■ AUSTRALIA
YouTube priest put on leave
A Roman Catholic priest who unleashed a torrent of expletives and racist abuse against skateboarders outside his Melbourne cathedral, only to have the outburst filmed and placed on YouTube, has been put on leave. The Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, was videotaped swearing at and abusing a group of teenagers using the cathedral grounds as a skate park. "Move, you fucking fool," Baron tells one skater in the video, slapping one of the group across the head and prompting a torrent of abuse in reply. Pointing to a skater lying on the ground, Baron is heard telling the youth "Little foreigner there, look at the sleepy eyes, black hair."
■ CHINA
Dog farmer sentenced
A dog farmer in Shanghai has been jailed for 14 years for breaking into a local dog breeder's home, tying her up and stealing 24 puppies, state media said yesterday. Ge Wei (葛偉), 32, owner of a farm outside Shanghai, was also deprived of his political rights for four years and fined 20,000 yuan (US$2,600) at a Shanghai court on Wednesday. The court was told that Ge set up his dog farm in a Shanghai suburb in 2005. "On Jan. 21 this year, Ge read an online posting regarding the sale of puppies. After having contacted the owner of the pups, identified as Ms Wang, Ge went to her home to inspect them, concluding that each dog could fetch more than 10,000 yuan each on the market," Xinhua said.
■ CHINA
Slave labor case decided
Courts in Shanxi Province have sentenced 31 people, including a police officer, to prison terms of up to five years stemming from the use of slave labor in brick kilns, state media reported yesterday. The scandal erupted in June after news media reported that children as young as eight were abducted or recruited from bus and train stations with false promises of well paying jobs and sold to kilns for about 500 yuan (US$65). Victims were forced to work almost around the clock, beaten, and deprived of pay, nourishment and basic medical care.
■ EAST TIMOR
Aussie troops may remain
Australia said yesterday it could keep its troops in the country until the end of next year if the new Timorese government, which has yet to be formed, still wants to keep them. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also brushed aside concerns after officials announced on Wednesday that it was delaying the composition of a new government. Speaking at Asia's annual security summit, Downer said Australia could keep its 1,000 troops in the tiny nation until the end of next year.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Lamb born with seven legs
A six-day-old lamb at a veterinary clinic on the South Island bleats like any other newborn sheep, but is rather different in other ways. The lamb has seven legs, local media reported yesterday. Two of the extra legs hang useless behind the lamb's forelegs. The animal has three hind legs, one of them with two hoofs. It walks using its two forelegs and three hind legs, the Ashburton Guardian newspaper said. The lamb was born last Friday on the farm of Dave and Di Callaghan. Dave Callaghan said he was surprised to find the seven-legged creature, born with a twin, walking round in the paddock with its mother and normal twin sibling. "I have never seen anything like that," he said.
■ ITALY
Getty to return statue
The Getty museum of Los Angeles, California, has agreed to return a prized statue, The Aphrodite, to Italy following years of dispute over allegedly looted antiquities, the culture ministry announced on Wednesday. Under a bilateral agreement, the Getty will "transfer to Italy 40 objects, including The Aphrodite, formally called the Cult Statue of a Goddess, in 2010, the ministry said in a joint communique with the US museum. The rare fifth-century BC statue made of marble and limestone was at the center of the dispute. The authorities claimed it had been illegally exported.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Man wins lottery twice
A lottery winner doubled his share of the jackpot after he mistakenly bought two lucky tickets for the same draw, organizer Camelot said on Wednesday. Derek Ladner, 57, from Cornwall, and his wife Dawn, 60, won with their usual numbers in the mid-week draw, sharing the ?2.4 million (US$5 million) jackpot with four other tickets. A week later, he found a second identical ticket in his wallet and realized he had absent-mindedly entered twice. Their double-share of the jackpot is worth just under ?1 million.
■ SERBIA
Bull taken to prison farm
A bull was incarcerated in a prison farm this week along with his recently convicted owner so he could look after the 1.5 tonne-animal, which would otherwise have risked going to the slaughterhouse. Four-year old Micko was taken to the farm at Novi Sad District Prison to join his owner Hamdija Djuric, who was jailed on July 21 for stabbing a man, Beta news agency reported. Micko had been left untended following Djuric's arrest. "Since there are no animal quarantine facilities in Novi Sad, it was important to find a solution to accommodate the bull," said Branka Pasko of the animal protection society Arka.
■ GERMANY
States enact smoking bans
Three states introduced smoking bans on Wednesday, after an attempt to pass national regulations collapsed in the face of disagreement between states and opposition from the tobacco lobby. Lower Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg in the west and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the east were the first to ban smoking in public places, while the other 13 regions have pledged to introduce bans by next year. The three banned smoking in schools, hospitals and state institutions, but Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will wait until next January before joining the other two states in outlawing smoking in bars and restaurants.
■ TURKEY
Eight killed in clashes
Three soldiers and five separatist Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas were killed in clashes in the east on Wednesday, army sources said. Five soldiers were also injured in the clashes in the eastern province of Tunceli, said the sources, who did not wish to be named. Dozens of soldiers have been killed this year in an escalation of violence in the east and southeast, which has prompted calls from the army for a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq to deal with rebels based there. The AK Party government, re-elected last month, has resisted the powerful army's calls.
■ UNITED STATES
Focus on Pakistan: Obama
Democratic Senator Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the US should shift its military focus away from the Iraq war to a broader fight against Islamic extremism, pledging to dispatch US forces to eradicate terrorist camps in Pakistan if that nation failed to take such action. The Democratic presidential nominee said he would order strikes on al-Qaeda targets and withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf did not blunt a resurging Taliban presence in the country's tribal areas. This, he said, is the "right battlefield" to make the US safer.
■ UNITED STATES
The real Harry Potter
Sometimes it is a hassle being Harry Potter, especially if you are a 78-year-old retiree. Each time a new Harry Potter book or movie comes out, Florida resident Harry Potter gets phone calls from children and interview and autograph requests. "The kids want to know if I'm Harry Potter," he said with a chuckle. "I tell them I've been Harry Potter for darn near 80 years." Potter said he has not read any of the books or seen the movies, but he gets his fun out of Pottermania. "When Harry talks to the kids, they'll ask about the owl and he'll say, `Oh, he came by and brought the mail,'" his wife Jan said. "Then, when they're done, the mothers come on and say thank you for talking to the kids. He gets a big kick out of it."
■ COLOMBIA
Phone scam on the rise
The nation, long one of the world's kidnapping capitals, has seen a rash of cases in which mobile phone customers receive messages telling them to turn off their handsets for two hours because their telephones have been cloned, police say. The criminals then contact family members of the phone user to say that he or she has been taken hostage. Families who have no way of contacting their relative are directed where to drop off ransom money before the two hours are up. "If you get a call telling you to turn off your handset, contact the authorities," local TV channel Caracol told viewers during a Tuesday news program.
■ UNITED STATES
Mom dressed dead toddlers
Two children found dead under an apartment sink were bathed and dressed by their mother before being wrapped in trash bags, arrest warrants released on Wednesday showed. The warrants provide new details of the events that police in Hanahan, South Carolina, say led to the arrest of a troubled single mother suspected of leaving her children in a hot car for hours while she was at work. Sametta Heyward, 27, was charged on Tuesday with homicide by child abuse after the bodies of one-year-old Triniti Campbell and four-year-old Shawn Campbell Jr. were found. The warrants said Heyward called her ex-boyfriend and told him she had "killed her babies."
■ GUATEMALA
Anti-crime body approved
Congress on Wednesday voted to create a commission made up of a team of international crime experts to investigate organized crime and police corruption. The US, Sweden, Norway and Spain have offered to help finance the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, which is expected to start work in November. "The commission's goal of helping Guatemalan authorities to investigate criminal groups and take them to trial ... will help to strengthen the rule of law," the US embassy in Guatemala said in a statement on Wednesday.
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