■ PHILIPPINES
Militant captured
Police and soldiers in the south have captured an Islamic militant allegedly involved in the beheading of 10 Marines last year, a military spokesman said yesterday. Sali Dungkal Alih, a member of the Abu Sayyaf group, was arrested by police and military agents on the southern island of Basilan late on Friday, Major Eugene Batara said. He said Alih had taken part in the beheading of the 10 Philippine Marines by Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim guerrillas in July last year in Basilan. The suspect had a bounty of 500,000 pesos (US$11,330) on his head.
■INDONESIA
Two drown in ceremony
Two people drowned when their boat capsized off West Timor during an annual ceremony to ward off evil, police said yesterday. The ethnic Chinese were killed when their boat capsized in heavy seas off Tanjung Bastian beach on the northern coast of West Timor on Sunday afternoon, district police chief Abdul Salam said. “Strong waves overturned one of the boats and two participants drowned and were found dead,” Salam said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Drought limits energy supply
People are likely to be asked to cut their electricity consumption from this weekend because of the effects of a prolonged drought, Energy Minister David Parker said yesterday. The drought has reduced the level of the most important South Island lakes used for generating hydro-electricity to about half of normal. About 64 percent of New Zealand’s power comes from hydro generation. “Rain over the weekend has had a small positive impact, but unless we receive significantly more this week, a power savings campaign funded by electricity generators will be stepped up, starting on Sunday,” Parker said.
■MALAYSIA
CD sniffing dog killed
A dog trained to sniff out pirated discs, from a Malaysian unit which criminals have made threats against, has been found dead in the undisclosed location where it was kept, a report said on Sunday. The New Straits Times said that Manny, a one-year-old golden Labrador which arrived in Malaysia in February, died about a week ago and that authorities were trying to determine the cause of death. “We have sent Manny’s body to University Putra Malaysia for a post mortem,” said Roslan Mahayuddin, the enforcement director of the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry. “He had not started work yet so I doubt that there was anyone who wanted to harm him,” Roslan said. Manny and another dog Paddy were the latest additions to the world’s first anti-piracy canine unit. The first dogs in the unit, another pair of Labradors named Lucky and Flo, made headlines last year after uncovering huge stashes of pirated CDs, doing serious damage to the lucrative illegal industry. During a five-month stint during which they sniffed out 1.6 million CDs, leading counterfeiters placed bounties on their heads.
■CHINA
Race fatal to onlookers
At least three people have died and another five are missing after they fell into a river while watching a dragon boat race in Jiangxi Province, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The eight were watching the race in Tonggubao village around 5pm on Sunday when they fell into the water. Witnesses said the riverbank had become muddy and slippery after recent rains. A search was underway for the missing five.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Fathers stage rooftop sit-in
Two fathers’ rights demonstrators scaled the roof of a senior lawmaker’s home in London on Sunday to stage a protest over family law policy. The men, dressed in superhero costumes, clambered on to the rooftops of the home of Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour party. Protest group Fathers 4 Justice said the men were Mark Harris and Jolly Stanesby, both from Plymouth. The group campaigns for reform of family laws and greater access rights for fathers who live apart from their children. The demonstrators said they planned to remain on Harman’s roof until she read a book written by Harris on problems fathers meet in the family courts system.
■ITALY
Bishop bans wedding
A bishop has told a young paraplegic he cannot have a church wedding because he is impotent, media reported. Salvatore de Ciuco, spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo, told SkyTG24 TV on Sunday: “No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment” of the marriage. The 26-year-old groom, who took part in a civil marriage ceremony on Saturday in Viterbo, has been paraplegic since he was involved in a car accident. The parish curate who was banned from marrying the couple was present at the ceremony.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Thieves add to power crisis
Theft of electricity cables has played a role in the power crisis, a senior government official said yesterday, urging communities to protect electricity networks. Mbhazima Shilowa, premier of Gauteng Province, told an energy summit that criminals stealing cables had been responsible for recent blackouts in the Johannesburg area. “There is no way that members of the community don’t see them [criminals], don’t know,” Shilowa said.
■Ukraine
Workers rescue two miners
Rescue workers reached a pair of survivors yesterday morning, after a deadly pit blast trapped dozens of coal miners for more than a day, media reported. Emergency teams working an estimated 625m below the surface in the eastern Donetsk region broke through to a chamber containing the two miners pinned under fallen rock. A third survivor was still pinned and rescuers were working to free him, Inter TV reported. It remained unclear how many of the 34 miners survived Sunday’s methane gas explosion at the Karl Marx mine in Yenakiyevo.
■KENYA
ADHD may help some: study
A genetic propensity for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may actually help people thrive in nomadic environments, a study of Kenyan tribesmen published last Tuesday showed. US researchers found a gene associated with the disorder was linked to better health and body weight in a group of nomadic cattle herders, but could cause malnourishment in their cousins who have settled and begun to grow crops. “Our findings suggest that some of the variety of personalities we see in people is evolutionarily helpful or detrimental, depending on the context,” said lead author Dan Eisenberg. “This insight might allow us to begin to view ADHD as not just a disease but something with adaptive components.” The dopamine receptor gene the team studied is involved in impulsivity, reward anticipation and addiction and is believed to be associated with food craving as well as ADHD.
■ URUGUAY
Dead penguins wash ashore
At least 60 dead penguins washed up on Uruguay’s coast on Sunday in an incident that environmentalists linked to a fuel spill following a boat crash near Montevideo’s port days ago. Another 34 penguins, covered in oil but alive, also appeared on the beaches, Richard Tesore of SOS-Marine Life Rescue told online news outlet Observa. The birds were Magellanic penguins, which migrate between southern Argentina and the coast of southeast Brazil, Tessore said. They may have swum through oil spilled when Syros, a Greece-registered boat, and Sea Bird, a vessel registered in Malta, collided near Montevideo last Wednesday. Officials said the collision produced a 20km-long spill near the Rio de la Plata river.
■CHILE
Search closing in on plane
Officials have picked up signals from the emergency transmitter of a small plane with 10 people aboard that is missing in the country’s south. Air Force General Hugo Pena said three planes and one helicopter have joined ground patrols in the search for the Cessna 208 Caravan. Pena says the plane took off on Saturday from the Puerto Montt airport for the southern village of La Junta. Authorities said they picked up the signal from the area of La Junta. The Patagonia Airlines plane was carrying nine Chilean passengers and was flown by a Chilean pilot when it took off in strong winds and rain.
■UNITED STATES
Gay bishop in civil union
The first openly gay Episcopal bishop and his partner of 20 years have been united in a private civil union. The Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson was legally joined to Mark Andrew, his partner of 20 years, in a ceremony on Saturday, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire said. Civil unions became legal in New Hampshire this year. The union was performed five years to the day after New Hampshire Episcopalians elected him as their bishop. The union and a following religious service were both held at St. Paul’s Church in Concord. Robinson had made public his intention to join his partner, but had kept the date secret out of concern about security.
■UNITED STATES
Helicopter crash kills four
A medical helicopter crashed on an isolated ranch in a national forest early on Sunday, killing a patient and three crew members and strewing debris over a wide area. The PHI Air Medical helicopter crew was taking a 58-year-old patient from a hospital in Huntsville, Texas, to one in Houston for surgery, said Butch Davis, Walker County chief sheriff’s deputy. The flight left Huntsville Memorial Hospital at 2:45am and the hospital lost contact with it two minutes later, Davis said. Searchers did not find the wreckage in the Sam Houston National Forest for almost six hours. The owner of the private ranch was not there at the time of the crash, Davis said. The cause was being investigated and the weather was clear at the time.
■UNITED STATES
Feds to probe mansion fire
Federal investigators were due in the Texas state capital of Austin yesterday to try to determine who set the fire that gutted the historic governor’s mansion. The 152-year-old Greek Revival style landmark was engulfed in flames before dawn on Sunday. More than 100 firefighters took part in a losing battle to save the iconic building, which officials believe fell victim to arson. “What has been lost today can never be replaced,” said Robert Black, press secretary for Governor Rick Perry. “It’s an extraordinary amount of loss.”
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.