■SOUTH KOREA
Fighter jet crashes
An F-16 fighter jet crashed in the Yellow Sea yesterday but its two pilots ejected safely, the Defense Ministry said. The two-seater aircraft was on a routine training mission from a base on the west coast when it crashed, the ministry said. “The two pilots ejected safely and were rescued by an air force helicopter and a boat in the West Sea [Yellow Sea],” a ministry spokesman said, adding the cause of the accident was not immediately known. He said investigators were trying to collect debris off Taean County, about 150km southwest of Seoul.
■INDIA
Pilgrims killed in crash
At least 24 pilgrims were killed and 75 injured when a truck carrying them from a Hindu shrine overturned on a road in Punjab yesterday, a news report said. The accident occurred near the town of Anandpur Sahib early yesterday when the truck was returning from the Hindu shrine of Naina Devi in Himachal Pradesh state, the IANS news agency reported. Twenty-one people were killed on the scene and three succumbed to injuries on way to the hospital, the PTI news agency said in its report. The injured were moved to a government hospital in Anandpur. Ravi Kumar, one of the wounded, told IANS “the driver was heavily drunk and he was driving the vehicle at a very high speed.”
■AUSTRALIA
Hungarian loses appeal
An 87-year-old alleged war criminal accused of murdering a young Jewish man in World War II yesterday failed in his latest bid to escape extradition from Australia to Hungary. Charles Zentai is accused of beating to death teenager Peter Balazs in 1944 in Budapest while serving as a soldier in the army of his native Hungary, then allied with Nazi Germany. Zentai was last August found eligible for extradition, but has mounted a series of challenges to the decision, including an appeal to the Federal Court on the grounds the case against him was legally unsound. But the Federal Court yesterday upheld his extradition.
■HONG KONG
British protester sentenced
A British man who unfurled banners denouncing China’s human rights record on a major Hong Kong bridge on the day of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony has been sentenced to six months in jail. A court document said Matt Pearce, a 33-year-old teacher from Bristol, England, was convicted of creating a public nuisance and sentenced on Monday. On Aug. 8, Pearce hung two banners on road signs on Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge that said, “We want human rights and democracy” and “The people of China want freedom from oppression.”
■CHINA
Man falls from CCTV towers
A man fell to his death from the futuristic Beijing headquarters of the country’s state broadcaster, state media said yesterday. The 23-year-old cleaner fell 45 stories on Sunday from the still unfinished China Central Television tower, Xinhua news agency reported. The report said it was not known whether the death was an accident or a suicide, but police had ruled out foul play. The headquarters building — two massive leaning towers that are joined at the top — became a symbol of the country’s modernization during the Beijing Olympics and was slated to be occupied by the state broadcaster later this year.
■MALAYSIA
Group seeks more patrols
A maritime watchdog yesterday urged an international naval coalition patrolling the waters off northern Somalia to extend its watch to the country’s eastern and southern coasts. The warning came amid a spike in attacks in the area. The latest attack occurred late on Monday, when pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at a South Korean bulk carrier off eastern Somalia. The vessel managed to escape after carrying out evasive maneuvers, the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center said.
■FRANCE
Academics find mass graves
Archeologists have stumbled upon two mass graves dating back to the years of civil strife unleashed after the French Revolution of 1789, officials said on Monday. Located in a park in the city of Le Mans, the graves contain the bodies of some 30 people including several women, two male teenagers and a child, the INRA archeology institute said in a statement. All were identified as victims of a massacre that took place on Dec. 12 and Dec. 13, 1793, as republican forces repelled royalist Catholic rebels from Le Mans during the first War of the Vendee. The first grave contained nine or 10 bodies, some still wearing shirt buttons and boot buckles, or carrying knives, while the second, sealed shut with a thick layer of lime, contained some 20 bodies. Between 1793 and 1796, the fervently Catholic Vendee region was rocked by a drawn-out insurrection aimed at reversing the French Revolution.
■IRAN
Saberi’s parents depart
The father of imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi said he and his wife were going to the Islamic Republic this week to see his daughter and speed up her release. Reza Saberi said he and his wife, Akiko, would leave their home in Fargo on Monday afternoon and hope to be in Tehran by today. Reza Saberi said he has been hearing word that officials were going to “speed up the process” of releasing his daughter, but he said “there’s still some work to do.” The government has said Roxana Saberi was arrested for doing reporting work in the country after her press credentials expired.
■QATAR
Arab summit backs Bashir
An Arab Summit voiced support for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Monday, rejecting an international arrest warrant issued against him for alleged war crimes in Darfur. “We reiterate our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the measure of the ... International Criminal Court against his Excellency [Bashir],” a final statement read at the summit in Doha said.
■GERMANY
Rightist youth group banned
The government banned an extremist right-wing youth group yesterday and conducted searches of property used by its leaders, the interior ministry said. A statement said the group, True Homeland German Youth, propagated racism and Nazi ideology. The ministry said the group organized holiday activities for children and young people where Nazi views were presented in the guise of non-political events.
The group schooled pre-teen children in “racial studies” and emphasized the need for “purity of blood” and the “procreation of the German race,” the ministry said. It also classed foreigners and Jews as a threat to the German race, the ministry statement said.
■UNITED STATES
Fifteen hospital workers fired
Fifteen hospital workers have been fired and another eight disciplined for looking at medical records of octuplet mother Nadya Suleman without permission, hospital officials said. Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center reported the violations of healthcare privacy laws to the state and has warned employees to keep away from Suleman’s records unless they have a medical purpose, hospital spokesman Jim Anderson said on Monday. “Despite the notoriety of this case, to us, this person is a patient who deserves the privacy that all our patients get,” Anderson said. He said Kaiser does not believe any of Suleman’s information was shared with the media, based on the results of their inquiry.
■UNITED STATES
Avoid pistachios, FDA says
Federal food safety officials warned on Monday that consumers should stop eating all foods containing pistachios while they figure out the source of a possible salmonella contamination. Still reeling from the national salmonella outbreak in peanuts, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said California-based Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc, the second-largest pistachio processor in the US, was voluntarily recalling a portion of the roasted nuts it has been shipping since last fall. A Setton spokeswoman said that amounts to more than 900,000kg of nuts. The FDA learned about the problem last Tuesday, when Kraft Foods Inc notified the agency that it had detected salmonella during product testing.
■MEXICO
Robbers get long stretch
A court has handed down prison sentences of almost 1,000 years each against five men convicted of robbing 18 customers at a Mexico City restaurant in October and holding them hostage. The sentences of 998-and-a-half years each are largely symbolic because the maximum prison terms in Mexico for such crimes are about 60 years and multiple sentences are served concurrently. The men robbed the customers, then took them hostage when police arrived. The customers were released a few hours later. The Mexico City prosecutors’ office said on Monday the men would also have to pay fines of more than 1.4 million pesos (US$98,000) apiece.
■UNITED STATES
Former adviser pans case
A former top government adviser who faces possible indictment in Spain for his role in establishing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on Monday described the case against him as “outrageous.” Douglas Feith — a key adviser in former US president George W. Bush’s Pentagon — told Fox News that moves before a Spanish court to indict him for facilitating torture were an effort to “intimidate US government officials.” A Spanish non-governmental group has called for six Bush-era advisers to be prosecuted, including Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and a top aide to vice president Dick Cheney.
■CANADA
Galloway ruling to stand
A judge declined on Monday to overturn a government ruling that bans an outspoken anti-war British lawmaker from entering the country. George Galloway was banned on national security grounds early last month, saying he provided money to Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada. Federal Court Justice Luc Martineau denied a request for an emergency injunction to allow Galloway in to begin a speaking tour in Canada. Galloway is well known in Britain for his ardent opposition to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of