■INDONESIA
Buddha Bar drops its name
The first Asian branch of the chic Paris-based Buddha Bar has dropped its name amid complaints by Indonesian Buddhists that it denigrated their religion, the management said on Tuesday. The Jakarta franchise of the bar-cum-restaurant, opened in a historic colonial-era building last year, said in a statement it dropped its name “out of respect” for the country’s religion minister and did not mean to offend Buddhists. “There has been no intention to hurt the feelings of Buddhists in Indonesia. Taking down the Buddha Bar is as a form of respect to Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni,” manager Henry Marheroso said in the statement. The bar has changed its name to Bataviasche Kunstkring, the original Dutch name of the building, a former immigration office, it said. Buddhist activists said the bar had been forced to drop the name after the government’s intellectual property agency revoked its right to the local Buddha Bar trademark.
■NEW ZEALAND
Motel bans a whole town
The Australian owner of a motel and his Scottish “Basil Fawlty” manager have banned an entire town, including its member of parliament. Steve Donnelly, owner of the Supreme Motor Lodge in the North Island town of Palmerston North, said he became fed up with the rowdy behavior of sports teams from Wainuiomata, a town near the capital Wellington. So he and manager Malcolm Glen — who according the motel’s own Web site is better known as “Basil Fawlty” after the highly strung John Cleese TV character — banned the whole town of 17,000 people. When Wainuiomata’s member of parliament and former cabinet minister Trevor Mallard tested the ban yesterday by trying to book in, Glen gave him his marching orders. “As a Scotsman I don’t have a vote, it doesn’t matter to me, you’re banned,” Glen told the lawmaker.
■NEW ZEALAND
Islands’ names are not legal
Experts searching for alternative Maori names for New Zealand’s two main islands were startled to find that their commonly used English names — North Island and South Island — were never made legal, officials said on Tuesday. To repair the 200-year-old oversight, the country’s Geographic Board, which assigns and approves names for all New Zealand places, said it would take steps to legally name the two South Pacific islands that make up more than 95 percent of the country’s land mass. The board had spent several years exploring a process for formally recognizing alternative Maori names for each island when it noticed that the islands had never been given official names, board chairman Don Grant said. “We therefore want to formalize alternative Maori names and, at the same time, make the naming of ... North and South Islands official,” Grant said.
■AUSTRALIA
Recession good for gamblers
Gamblers who tipped that the government was wrong and that Australia would fall into recession this year were rewarded with big payouts yesterday from Internet betting agency Centrebet. Centrebet financial analyst Neil Evans said the smart money had always been on the economy contracting in two consecutive quarters and that astute gamblers had always discounted claims that billion-dollar stimulus packages would keep the economy growing. This week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd conceded he was wrong and that the economy would indeed go backwards this year.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Nazi-bred cows find new life
A herd of “super cows,” descended from animals bred in Nazi Germany, is making an impressive sight on a farm in southwest England. The animals, Heck cattle, were bred by the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, two zoologists who wanted to recreate the auroch. An extinct European wild ox, the auroch features as an important beast in Teutonic mythology. Only a few Heck cattle survived after World War II, but Derek Gow, a farmer and conservation consultant, has shipped 13 bulls and cows from Belgium to the farm in Devon, where they have joined a growing collection of beavers, polecats and water voles. Gow believes Heck cattle — which, he says, “look prehistoric” — could one day have an important conservation role, taking the place of aurochs in the environment. “They are an important part of the ecosystem because each cow produces its own weight in dung a year. That is excellent for the whole food chain, from dung beetles upwards,” Gow said.
■SOUTH AFRICA
ANC angry over chicken ad
The Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC) has vowed “militant action” against Nando’s, the chicken restaurant chain, for satirizing its controversial leader, Julius Malema, in TV and radio advertisements. Nando’s, known for its spicy “peri-peri” chicken, has a long history of poking fun at politicians through its ads. The baby-faced, shaven-headed Malema, 28, has been a favorite target of satirists for his boorish outbursts in defense of controversial ANC leader Jacob Zuma. In the Nando’s ad, a puppet of Malema is pressed by a news presenter about his demands for “change” within the ANC. Malema replies: “We will get the change [money] we need from Nando’s.” The league said the ad was a “racist” attempt to portray political leaders as “cartoons” and threatened to “mobilize” the public against Nando’s. A Nando’s marketing official was quoted in media reports as saying the ad was aimed at providing a bit of comic relief during election time.
■ITALY
Three kids left in pizzeria
Police were searching on Tuesday for a German woman and her companion who abandoned her three young children after dining late in a pizzeria and then going out to smoke a cigarette. Police official Lorenzo Mediano said in a telephone interview from the mountainous Aosta region in northwest Italy that, judging by their clothes, the couple and the children appeared to be poor and the youngsters looked “neglected,” although they were in good health. Pizzeria owner Carmelo Casella told state TV in Aosta that, after they ate at his restaurant on Sunday night, the couple went outside to smoke and never came back. After 10 minutes, the pizzeria’s staff went outside to see what had happened but the couple had vanished. The children are a baby of about six months, a toddler of about two years, and a child of about six.
■UNITED STATES
Missing monkey captured
He spent six weeks on the lam from the circus, but Reggie the spider monkey has been captured with the help of junk food. Reggie had performed for the Liebel Family Circus for years, but he escaped on March 13 when the troupe did a show at a central Florida flea market. He was spotted a few weeks ago in a nearby neighborhood, but a dog frightened him away before residents could attract him with some food. On Monday, Reggie was seen hanging from a tree at a mobile home park. Neighbors fed him soda and potato chips until circus owner Tom Liebel came to grab him.
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