■AUSTRALIA
Handyman’s drill saves life
A small-town doctor used a handyman’s power drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life. Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in Maryborough, Victoria, hitting his head on the pavement. By the time he got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness. The hospital was not equipped with neurological drills — so Dr Rob Carson sent for a household drill from the maintenance room. He called a neurosurgeon in Melbourne, who talked him through the procedure. Rossi was later airlifted to a Melbourne hospital and released on Tuesday, his 13th birthday.
■HONG KONG
Tsang and staff take pay cut
Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) and other top officials were preparing yesterday to take a pay cut because of the economic slump. The move would mirror a similar voluntary pay cut of 10 percent taken by former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) during the SARS crisis in 2003. Tsang earns nearly US$48,000 a month.
■AUSTRALIA
Komodo dragons use venom
The Komodo dragon has a snake-like venom in its bite that sends victims into shock and stops their blood from clotting, Australian researchers said on Tuesday. It had been widely believed that deadly bacteria in the carnivorous lizard’s mouth helped kill its prey. But magnetic resonance imagery uncovered venom glands containing a shock-inducing poison that increases blood flow and decreases blood pressure, lead researcher Bryan Fry said. He surgically removed a venom gland from a terminally ill Komodo at Singapore Zoo for the study and said it contained a highly toxic poison.
■AUSTRALIA
Man charged over roos
Victoria state police charged a man with aggravated animal cruelty yesterday for allegedly shooting two kangaroos with arrows earlier this month, leaving one of them with a shaft embedded in its head. They said the 27-year-old man was arrested after raids on two homes in Melbourne’s suburbs, where they seized arrows, bows, camouflage clothing and a computer. A male Eastern Grey kangaroo was pierced through the head and veterinarians believe he wandered around the bush for a week before being rescued. A female Eastern Grey was shot in the rump. Both had operations to remove the arrows and are expected to fully recover.
■AUSTRALIA
Betting agency criticized
The country’s top Internet betting agency was branded as insensitive yesterday for offering odds on the monthly unemployment figures. “Taking bets and making money out of the misfortune of the unemployed is as distasteful as it gets,” Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser said. “I think the people at Centrebet need to revisit this issue and accept that this is an unacceptable practice.” Centrebet spokesman Neil Evans said that while gambling on the rate of unemployment was a “socially sensitive” issue, it was an exciting departure from betting on sports.
■South Korea
New speculation on heir
A North Korean defector said Kim Jong-il is grooming his middle son as successor, not his youngest as has been speculated. Seoul’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper quoted the defector as saying that 29-year-old Kim Jong-chol holds a secret high-level post in the ruling Workers’ Party and reports directly to his father.
■BURUNDI
Mass-murder trial opens
The trial of 11 people accused of the ritual killing of a dozen albinos opened on Tuesday. The killings were carried out over a six-month period from last September mainly in the Ruyigi Province of the tiny central African country. Prosecutor Nicodemus Gahimbare told the court that eight of the suspects embarked on a killing and mutilation spree of albinos on Sept. 8 with the murder of a little girl. Three others are charged with attempted murder. They all pleaded not guilty. At the latest, a ruling is expected by yesterday, the prosecutor said. If convicted, the 11 men, among them a government soldier, face life terms.
■ITALY
‘Dangerous’ fugitive arrested
Police arrested one of the country’s “most dangerous” fugitives in raids early on Tuesday that netted at least 70 suspected members of the the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate. The search for dozens more was still under way, police said. Officers in the southern city of Caserta, 30km northeast of Naples, said they arrested Franco Letizia shortly after midnight in a home in a nearby town. Letizia is accused of running extortion rackets and is the suspected chief of the Bidognetti crime clan, police said. Investigators suspect Letizia, 31, took over the reins of the clan after the capture in January of Giuseppe Setola, who was considered the mastermind of a bloody crime spree last year to eliminate rivals.
■DENMARK
Journalist murders guppy fish
A TV journalist was found guilty on Tuesday of killing 12 guppy fish and violating animal protection laws by pouring shampoo into an aquarium for a report, the Glostrup court said. Lisbeth Koelster, a TV presenter on the Danish public channel DR1, said she poured a “very diluted” amount of shampoo into a fish tank on a 2004 episode of the consumer affairs show she fronted to demonstrate the level of toxic material in a brand of anti-dandruff shampoo. After three days, all but one of the fish were dead, the court said in its ruling. A veterinary practitioner who saw the show pressed charges for causing unnecessary suffering to animals, an offence under Danish law. Koelster was not sentenced.
■SPAIN
Northern Africans detained
Police detained 17 northern Africans early yesterday on charges including possible links with al-Qaeda, police sources said. The suspects, who were reported to be Moroccans and Algerians, were held in the Basque city of Bilbao. The charges against them included drug trafficking, robberies and falsifying documents. It was suspected that they used their criminal earnings to finance al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which is the northern African arm of al-Qaeda.
■GERMANY
Zoos battle over Knut
A Berlin judge on Tuesday ordered two leading zoos to resolve their dispute over who owns the rights to Knut, the headline-grabbing polar bear. Knut is at the center of a custody battle between the zoo where he lives and the zoo that legally owns him. Both claim they have a right to a share in the millions in revenue he has generated since his birth. Berlin zoo, where the bear was born in 2006, has rejected demands by Neumunster zoo, his legal owners, for a share of the estimated 10 million euros (US$13.6 million) in entrance fees and merchandising revenue that Knut has earned.
■UNITED STATES
Sun, water bowl start blaze
Fire officials in the Seattle suburbs say a sunny day and a dog’s glass water bowl combined to cause a blaze that charred the back of a home. Bellevue Fire Department Lieutenant Eric Keenan says investigators determined the glass bowl of water focused sunlight enough to act like a magnifying glass and start the fire on the home’s wood deck on Sunday. Investigators said there was no electrical wiring or other possible cause. The homeowners were away, but neighbors noticed the smoke and flames. The family dog was rescued. Damage was estimated at US$215,000.
■UNITED STATES
Arrest made in Dolla death
A man was arrested in connection to the shooting death of up-and-coming rapper Dolla, 21, at a Los Angeles shopping mall, police said on Tuesday. Police said that Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, of Atlanta, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with a gun on Monday night. His bail was set at US$1 million. Dolla, whose birth name was Roderick Anthony Burton II, is among a growing list of slain rappers, including Tupac Shakur in 1996, the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC in 2002 and Deshaun “Proof” Holton in 2006. Burton was shot several times in a parking structure at the Beverly Center and was declared dead at a hospital, police said. Police said Berry was found hours later in a ticketing area of Los Angeles International Airport.
■BRAZIL
Flooding kills 45
Severe flooding over the last month brought on by torrential rains has killed 45 people across the north and forced some 378,000 others to evacuate their homes, mainly to emergency shelters, officials said on Tuesday. The National Civil Defense Secretariat said deaths have occurred in eight out of the 11 states severely affected by the flooding, including Ceara with 15 deaths, 10 in Maranhao and seven in Bahia in the perennially drought-stricken northeast and eight deaths in the northern state of Amazonas. Southern Brazil, meanwhile, was experiencing its worst drought in 80 years, with authorities declaring a state of emergency in more than 100 municipalities.
■MEXICO
Inmates riot over flu limits
Inmates at a Mexico City prison rioted on Tuesday over restrictions on visits because of swine flu. Inmates at the city’s southern penitentiary burned mattresses, hurled rocks and damaged prison installations before riot police regained control. Nobody was injured, an official said. He told local media the prisoners were upset because visiting hours were cut, and the number of visitors per inmate was reduced to prevent swine flu.
■UNITED STATES
Alleged pirate indicted
A Somali teenager whose role in the commandeering of a US cargo ship thrust him into the international spotlight has been indicted on multiple piracy charges, authorities said on Tuesday. Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse — the only alleged pirate to survive the siege — has been jailed in Manhattan since he was captured on April 12 and flown to the US to face what is believed to be the first US piracy prosecution in more than a century. Muse, 18, was expected to enter a plea later this week on 10 counts, including piracy under the law of nations, conspiracy, hostage-taking, kidnapping and possession of a machine gun while seizing a ship by force.
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