■CHINA
Suspected killer arrested
Police have arrested a taxi driver suspected of raping and killing at least seven women, in a serial murder case that has horrified locals, state press said yesterday. The driver, identified as Da Li, was arrested in the east of the country after a nationwide manhunt, the East Asia Economic News reported. Da is suspected of being involved in the murders of seven woman, while police are seeking to link him to two more murders in Baicheng, the report said. Police broke the case after a woman who disappeared two weeks ago sent a short message to her mother with the license plate of the taxi cab that she was riding in.
■NEW ZEALAND
Glacier disappearing fast
The Tasman Glacier is retreating at the rate of more than 500m a year because of global warming, a scientist said yesterday. Martin Brook said that the glacier, which sweeps past Mount Cook, the country’s highest peak, in the Southern Alps, was melting into a lake that began to form only 35 years ago and was now 7km long and 2km wide. He told Radio New Zealand that the lake was likely to more than double in length to 16km over the next 20 years. “It’s just too warm for a glacier to be sustained at such low altitude,” said Brook, a glaciologist at Massey University.
■CAMBODIA
Man accused of killing dad
A man has been charged with murdering his father after becoming “embarrassed” by village gossip that the man was a sorcerer, police said yesterday. Police in Kampong Chhnang said Tong Syleina, 20, attacked his father, Khat Tongly, 56, on Monday, hacking him to death with a machete. He was charged late on Tuesday evening. “He admitted that he did the murder because he felt ashamed and embarrassed about village gossip that his father was a sorcerer. The villagers insulted his family with this talk and called him son of sorcerer and witch boy,” officer Chim Bunthueon said. Executions of accused sorcerers remain common in rural areas.
■NEW ZEALAND
Officials warn of fake drugs
Health officials warned yesterday against buying medicines on the Internet, saying poor quality or counterfeit drugs for erectile dysfunction had been intercepted entering the country from India, China and Thailand. Stephen McKernan, the director general of health, issued a specific warning about four products illegally promoted in Singapore for treating erectile dysfunction that had been found to contain dangerous levels of a prescription medicine used to treat diabetes. He said the products — Power 1 Walnut, Santi Bovine Penis Erecting Capsule, Zhong Hua Niu Bian and a counterfeit Cialis — contained a diabetes drug and were believed to have caused one death and up to 89 adverse reactions in Singapore.
■INDIA
Elephant tramples three
At least three people were trampled to death by an elephant and several injured when an intoxicated man teased the animal on Wednesday during a Hindu festival, police said. The elephant went berserk in a town in Kerala and destroyed a temple’s theater and tower, as hundreds of people ran in fear. “The elephant was provoked,” police official P.S. Suresh said yesterday. TV channels showed pictures of the elephant trampling the man, hurling another with its trunk and attacking other elephants. Forest officials rushed to the spot and fired tranquilizers to calm the elephant.
■RUSSIA
Gay pride march banned
The Moscow mayor’s office said on Wednesday it would not allow gay pride marches — previously broken up by ultra-nationalists — to take place on the May Day holiday. The announcement came as a gay rights leader said he planned events next month to highlight the repression of sexual minorities. “The council will act decisively and uncompromisingly to prevent attempts to hold such events because society is overwhelmingly opposed to the gay lifestyle and philosophy,” council spokesman Sergei Tsoi was quoted by Interfax as saying. “It is a matter of surprise and indignation that gays plan to carry out unsanctioned gatherings in various parts of Moscow during the Festival of Peace and Work,” he said. “There could be bloodshed and no one wants that.”
■BELGIUM
EU denies ‘secret plans’
The EU has no plans to abolish England, officials in Brussels insisted after two British newspapers accused the EU of wanting to “wipe England off the map.” A European Commission spokeswoman said: “There are no secret plans to carve up the continent in a way that makes England disappear. There is no goal of creating a United States of Europe.” The comments came after two popular British tabloids, the Sun and the Daily Mail, celebrated the day of England’s national saint, St George, by revealing the existence of “EU plots to carve up Britain.” “Secret plans” allegedly drawn up in Brussels included maps “wiping out” England and changing the name of “the English Channel” to “Channel Sea.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Blair dodges ticket fare
Former prime minister Tony Blair was left red-faced when he was caught traveling on a train without a ticket and said he had no cash to pay the fare, a report said on Wednesday. Blair, who has earned around £500,000 (US$1 million) on the speaking circuit since leaving office in June, was confronted by a ticket inspector as he traveled to Heathrow airport to catch a flight to the US on Monday, the Daily Mail newspaper reported. He said he had no cash for the £24.50 fare because money an aide had given him was no longer in his pocket. The newspaper, quoting Blair’s spokesman, said his bodyguard offered to pay the ticket, but the inspector said he could travel for free.
■ITALY
Macabre crime ring busted
A macabre criminal ring has been dismantled in southern Italy involving hospital workers tipping off funeral homes when patients die, local police said on Wednesday. “Operation Dearly Departed,” begun in 2006, led to the arrests of 33 people in the scam in the southern port of Bari, police said. Hospital workers who informed the funeral homes of dying patients were paid between up to 650 euros (US$1,000) for the information, the ANSA news agency reported. Members of the alleged ring also extorted 100 euros from the bereaved for transporting the bodies to their homes, police said.
■TURKEY
Military bombs Iraqi Kurds
Warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq on Wednesday, a pro-Kurdish news agency said, quoting rebels in the area. The bombardments lasted for about 45 minutes and began at about 1pm GMT, said a report from the Firat news agency, which said that the targets were rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases in the town of Khakurk. The Turkish army did not confirm the bombing raids, which Firat said did not cause any rebel losses.
■COLOMBIA
Correa appeals to FARC
Leftist Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday he was willing to recognize the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels as legitimate combatants if they stop acting like terrorists. “To attain that status they would have to give up all activities contrary to the rules of war, such as kidnappings, attacks that can qualify as acts of terrorism, bombings, et cetera,” Correa said in an interview with Venezuelan TV. “We say this categorically, they must give up actions that go against human rights ... and free unconditionally all the hostages they are holding,” Correa said. It was the first time Correa spoke about the FARC either as a legitimate fighting force or as a terrorist group, which is how the US, Europe and Colombia brand them.
■CANADA
Arms sales may be eased
The government said on Wednesday that it was considering lifting restrictions on the sale of automatic firearms to 11 NATO countries, hoping to bolster its arms manufacturing sector. The proposed changes outlined in the government’s gazette would expand by more than half the number of countries to which defense contractors can sell automatic firearms. Currently, Ottawa allows arms exports to only 20 nations. The additions would “improve access to potential market opportunities for Canadian firms in the defence sector” and “thereby potentially support increased production for Canadian firms in the defence sector,” the government said in a statement.
■UNITED STATES
Man charged for mail fraud
A businessman who sold Viagra-laced chocolate as a food supplement called “Boom” was indicted on Wednesday for mail fraud by a federal judge and faces 20 years in jail if found guilty. Tibor Liska pleaded guilty to selling by mail some 12,000 packets a month of sildenafil — a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction sold under various names, including Viagra — mixed with chocolate and herbs, US attorney Michael Garcia said in New York. The food supplements were distributed between March 2006 and November last year.
■UNITED STATES
Grizzly bear kills handler
A grizzly bear featured in the recent Will Ferrell film Semi-Pro and touted as one of the “best trained” in show business has killed its handler, but officials said on Wednesday they were puzzled by what provoked the attack. The 320kg, 230cm-tall bear bit Stephan Miller, 39, in the neck on Tuesday at a facility where wild animals are trained for film and TV productions near the mountain resort of Big Bear Lake, east of Los Angeles. Two other trainers at the facility subdued the bruin with pepper spray and were unhurt in the incident, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire said.
■UNITED STATES
Organized crime top threat
Organized crime has emerged as a top global threat as criminals conspire worldwide to prey on everything from energy markets to victims of identity theft, US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday. Organized crime groups are particularly dangerous when they hook up with terrorists to turn a profit, Mukasey said in announcing a new government focus on mobsters. Also alarming is growing evidence of what Mukasey described as mobsters infiltrating and corrupting global fuel and energy markets with the potential to destabilize parts of the US economy.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.