■ CHINA
PLA get new uniforms
The world's largest military will take on a fresh look as Beijing rolls out new uniforms for the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army (PLA), state media reported yesterday. Troops in Beijing and the Macau Special Administrative Region will change over on Aug. 1, which is Army Day, the official Xinhua news agency said. Forces elsewhere will make the switch over the next three years, it said. The changeover, which includes new bedding, is expected to cost 6 billion yuan (US$787 million), the report said, citing General Liao Xilong, chief of the PLA's General Logistics Department.
■ NEW ZEALAND
More sanctions for Fiji
New Zealand has imposed additional sanctions on Fiji, banning access to New Zealand to a wider range of people associated with the South Pacific island nation's military regime, Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday. Wellington's tighter sanctions come after Fiji expelled New Zealand's top diplomat on June 14, alleging High Commissioner Michael Green had been "meddling" in Fiji's domestic affairs. New Zealand rejected the claims. New Zealand imposed broad-ranging sanctions shortly after the Dec. 5 bloodless coup led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama - including halting all aid funneled through Fiji's government.
■ MALAYSIA
Police chief retains position
The government agreed yesterday to extend the tenure of the country's police chief despite claims circulated on the Internet and local newspapers that he was involved in graft and was linked to crime syndicates. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose portfolio includes the police, said he would retain Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Musa Hassan for an unspecified period. "I have decided to extend the IGP's service so that he can continue his agenda to fight crime and bring good the level of integrity to the police force," Abdullah said at his office in Putrajaya, the nation's administrative capital.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Tycoon gets 18 months
A court sentenced tycoon Kim Seung-youn to 18 months in prison yesterday over a sensational beating attack earlier this year against bar workers who had scuffled with his son. The Seoul District Court handed down the ruling. Prosecutors last month sought a two-year prison term for the Hanwha Group chairman in the attack on off-duty karaoke bar workers involved in the altercation with his 22-year-old son, a student at Yale University. Victims said that Kim's bodyguards confronted them after the scuffle in March and forcibly took them to a construction site near the capital, where the tycoon attacked them.
■ AUSTRALIA
Compensation considered
Canberra is considering compensating 247 people found to have been illegally detained by its immigration authorities over the past 14 years, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said yesterday. The move came hours after it was revealed that an average of 17.6 people - including citizens, permanent residents and lawful visa holders - were detained every year between 1993 and this year and held for anywhere between a few hours and more than six years. Government ombudsman John McMillan, who made the findings in four reports, said it was "inexcusable" that frequent errors by immigration officers had led to the detention of people who had a lawful right to live in the country.
■ UNITED STATES
Locusts threaten farms
Locusts have swept across 70,000 hectares of desert and threaten to swarm into farmlands in the worst plague to hit the country since 1993, officials warned on Sunday. "The desert locusts have hit three provinces and 70,000 hectares are now covered by locusts but these are desert not agricultural areas," said Abdou Fareih, head of the Yemeni Locust Monitoring and Combating Center. The government has asked the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for helicopters to spray locust-infested areas. The FAO says only intensive spraying from the air will stop the locusts breeding and causing serious damage to food crops. The country imports most of its food, so damage to crops would not lead to famine, officials say.
■ UNITED STATES
`Vampire' peacock attacked
A peacock that wandered into the parking lot of a Staten Island Burger King parking lot was attacked by man who claimed the bird was a vampire, authorities said. The bird had to be euthanized after it was beaten so badly that most of its tail feathers fell out, a spokesman for the New York City's Center for Animal Care and Control said. "It's just unbelievable that someone would do something to a poor, defenseless animal and do it in such a cruel fashion," he said. The bird was perched on a car hood on Thursday morning and employees were feeding it bread when the man appeared. He seized the bird by the neck, hurled it to the ground and started kicking and stomping on the creature, claiming it was a vampire, eyewitnesses said.
■ UNITED STATES
Pig parts grease highway
A busy section of the Edens Expressway in Chicago was closed for seven hours on Sunday after a truck tipped over and spilled pig ears, pig feet and grease. The greasy pig parts created slippery conditions and forced the closure of northbound lanes. A sudden shift in the truck's load caused it to tip onto its side, Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey said. Hassan Ware, 39, was cited for driving too fast for conditions and spilling his load on a highway, state police said. Clean-up crews used sand to absorb the grease, sprayed a foam usually used in hazardous materials situations and spread rock salt to provide more traction, Claffey said.
■ EGYPT
Convicted spy dies in jail
An engineer who was convicted in 2002 of spying for Israel died in jail on Sunday while serving a 15-year sentence, security sources said yesterday. The cause of his death was unclear, sources said. Sherif al-Filali, believed to be in his early 40s, had initially been found innocent of espionage in 2001, when the judge called him a true patriot because he turned himself in as soon as he realized he might have been involved in a crime. But President Hosni Mubarak threw out the acquittal and ordered a retrial in an emergency state security court, where Filali was convicted in 2002 of trying to collect military information and other data for Israel.
■ UGANDA
Plastic bag ban takes effect
A ban on plastic bags took effect on Sunday to cut down the piles of rubbish that litter the capital and other urban areas, breeding germs and poisoning water supplies. Officials want people to use banana leaves, the traditional material for carrying goods, instead. The ban followed a similar one on Tanzania's Zanzibar islands last year. Companies are now barred from making, importing or using plastic bags.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited