■ AUSTRALIA
Golden gun on display
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was truly the man with the golden gun. And to prove it, the Australian military handed over a golden Tabuk rifle to the Australian War Memorial yesterday. The military had received the rifle from US troops in thanks for taking part in the Iraq war. The rifle was found by US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division while clearing buildings around Kirkuk, Iraq. The museum put the rifle on display.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Tycoon testifies in court
One of the nation's richest businessmen told a court yesterday he beat karaoke bar workers in the head in retaliation for a suspected attack on his son, and his bodyguards continued the assault when he got tired of punching. Prosecutors have said Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn and several bodyguards stormed into an upscale Seoul karaoke bar seeking those who had supposedly beat up his son in an early March incident. He then seized several workers, shuttled them off to a remote mountain area and forced them to their knees while he beat them, they said.
■ JAPAN
Passenger shirks order
Police arrested a suspected gangster on Sunday after he ignored an aircraft captain's order to turn off his five mobile phones as the plane was taking off, police said. Naoyuki Shimoda, a 34-year-old DVD sales clerk, was arrested for violating the Aviation Law for ignoring the captain's order when he was on board an aircraft taking off from Tokyo's Haneda airport, a spokeswoman from the police said. Following the captain's order, Shimoda said "Shut up! Why don't you call police," while continuing to use his mobile phones.
■CHINA
Needles found in boy
Doctors in Guangzhou City were planning to perform surgery on a one-year-old boy whose parents took him to a hospital because he had been unusually fussy and learned he had six sewing needles in his body, newspapers reported yesterday. The child's parents, who are migrant workers, said they had no idea how the needles ended up in their son, nicknamed Xiao Yu. The parents said they took Xiao Yu to a hospital on June 2 after he cried for three or four nights in a row and ate less than usual. X-rays revealed two needles inside the boy's chest, two in his scrotum, one embedded in his head and another in his abdomen. The parents said no strangers have come into contact with the boy.
■ JAPAN
Manta ray makes history
An aquarium in Okinawa is celebrating a special new arrival this week -- a giant manta ray keepers say is the world's first ever born in captivity. Video footage shows the 1.9m baby being squeezed out of her mother's body rolled up like a carpet, before unfurling her fins and flitting gracefully across the tank at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. "My heart was heavy at first because I thought it had been still-born, but we were so relieved when she finally started swimming around," the aquarium's manta ray breeder, Minoru Toda said. The birth on Saturday followed a pregnancy of more than a year after the 4.2m mother ray mated with a male manta also kept at the aquarium. Aquarium workers will use their intuition when caring for the new baby, because scientific knowledge about their development is limited, Toda said.
■ ITALY
`Architect of fashion' dies
Designer Gianfranco Ferre, known as the "architect of fashion" for his structured, sculpted shapes and for his groundbreaking tenure at Christian Dior, died on Sunday, a hospital said. He was 62. Ferre was taken to the San Raffaele hospital in Milan on Friday after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage. The hospital, in a statement authorized by Ferre's family, said he died at 9pm on Sunday. Ferre started his career as an accessories and jewelry designer and then moved on to clothes. His unofficial title as the country's architect of fashion came thanks to the degree in architecture he obtained in 1969 from Milan's Polytechnic Institute that inspired his designs.
■ ITALY
Bunnies threaten airport
Make like bunnies! The wild hares at Milan's Linate airport have taken that to heart -- so much so that officials on Sunday mounted an unusual operation to keep the furry creatures off the runways. Some 200 volunteers with reflective vests and whistles snared 57 hares and four wild rabbits, part of a twice-annual capture to keep the airport hare population under control. The animals were put in wooden crates and transferred to a nearby wildlife preserve, officials said. The province of Milan has to routinely catch the fertile hares because they interfere with takeoffs and landings. They can also cause false alarms with the airport's radar system.
■ UNITED STATES
Oral sex recruiter confesses
A 30-year-old military recruiter who pleaded guilty to offering to help a 16-year-old girl get into the Army in exchange for oral sex was sentenced to a year in jail. Army Sergeant Robert Scott was also ordered on Friday to register as a sex offender, serve five years of probation and pay fines totaling US$3,020. Scott pleaded guilty April 17 to a count of third-degree criminal sexual assault. The charge stems from a March 15 incident in which he made sexual advances toward the girl, a high-school student. Scott acknowledged that he offered to help her get enlisted more easily if she gave him oral sex.
■ UNITED STATES
Topless case settled
A New York artist arrested by police when she went on a topless stroll two years ago has accepted a US$29,000 settlement from the city, her lawyer says. Jill Coccaro, 27, was charged briefly with indecent exposure despite a 1992 state appeals court ruling that women had the right to be topless if men were allowed to take off their shirts. Coccaro, who now goes by the name Phoenix Feeley, bared her breasts on Aug. 4, 2005. Feeley remained in custody for 12 hours before she was told prosecutors were not going to pursue charges.
■ MEXICO
Cuban refugees intercepted
The navy has intercepted two boats carrying 58 Cuban refugees in the waters of the Caribbean near the Cancun tourist resort, officials said on Sunday. The government was investigating the incident as a possible human trafficking operation run by the ships' crews. Local media on Thursday gave unconfirmed reports of the arrests of the Cuban refugees, as well as four crew members from the two vessels identified by the Attorney General's office as two Mexicans and two Cubans. Authorities did not issue an official report about the arrests until Sunday.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese