■ CHINA
Navy ship goes to Japan
A naval ship left yesterday for a port call to Japan for the first time since World War II in a further sign of easing in Sino-Japanese relations. The guided missile destroyer Shenzhen departed from its base in Zhanjiang and was scheduled to arrive in Japan next Wednesday for a four-day visit, Xinhua news agency reported. The port call is the first to Japan by the People's Liberation Army naval forces and is supposed to be reciprocated under plans agreed to by the countries' defense ministers in August. The ship's first stop will be Tokyo.
■ CHINA
Jailed reporter wins award
Imprisoned journalist Li Changqing (李長青) has been awarded the World Association of Newspapers' annual press freedom prize, the Paris-based organization said on Tuesday. Li was sentenced last year to three years in prison for "spreading false and alarmist information." His arrest followed an investigation into a graft-busting bureaucrat that Li promoted in his writings who was later sentenced to life in prison on bribery charges. Supporters said the accusations against the official, Huang Jingao (黃金高), were trumped up. Prosecutors accused Li of leaking information about a dengue fever outbreak to an overseas Web site.
■ AUSTRALIA
Navy rescues 16 from boat
The navy rescued 16 people, 10 of them children, from a boat sinking in rough water off the northwest coast, the defense department said yesterday. It was not immediately clear whether they were trying to seek asylum or where they were from. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said they had set off in a wooden boat from Indonesia's Rote Island. Immigration officials were working to determine their identities and nationalities. Many asylum seekers set off from Indonesia in rickety boats bound for Australia. In 2001 the Norwegian vessel Tampa rescued 433 asylum seekers from a sinking Indonesian ferry and attempted to take them to Australia. Prime Minister John Howard refused to allow the ship to dock.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Piglet found in toilet paper
A piglet nicknamed Andrex is recovering after being found in the back of a truck full of toilet paper at a supermarket. The animal, thought to be two or three weeks old, was discovered in a delivery at a Tesco store in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. Staff wrapped the piglet in a blanket and called the RSPCA, a Tesco spokesman said on Tuesday. He was taken to an animal shelter in Radcliffe-on-Trent, outside Nottingham, suffering from cuts and bruises to his snout.
■ FRANCE
Chirac under investigation
Judges have placed former French president Jacques Chirac under investigation for embezzlement of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris, his lawyer Jean Veil said yesterday. Chirac, who lost his immunity from prosecution after leaving office in May, has consistently denied any wrongdoing while he was mayor between 1977 and 1995. The case revolves around jobs allegedly handed out to sympathizers by Paris city hall.
■ ZIMBABWE
Ian Smith dies at 88
Rhodesia's last prime minister Ian Smith, who has died aged 88, once insisted black rule would not come to pass in a thousand years. Four years later he was a citizen of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It was a typically outspoken and ill-judged prediction by a man who turned his country into a global pariah but also won grudging admiration in some quarters for defying international isolation and sanctions for more than a decade. Smith spent his last days living with his daughter-in-law in Cape Town. Janet, his wife, died in 1994. Their only son Alec died last year.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Met mascots too white
The Metropolitan Police in London are spending £15,000 (US$31,000) to create "ethnically diverse" mascots after complaints about a model deemed too white and too male, reports said on Tuesday. Met chief Sir Ian Blair ordered the new politically correct models after an Asian officer complained about PCSO Steve, the mascot produced to visit to schools to promote the police force. Critics said the fact that Steve was white, with blue eyes and blond hair, risked leaving Asian and women officers "isolated," the Daily Telegraph said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Charity pub crawl planned
A group of "pilgrims" is planning to stage a charity pub crawl next month to mark the anniversary of a mysterious London meander by a senior English clergyman, who denies he was drunk. The Bishop of Southwark made headlines last December when he wandered home from a pre-Christmas party at the Irish embassy, ending up with a black eye, lost possessions and colorful tales reported of his antics en route. The clergyman, Tom Butler, claimed to have no memory of what happened to him on the night, but witnesses recorded how at one point he was found sitting in someone's car, throwing toys out of the window. When asked to explain himself he uttered a line which has since come back to haunt him: "I'm the bishop of Southwark, it's what I do." Now the Ship of Fools, dubbed "the magazine of Christian unrest," is organizing a "pilgrimage" involving pub-hopping along the bishop's alleged route. "Only 30 pilgrims -- for the sharp-eyed among you, the number which assembled in Southwark at the start of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales -- will be able to make the trip," the organizers said.
■ BRAZIL
God is one of them
"God is Brazilian," President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva said on Tuesday in relation to his government's announcement earlier this month that massive new oil reserves had been discovered offshore. "This discovery ... proves that God is Brazilian," he said during a speech at his presidential palace in Brasilia. His theological assertion is not original: people there have long claimed that God shares their nationality on the basis of the natural resources at their disposal. The British magazine The Economist also made reference to that, saying in its take on the oil find in an article last week titled "God may indeed be Brazilian after all."
■ UNITED STATES
Trio sentenced for hate crime
Three men who beat a homosexual man and chased him onto a road where he was struck by a car and killed were sentenced to prison, prosecutors said. In what prosecutors called a hate-inspired robbery scheme, the men found Michael Sandy in an Internet chat room frequented by gay men, lured him out to New York's Plum Beach with a promise of a date and attacked him. The men received sentences of seven to 21 years in jail for second-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and attempted robbery.
■ UNITED STATES
Polygamist gets jail
The head of a polygamist sect was jailed for five years to life on Tuesday following his conviction on rape charges over the marriage of a schoolgirl against her will to a cousin. Warren Jeffs, 51, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was found guilty in September on two counts of acting as an accomplice to rape. At a sentencing hearing in St George, 480km south of Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jeffs was given consecutive terms of five years to life for each offense.
■ UNITED STATES
Boy stabs brother over TV
A 12-year-old boy stabbed his 13-year-old brother during a fight over what to watch on TV, seriously hurting him, police said. The older brother was in extremely critical condition, authorities said. The two had been fighting when the younger boy allegedly went to the kitchen, returned with a 12cm knife and stabbed his brother in the abdomen, Phoenix Police Lieutenant Rob Howe said. Their father heard them fighting over the TV, Phoenix Police Sergeant Joel Tranter said. The boys' seven-year-old sister was in a different room at the time of the stabbing.
■ UNITED STATES
Dolphin has three mothers
A two-month old dolphin calf at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, is being nursed by three females, the aquarium said. While it is known that female bottlenose dolphins can spontaneously produce milk if a calf is present, the practice is not well documented and aquarium staff are carefully watching the process. The unnamed calf was born to a dolphin named Jade, who is being helped in her nursing duties by the mother-daughter team of Chesapeake and Shiloh, the aquarium said in a statement issued Tuesday to announce the birth. Aquarium officials are compiling a list of possible names for the calf, which appears to be thriving.
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