■ INDONESIA
Rights report delayed
The government refused yesterday to give a date for the publication of a long-awaited report on rights abuses during East Timor’s 1999 independence vote, amid criticism over the delay. The Indonesia-East Timor Commission of Truth and Friendship, tasked by both governments to uncover the truth behind the violence surrounding the referendum, finalized the report in March but it remains under wraps. “No date had been determined. We’re still waiting for an appropriate time from both presidents,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said. A coalition of human rights groups criticized the delay, which has led to fears the report is being watered down to protect powerful figures. “This is delaying justice,” said Rafendi Djamin of the Human Rights Working Group, a local nonprofit organization.
■ CAMBODIA
Puffer fish attacks teen
A teenager was recovering in hospital after an angry puffer fish mauled him in the groin, local media reported yesterday. The Koh Santepheap daily ran a picture of the unnamed 13-year-old in a hospital bed, saying he was lucky to be alive. The paper quoted the boy’s father, Sok Ly, as saying the fish had become enraged when it was accidentally trapped in the boy’s net and, when it was freed, had attacked. The victim, from Prek Pneuv commune outside Phnom Penh, was expected to recover from the attack, the paper said.
■ THAILAND
Woman arrested for 'insult'
A woman arrested for refusing to stand as the royal anthem played in a Bangkok cinema faces up to 15 years in prison, police said yesterday. Ratchapin Chancharoen, 28, was arrested on Sunday evening and charged with insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej by not standing during the anthem, which plays to a montage of royal portraits before the screening of every film. Other theater-goers became angry when Ratchapin refused to stand, and she allegedly shouted “impolite words” as a group confronted her, police said.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Light bulbs to be replaced
The country will phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs next year as part of an energy-efficient lighting strategy that will save nearly US$375 million annually by 2020, the government said yesterday. Energy Minister David Parker said that only 5 percent of the energy used by traditional bulbs generated light — the rest was wasted as heat. The strategy, using new energy-efficient bulbs, aims at a 20 percent reduction in the energy consumed by lighting.
■ LIBYA
Boat accident kills 150
At least 150 illegal immigrants drowned when their boat capsized an hour after it sailed from Libya on its way to Italy, an Egyptian diplomat in Libya said on Monday. The incident is believed to have occurred over two weeks ago. A man from Egypt and another from Bangladesh survived and are now in Libyan custody, the Egyptian consul in the Libyan capital Tripoli, Adham Hilal, said in remarks carried by the Egyptian state news agency MENA. The Egyptian who survived was identified as Wail Abdel Motagali Ali from the town of Zagazig, northeast of Cairo.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Team hunt for TB sufferers
Health authorities in South Africa said on Monday they were sending out a team in protective clothing to hunt for tuberculosis patients who escaped from hospital. The missing patients are suffering from a drug-resistant strain of the illness and three have the extremely dangerous XDR-TB. The breakout from the Jose Pearson hospital in Port Elizabeth reportedly took place after a security guard allowed one patient with XDR-TB to go shopping. The others protested when they were not allowed out, overpowered the guards and ran off. The provincial health authority said that three of the 19 patients who escaped had returned to their families, who would bring them back to hospital.
■ IRAN
Cops begin dress crackdown
Police closed 32 clothes shops and hairdressers and stopped cars and pedestrians in the street in an intensified crackdown on women who do not abide by Iran’s strict Islamic dress code and on men who take up fashions seen as too Western, Iranian media reported on Monday. The sweep, which was launched on Saturday in some neighborhoods of Tehran, is part of an annual campaign aimed at enforcing dress codes, which require women to wear long loose robes or coats and cover their hair in public. Many women, particularly in Tehran, push the boundaries of the code, wearing short, colorful coats that show the shape of the body and letting their headscarves slip to show much of their hair.
■ GAZA STRIP
Journalists stage protest
Journalists in the Gaza Strip held a symbolic work stoppage on Monday as part of a protest to demand Israel explain why its troops killed a Reuters cameraman in the Palestinian enclave two months ago. Responding to condemnation of the killing from the EU, Israel’s foreign minister said during a meeting with EU counterparts that her government would publish the results of an inquiry into the April 16 incident, possibly within days. The demonstration, during which journalists in Gaza laid down their cameras, came on a day when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon unveiled a memorial in London dedicated to journalists killed while reporting on wars around the world.
■ ITALY
Man kidnaps ex-girlfriend
An Italian man was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend from a pub, taking her home and forcing her to iron his clothes and wash the dishes, police said on Monday. The 43-year-old man dragged the woman out of a pub in the port city of Genoa, shoved her into a car and took her to his home where he made her iron and wash dishes after threatening her, they said. Police arrived at his house after being tipped off by a friend of the woman. The man, who was apparently furious at his ex-girlfriend for leaving him, was arrested on charges of kidnapping, police said.
■ UNITED STATES
MySpace woman enters plea
The Missouri woman accused of posing as a boy on the Internet and harassing a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide pleaded not guilty on Monday morning to charges of Internet fraud and conspiracy to inflict emotional distress. Lori Drew, 49, is accused of setting up an account on MySpace, calling herself Josh Evans and, along with other people, sending cruel messages to 13-year-old Megan Meier. who had been friends with Drew’s daughter. Megan hanged herself in October 2006.
■ UNITED STATES
Horse vasectomy reversed
Scientists at the national zoo said on Monday that they have reversed a vasectomy on an endangered horse to allow it to reproduce naturally, the first-known operation of its kind on an endangered species. Veterinarians said the surgery was performed in October on a Przewalski horse named Minnesota. The horses are native to China and Mongolia and were declared extinct in the wild in 1970. Minnesota had a vasectomy in 1999 at his previous home at the Minnesota Zoo.
■ UNITED STATES
Couple faces filicide charges
A couple accused of killing their 13-year-old son by tying him to a tree for two nights for punishment appeared in a North Carolina courtroom on Monday to face charges of murder and felony child abuse. Brice McMillan, 41, and his wife Sandra McMillan, 36, of Macclesfield did not enter a plea. Arrest warrants said the child sustained “bruising to the wrist, cuts to entire body, missing flesh from buttocks, results from being tied to a tree for approximately 18 hours resulting in death.” An autopsy is pending.
■ UNITED STATES
Judge cuts dog's inheritance
Trouble, a white Maltese that inherited US$12 million from late hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley, will have to get by on a little less after a judge gave US$10 million of the bequest to charity and two Helmsley grandchildren. Judge Reena Roth ruled Helmsley was mentally incompetent when she made out her will, and decided to give US$4 million to charity and US$6 million to Craig and Meegan Panzirer, who were cut out of the will. Trouble lives at an undisclosed location in Florida, where she was taken in after receiving numerous death threats.
■ COSTA RICA
Cops detain 'banana buyers'
Two men caught with US$372,000 in cash near the Panama border are telling police they just wanted to buy bananas. Police say the pair appeared nervous when their car was stopped over the weekend. So officials searched the vehicle and found the cash in a briefcase. Police commander Freddy Hernandez said on Monday that the men told officials they were banana brokers. Police are holding them on possible money laundering charges.
■ BRAZIL
Soldiers held over killings
Eleven soldiers were arrested after allegedly turning over three shantytown residents to a drug gang that executed them and left their bodies in a garbage dump, police said on Monday. The killings touched off anti-military protests on Sunday and Monday in the Providencia shantytown, with residents burning city buses and throwing rocks at soldiers. The soldiers detained the three on Sunday on charges of disrespecting authority and later released them in a shantytown belonging to a rival gang, a police official said. The men’s bullet-ridden bodies were discovered at a garbage dump on Sunday.
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