■ MARSNALL ISLANDS
Stranded tourists evacuated
Foreign tourists will be evacuated from one of the world's most famous nuclear test sites after they were left stranded by the grounding of the Marshall Islands national airline, officials said. Seven international divers from Australia and the US and a Canadian photo journalist were stranded on Bikini after Air Marshall Islands' last operational plane was grounded last Saturday after a mid-air engine failure. The Marshalls Sea Patrol said a patrol boat would depart today for the 36 hour journey to Bikini from the capital Majuro.
■ CHINA
Uranium goes missing
Eight kg of radioactive uranium has gone missing, delaying the verdict in a trial of four men charged with attempting to sell it on the black market, state media said yesterday. A court in Guangzhou heard the four tried to sell the material, which can be used in making nuclear weapons, between 2005 and January of this year, the China Daily said. The men were arrested in January after a potential buyer in Hong Kong reported them to the authorities, but "the men claimed [the uranium] had been lost because it had been moved around so much between potential buyers," the paper said. A verdict will not be reached until the uranium is tracked down.
■ JAPAN
Inmates die from heat
Two inmates in cells without air conditioning or fans have died in a heat wave, which has claimed dozens of lives this month, jail officers said yesterday. A 71-year-old man was found unconscious in his 4m2 cell without air conditioning or a fan at a jail in Saitama Prefecture, where the mercury hit an all-time record 40.9oC last week. The man was sent to hospital, but died two days later, said a jail officer. In Osaka Prefecture, another inmate in his 30s, who was undergoing rehabilitation for drug addiction, suffered a fever and was taken to hospital. A few days later he returned to his cell, but died the next morning, the officer said.
■ JAPAN
Man cuts off finger in protest
A member of a right-wing group was arrested on Thursday after he sent his severed little finger to the ruling party's headquarters in protest at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's failure to visit a Tokyo war shrine. Abe stayed away from Yasukuni shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of the nation's World War II surrender. The 54-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of making threats after he sent his finger to the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters, said a police official. The envelope also contained a letter of protest and a disk showing images of the man cutting off his finger, the official said. "I thought they would ignore me if I just sent the letter, so I put my little finger in as well," Kyodo news agency quoted the man as telling police.
■ AUSTRIA
Man rescued from trash
Refuse collectors rescued a Polish man from the jaws of a rubbish truck after hearing his cries for help, daily Kleine Zeitung reported on Wednesday. The homeless 50-year-old had spent the night in a rubbish container on a housing estate in the town of Arnoldstein. In the morning, refuse collectors came along and emptied the bin into the back of their truck, Kleine Zeitung said. One of the workers heard his cries and stopped the machine when the press in the back of the truck started squashing the rubbish. The man was not hurt but taken to hospital for a check-up.
■ RUSSIA
Man's privates torched
A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said on Wednesday. Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict." The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small apartment, something common in a country where property costs are very high. "It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this."
■ FRANCE
Love handles disappear
A small ring of flab around President Nicolas Sarkozy's middle mysteriously disappeared in US vacation photos of him in a swimsuit that were published in the weekly Paris-Match. Sarkozy's office insisted on Thursday they had nothing to do with the disappearance. Spokesman David Martinon denied reports that the presidential palace gave instructions to the magazine's owner -- and Sarkozy friend -- Arnaud Lagardere, to retouch the photos. "The only line we work on is the political and diplomatic one," Martinon told a news conference. "We are rather bad at Photoshop here," he added ironically. Paris-Match said it retouched the photos because "the position of the boat exaggerated this protuberance ... In lightening the shadows, the correction was exaggerated."
■ RUSSIA
Czar's son found?
The remains of the last czar's son and heir to the throne, missing since the royal family was gunned down nine decades ago by Bolsheviks in a basement room, may have been found, an archaeologist said on Thursday. Bones found in the remnants of a bonfire near Yekaterinburg, the city where Czar Nicholas II and his wife and children were held prisoner and then shot in 1918, belong to a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of the czar's son Alexei and a sister whose remains have also never been found, a top local archaeologist said.
■ FRANCE
Dead babies discovered
Police on Thursday arrested the mother of three newborns after their decomposing bodies were found in a suitcase and box at her home in Albertville. The 36-year-old woman told police she had given birth to the babies on her own and hidden them from her partner. The babies were born in 2001, 2003 and last year. Her companion stumbled on one of the decomposing bodies in a suitcase while the woman was away and alerted police. Prosecutor Henry-Michel Perret said "she said that she did not want to be pregnant."
■ UNITED STATES
Wiccans charged in feud
A self-proclaimed high priestess and a man were accused of tossing raccoon parts on the doorsteps of businesses, allegedly as part of a Wiccan community feud in Salem, Massachusetts. Sharon Graham, 46, and a fellow Wiccan, Frederick Purtz, 22, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham also was charged with intimidating a witness. They were accused of putting a raccoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of Angelica of the Angels and the Goddess' Treasure Chest in May. A witness said Graham had a disagreement with the owners of the targeted businesses over proposed regulations that would limit the number of psychics who come to Salem during the Halloween season.
■ VENEZUELA
Body sent to morgue by taxi
A Caracas family was forced to send a murdered son to the morgue in a taxi after waiting five hours for police who never arrived, El Universal reported on Wednesday. Heavy rains threatened to wash away Kelvin Jose Pinango's body, which was left near a creek in the poor 23 de Enero neighborhood after the 20-year-old was killed on Monday in what appeared to be an attempt to steal his motorcycle, the newspaper said. "We dragged the body to the edge [of the creek] and after five hours we hired a taxi," a family member told the paper, asking not to be identified.
■ UNITED STATES
Suspect flees police station
A man being questioned in a homicide escaped from police custody on Thursday afternoon by jumping from a third-floor window at a Queens County police station onto the roof of a lower building, the police said. The man, Maxie Dacosta, 27, had been detained as a suspect in the death of a Long Island man, Darnell Angevine, 25, of Amityville. Angevine was shot in the chest shortly before 3am in Jamaica, New York, during a dispute involving a large group of men, the police said. Dacosta was taken to the 103rd Precinct station house, where he escaped about 2:30pm, the police said. The police said the window had been closed.
■ UNITED STATES
Drill instructor charged
A US Marines drill instructor has been charged with 225 criminal counts connected to abusing recruits, a Marines spokesman said. Sergeant Jerrod Glass postponed making a plea during a court appearance at San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot in California, where he worked, the spokesman said on Thursday. The charges include 91 counts of assault, 90 of failure to obey lawful orders and 27 of cruelty and maltreatment. Glass had worked as a drill sergeant for less than a year when the alleged mistreatment occurred in January and February. No member of his platoon was seriously injured.
■ UNITED STATES
Terrorist-buster busted
A veteran detective's claims that he flunked a drug test because his wife served him marijuana-spiked meatballs "simply weren't credible," and he has been fired by the New York Police Department, a spokesman said. Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. During the investigation, his wife said she had secretly substituted marijuana for oregano in her meatball recipe in hopes of forcing him to leave police work. His lawyers presented evidence that she had passed a lie-detector test.
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