■ EAST TIMOR
Interim PM sworn in
Estanislau Aleixo da Silva was sworn in yesterday as East Timor's interim prime minister, succeeding Jose Ramos-Horta, who was elected president in a landslide earlier this month. Aleixo da Silva, a member of the ruling Fretilin party, will only serve until next month's parliamentary elections, in which outgoing President Xanana Gusmao is widely tipped to become the next prime minister. "I feel honored that I am trusted by my party as well as by President Xanana to hold the post of prime minister," he told reporters after a ceremony at the presidential palace, presided over by Gusmao.
■ JAPAN
Police raid naval college
Civilian and military police raided a historic naval college yesterday over leaked data on the missile defense system Tokyo shares with Washington. The leak of sensitive information on the high-tech Aegis radar system, used by the US on ships fitted with SM-2 ballistic missile interceptors, worried Washington and came as the two countries pledged closer defense ties. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates voiced his deep concern when he met Japanese counterpart Fumio Kyuma last month. Police believe the unauthorized information may have circulated at the First Service School in Etajima.
■ CHINA
Tourism opens up
Tourism to foreign companies will be fully open from July 1, an official newspaper reported yesterday, promising expanded competition in the country's fast-growing travel market. Head of the China National Tourism Administration Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉) said that from that date foreign travel agencies could open subsidiaries in the country "without restrictions" and registered capital requirements for such operations would be relaxed, the China Daily reported. "It will help enhance the competitiveness of Chinese tourism enterprises," Shao said of the move, which will take effect four months before a deadline set when China joined the WTO in 2001.
■ CHINA
Beijing cracks down on ads
Beijing has launched a crackdown on over-the-top advertising, claiming that the ads offend socialist values and threaten "social harmony." The city's aggressive real estate developers have been reaching for Donald Trump-like capitalist superlatives to sell housing. "Luxurious," "ultra-distinguished," "supreme pleasure" and other terms crowd billboards that promise buyers the life of moguls or aristocrats. "Be a foreigner's landlord!" crowed one advertisement -- in Chinese only -- for buyers to invest in a new apartment block in a Beijing development. Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan (王岐山) recently complained about the rhetorical excess, and on Friday the city's commercial agency said it had seen enough.
■ INDIA
Groom goes on hunger strike
Turned down for marriage because of his dark complexion, an Indian man staged a hunger strike outside his would-be bride's house for two days before she finally relented, an official said yesterday. Saral Prasad, the 23-year-old groom in eastern Bihar state, said he would not budge from the girl's village home after she refused to marry him earlier this week in an arranged marriage because he was too dark. Rajani, 19, changed her mind after two days and the couple got married, Arun Kumar Mishra, a village council official said.
■ SWIZERLAND
Burundians get new home
A group of 88 Burundians who have lived as refugees in neighboring Tanzania for up to 35 years on Friday became the first of about 8,500 to leave Africa for a new life in the US. The resettlement was offered by the US government in October after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued an appeal to find a new home for thousands of Burundians who fled ethnic violence in their country in 1972. The UNHCR said a further 3,000 refugees would leave Tanzania for the US over the next 15 weeks, and the remaining 5,400 Burundians would follow this year.
■ BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Man indicted for war crimes
The war crimes court indicted on Friday a Muslim wartime police commander for torturing Croat prisoners in a Roman Catholic church in the south during the brief Croat-Muslim war in 1993. The court charged Zijad Kurtovic with war crimes. Kurtovic tortured detained Croat civilians and prisoners of war in the All Saints church in Donja Dreznica village, the indictment said. He beat them with crosses and statues of Saints, it said. "The accused, inter alia, allegedly, forced detainees to eat pages from the Bible and other religious books," and forced two detainees to perform oral sex, it said.
■ TAJIKISTAN
Heroin sent with DHL
Police have arrested a woman for trying to smuggle heroin in a refrigerator through the express delivery firm DHL, the interior ministry said on Friday. The DHL office in Dushanbe grew suspicious after noticing that its transportation cost to Moscow exceeded the actual cost of the fridge by several times. It then called the police, said the interior ministry. "We have arrested a 26-year-old woman who tried to send via DHL a refrigerator with a total of 17.4kg of heroin hidden in its inner cover plate," Interior Ministry spokesman Khudoinazar Asozoda said.
■ UNITED STATES
Taylor can keep Van Gogh
Actress Elizabeth Taylor can keep a Van Gogh painting that might have been illegally seized by the Nazis because the family who once owned it waited too long to ask for it back, a US appeals court ruled on Friday. Taylor, 75, bought the 1889 painting View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1963 for US$257,000. The painting is worth many times more today. The Orkin family, South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939, sued Taylor in 2004, saying that the work had been confiscated by the Nazis and should be returned to them under the 1998 US Holocaust Victims Redress Act.
■ SUDAN
Chadian president to visit
Chadian President Idriss Deby will visit Sudan next month for talks aimed at fully normalizing frayed ties with Sudan, a Sudanese Foreign Ministry official said on Friday. The two countries, who have long been at loggerheads over military clashes and rebel activity on their volatile desert frontier, signed a Saudi-brokered reconciliation deal on May 3. They have pledged to cooperate in stabilizing war-ravaged Darfur and neighboring areas of Chad. State Minister for Foreign Affairs al-Samani al-Wasiyla said the visit was part of efforts to implement a Libyan-sponsored deal.
■ UNITED STATES
Scotty's ashes found
They beamed him up -- and on Friday, after a three-week search, they found the rocket that had carried ashes of Star Trek actor James Doohan briefly into space. The remains of Doohan, who played Star Trek character Scotty, were blasted off to the edge of space from New Mexico last month, two years after his death. The payload also included the ashes of another 200 people. But the rocket carrying the capsules with the ashes back to Earth got lost in rugged terrain and the search for it was hampered by bad weather.
■ VENEZUELA
Colombia visit canceled
Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro canceled a visit to Colombia and warned the neighboring country that President Hugo Chavez's government will not tolerate being slighted by Colombian officials. Maduro was responding on Friday to remarks by Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who said during a recent visit to Spain that large amounts of Colombian cocaine are being smuggled through Venezuela. "What comes out constantly are statements by [Colombian] ministers against Venezuela," Maduro told reporters. "We aren't going to accept any more conduct of this sort ... It's not a game to us."
■ CANADA
Jet crashes, killing pilot
A Snowbirds jet crashed during rehearsals for weekend performances at Malmstrom Air Force Base, killing the pilot, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. The Canadian military identified the pilot as Captain Shawn McCaughey, 31, of Candiac, Quebec. The crash occurred at 3:45pm on Friday, when a group of five planes was practicing maneuvers above the base. The plane broke from the formation and "for some reason shortly thereafter pitched down and crashed," FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said. McCaughey was the only person in the single-engine jet, and he did not eject.
■ UNITED STATES
Newspaper cuts jobs
The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper plans to cut about a quarter of its newsroom staff. Management told union leaders on Thursday that it plans to eliminate 80 union and 20 management positions, out of a newsroom staff of about 400. The Chronicle is owned by Hearst Corp. Managers told the union the cuts were necessary because of the paper's continuing financial losses, Michael Cabanatuan, president of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, said in a prepared statement.
■ VENEZUELA
Chavez wants papal apology
President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them. Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the pope before, accused the pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus' 1492 landing in the Americas. "With all due respect your Holiness, apologize because there was a real genocide here and, if we were to deny it, we would be denying our very selves," Chavez said. In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Venezuela's neighbor Brazil, the pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Indian leaders in the region were outraged by the comments. Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number