
Police to give youths advice
Police in Terengganu state will advise youths who remain outdoors after 2am to return home, an official said yesterday, in an effort to curb crime, underage sex and reckless motorcyclists. "We're not calling it a curfew. We're only trying to advise youths to be home by 2am," said Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani, state police chief. He said the drive would be aimed at "teenagers" but did not specify an age limit. However, youngsters approached by authorities while loitering around beaches and public squares should heed the advice, Acryl Sani said.
■ BELGIUM
Rwandan denies murders
Former Rwandan army major Bernard Ntuyahaga denied involvement on Monday in Brussels in the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and the country's prime minister in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, insisting he was an innocent bystander. "I was at the bad place at the bad moment," he told the court on the second day of his trial. Ntuyahaga is charged with murdering the Belgians and prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who they were trying to protect, on the day after the Rwandan president's plane was shot down on in 1994.
■ CANADA
PM listens through `ether'
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reacting to reports that he has engaged a clairvoyant, urged people on Monday to contact him through the ether. Harper's image adviser -- who looks after his wardrobe and general grooming -- is also a self-styled psychic, prompting light-hearted press speculation that the prime minister might be receiving information via a crystal ball. Harper is not known for his sense of humor but made parliament laugh after an opposition legislator said citizens should call the prime minister's office and insist he do more on climate change.
■ GERMANY
Kidnap plan revealed
Terrorists once planned to kidnap fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld as part of a scheme to free fellow guerrillas from jail. A former member of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, which terrorized the country throughout the 1970s and 80s with murders, kidnappings and bank robberies, said Lagerfeld was viewed as a perfect target because of his personal wealth. Convicted terrorist Peter-Jurgen Boock, who is out of prison having served 17 years, said the designer was the most prominent of "an array of people with a large fortune on whom we collected information with a view to kidnapping them."
■ POLAND
Men convicted of mugging
A regional court in Warsaw convicted three men on Monday for mugging Russian diplomats' children and stealing their mobile phones in a 2005 incident that strained Polish-Russian ties, according to a news report. The men, identified only as Pawel B., Filip P. and Grzegorz L. because of identity laws, were convicted of mugging three children of Russian diplomats and a Kazakh friend in a Warsaw park in July 2005, the PAP news agency reported. No one at the Warsaw regional court was immediately available for confirmation. Following the mugging, Russia swiftly demanded an official apology from Warsaw, claiming the attack was politically motivated.
■ ITALY
Group chooses flavors
Ice cream lovers can help fight global warming by seeking out ice creams flavored with local berries, fruits and nuts, a farmers' group says. Papaya ice may be nice, but it takes 5.4kg of oil -- with the attendant carbon dioxide that releases into the atmosphere -- to transport 1kg of the fruit from Argentina to Rome, Coldiretti said in a statement over the weekend. The farm group urged Italians to pick those types made from local produce instead. It said environment-friendly ice-cream parlors have been opening up across Italy in a sign of growing demand for fresh, authentic products whose use helps to trim emissions, a main contributor to global warming.
■ UNITED STATES
Halberstam dies in crash
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam was killed in a car crash early on Monday south of San Francisco, a coroner said. He was 73. Halberstam, a New Yorker, was a passenger in a car that was hit broadside by another vehicle around 10:30am near a bridge in Menlo Park, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said. The driver, a student at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, was taken to Stanford Medical Center. Two others were injured in the crash. Halberstam spoke on Saturday at a Berkeley-sponsored event on the craft of journalism and what it means to turn reporting into a work of history.
■ UNITED STATES
Border agent faces charges
A border patrol agent was charged with murder on Monday for shooting dead a Mexican immigrant last January in a case that prompted condemnation and increased tensions with Mexico. The Cochise County, Arizona, Attorney's office filed four charges, including first degree murder against agent Nicholas Corbett. The charges alleged that Corbett unlawfully shot Mexican Francisco Dominguez-Rivera shortly after he crossed a stretch of desert border between Douglas and Naco on Jan. 12. Following the shooting, Mexico's foreign ministry complained of"disproportionate violence" and instructed the Mexican embassy in Washington to investigate the circumstances.
■ CHILE
Fjord residents to be moved
The government said on Monday that it will evacuate residents and businesses from the banks of a southern fjord that was swamped by deadly waves after an earthquake. At least three people died when they were swept out to sea on Saturday by 8m waves triggered by an earthquake that sent avalanches crashing into Aysen Fjord. Rescuers searched on Monday for seven missing people. Experts warned that the fjord is unsafe because seismic activity that started on Jan. 22 is expected to continue.
■ ECUADOR
Shark fishermen arrested
Eleven crew members aboard a boat found with 65 sharks caught in the marine reserve off the Galapagos Islands were arrested on Sunday. The boat was seized before dawn on Sunday during a joint patrol by the Ecuadorean navy and park officials. Sharks are a key part of the Galapagos' food chain, and their absence could upset the reserve's ecosystem, a statement from the Galapagos National Park service said on Monday. Last month, UNESCO's World Heritage Center director warned of threats to the flora and fauna of the "fragile and delicate" island chain, including increased tourism and human settlements.
■ UNITED STATES
New York regulates pedicabs
The New York City Council on Monday put the brakes on legions of unregulated bicycle taxis, adopting licensing and safety standards that the drivers called unfair and the mayor vetoed last month. The pedicabs have become popular among tourists and residents. Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month had second thoughts during the bill-signing ceremony after a group of pedicab drivers and their supporters stood up and told him the bill was unfair. He later vetoed it. Despite his objections, the council voted overwhelmingly to override the veto, so the regulations should take effect in about five months. The regulations would limit the number of pedicabs allowed on city streets to 325 and require drivers to display fare cards.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not