■JAPAN
Arms exports ban relaxed
Tokyo has decided to relax its self-imposed ban on arms exports to allow more joint development and production of weapons with other nations, the Nikkei Shimbun reported yesterday. The new measure would “enable shipments to countries with which Japan co-develops arms,” the newspaper said without citing sources. “The move is aimed at reducing procurement costs and stimulating the domestic defense industry by promoting joint development and production of key arms, such as next-generation fighter jets, with the US and Europe,” it said. By taking a more active role in US or European military development programs, Japan hopes to reduce the purchasing cost of major equipment such as jets, the paper said. Tokyo however would continue to prohibit arms exports to nations that are state sponsors of terrorism, violate the human rights or lack sufficient controls over arms sales, it said.
■AUSTRALIA
Asylum seekers intercepted
A boat carrying more than 70 suspected asylum seekers was intercepted yesterday, the latest in a string of such vessels stopped this year. A navy patrol intercepted the boat 11km north of Ashmore Island in the Indian Ocean, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said in a statement. The 73 passengers and four crew members were being taken to Christmas Island, where the government detains and processes refugee applicants. A recent rise in boat arrivals has stoked a political debate over immigration. Last year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd relaxed the mandatory detention policy for asylum seekers and allowed full residency visas for those who are accepted as refugees, rather than temporary visas granted by previously. The opposition says the decision made Australia a more attractive destination.
■CHINA
Waitress not raped: police
Police said yesterday that a young woman accused of murdering an official during an alleged sex attack was not raped, the latest development in a scandal that has shocked the nation. Lawyers for waitress Deng Yujiao (鄧玉嬌), 21, have insisted that she was sexually violated on May 10 when she fatally stabbed local official Deng Guida (鄧貴大) in a Hubei Province spa and karaoke parlor where she worked. Deng Yujiao has won widespread sympathy and been deemed a heroine by the media after she allegedly killed Deng Guida when he and two other local officials tried to force her to have sex at the Dream Town spa and karaoke bar. Following the killing, the waitress turned herself into the police and remains in custody, charged with murder. State press reports said the officials arrived at the spa after a drinking bout and beat the girl with a wad of cash after she insisted that she was only a waitress and did not provide sexual services. After repeatedly forcing her down onto a sofa, the young waitress pulled out a manicure knife and stabbed the official, the reports said.
■HONG KONG
One arrested for forced strip
Police on Saturday arrested a suspect alleged to have forced a man to strip naked and walk down the street in broad daylight, in an incident then uploaded to YouTube. Tens of thousands of people have watched the two-and-a-half-minute clip, which shows a man being beaten with an umbrella outside a 7-Eleven store and then forced to strip naked and walk in a circle in the middle of the street. The video, apparently recorded and uploaded by a resident watching the incident from an apartment overlooking the street, triggered a police investigation and has now been removed from YouTube.
■CHINA
Water project in the works
A massive water diversion project will displace 330,000 people in Hubei Province, local media reported yesterday. About 230,000 local residents in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area would be relocated to more than 50 nearby counties and cities, the project office chief was quoted as saying in a report by Xinhua news agency. Pilot relocation work began last November, the report said. The South-to-North Water Diversion Project, which was first proposed by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in 1952 and finally approved in 2001, will transfer water from China’s flood-prone south to the drought-stricken north. The government has said the scheme will cost 500 billion yuan (US$62 billion).
■MALAYSIA
Maid beaten to death
Police detained two siblings on suspicion of beating their Indonesian maid to death, news reports said yesterday, in what would be one of the country’s worst cases of domestic worker abuse. The maid’s employers called for emergency aid on Saturday, Arjunaidi Mohamed, a Kuala Lumpur district police chief, told the national news agency Bernama. Paramedics found the maid dead in the living room with bruises on her body, and contacted police, he said. Police have classified the case as murder and detained a brother in his 30s and a sister in her 20s who live with their parents on suspicion of severely beating the maid, Arjunaidi told the Star newspaper.
■NEW ZEALAND
Earthquake strikes islands
A powerful 6.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the remote Kermadec islands yesterday, seismologists said. The quake struck at 12:58pm, 270km south of Raoul Island at a depth of just 12.5km, the US Geological Survey said. No tsunami warning was immediately issued.
■UKRAINE
Churchgoers die in crash
Seven churchgoers died and eight were injured yesterday in road accident, police officials said. The victims had been en route to worship at the Krehovsky monastery in western Lviv Province, Channel 5 quoted police spokeswoman Svetlana Dobrovolska as saying. The Orthodox Christian pilgrims’ minibus collided head on with a truck in the early morning hours, after the truck driver fell asleep, the report said. It was not clear from initial reports whether the truck driver was among the injured. Survivors were being treated at local hospitals. The country’s road system is among Europe’s most dangerous.
■SERBIA
Church targets rehab center
The Orthodox Church ordered the closure yesterday of a treatment center for drug abusers after a video showed a patient being beaten with a shovel, punched and kicked as part of supposed treatment. The Holy Synod, the Church’s top body, asked Bishop Artemije, the head of the local diocese, to order an immediate shutdown of the facility and “launch proceedings against those responsible in line with Church’s laws and regulations.” A video posted on the Web site of Belgrade’s Vreme weekly showed one of the center’s employees repeatedly beating a man with a shovel, kicking him and hitting him with brass knuckles in the face inside a room decorated with icons.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Teen arrested in murder case
A 13-year-old boy was arrested on Saturday in connection with the murder of a teenager in east London, Scotland Yard said. Officers found the victim, named locally as 17-year-old Jahmal Mason-Blair, with a stab injury to his neck on Amhurst Road in Hackney shortly before 1am. An air ambulance doctor pronounced the boy dead at the scene. Mason-Blair was a talented footballer who had no involvement with gangs, his elder brother Shaun told Sky News. “He didn’t have a bad bone in his body ... everyone is just shocked,” Shaun said. Friend Connie Drew told BBC he was a “lovely young boy ... he lived for football.”
■TUNISIA
World’s longest pants made
Fashion designer Larbi Boukamha beamed with pride on Saturday as he sent out his latest creation — the world’s longest pair of pants — at a football stadium near Tunis. At 50m, equal to a 22-story building, with a 36m waist, the pants have overtaken a Peruvian pair that was 10m shorter to claim a place in the Guinness World Records book. “I worked on it for two months, eight hours a day,” said Boukamha, 37, explaining how the pants used up 1,600m of fabric and cost 31,000 dinars (US$23,300) to make. “Larbi Boukamha merits this honor,” said Omar Talel of Guinness World Records, who was in Tunis to validate the record.
■IRELAND
No publicity for sextuplets
The young parents of the country’s first sextuplets have said they will not allow their children to be subjected to the publicity generated by previous multiple births. Instead, the family will return home to their small rural community as soon as the babies are well enough to leave hospital. Nuala Conway gave birth to six babies in five minutes at Belfast’s Royal Victoria hospital on Friday night. The four girls and two boys weighed between 640g and 1kg and were delivered by caesarean section by a team of medics. The birth was 14 weeks early and all six babies were in intensive care on Saturday, with their condition described as being “as good as could be expected.”
■UNITED STATES
Man appeals cruelty fine
A Kansas man accused of beating a gull that tried to eat his wife’s ice cream is appealing a US$275 fine stemming from the incident in California. The Orange County Register reported on Friday that Dragan Djuric contested the fine levied for violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Police said Djuric beat a gull with a stick and broke its wing in Laguna Beach. The bird was later euthanized. Djuric said he acted in self-defense after the bird swooped down, hit his wife’s head and tried to grab her ice cream. Witnesses said the ice cream fell on its own and Djuric struck birds that descended to eat it.
■UNITED STATES
Calf born with seven legs
The Steamboat Pilot & Today of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, reported that a veterinary hospital helped deliver a seven-legged calf on Thursday. Staff at the Steamboat Veterinary Hospital said the calf had two spines but one head. One leg had two hooves. The calf lived for only about 10 minutes. Veterinarian Lee Meyring said the birth resulted from an incomplete splitting of the embryo into twins. The calf’s owners did not want to be identified.
■UNITED STATES
Couple sues ‘CSI’ writer
A couple have sued a writer for the CBS show CSI, claiming that two shady characters were named after them in revenge for a real estate deal gone bad. Real estate agents Melinda and Scott Tamkin on Friday sued writer and producer Sarah Goldfinger for defamation and invasion of privacy. They are seeking US$6 million in damages, alleging the show hurt their real estate business. The Tamkins represented the owners of a home that Goldfinger wanted to buy in 2005. The CSI show set in Las Vegas featured a real estate agent named Melinda, who dies under mysterious circumstances, and her husband Scott, who watches pornography, drinks and is suspected of killing his wife. The characters had the last name Tamkin in an original screenplay and Goldfinger helped cast actors who looked like the Tamkins, the lawsuit said. The Tamkins say the characters’ last name was changed to Tucker at the last minute.
■UNITED STATES
City hopes to scare seals
San Diego officials who want to prevent seals from taking over a popular beach are hoping that a dog’s bark is worse than its bite. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on Saturday that the city would seek court approval for a plan to use recordings of barking dogs at Children’s Pool beach in La Jolla. The city hopes the recordings will disperse about 200 seals. The plan will cost nearly US$700,000 a year. Marine experts said the seals would likely adjust to the noise, but city officials said their backup plan was to add other sounds and spray the seals with water.
■UNITED STATES
Bees trap workers in store
Thousands of bees swarmed outside a New York game store, trapping employees inside for hours, WABC-TV reported. Worried employees peered through the windows of the Manhattan store while talking on the phone as the bees clustered on Saturday afternoon. A sign in the window said: “Look! ... closed due to bee infestation.” Most passers-by avoided the GameStop store near Union Square but Edward Albers tried to help. Dressed in regular clothes, he lured many bees into a box without getting stung. A bee specialist then arrived in protective gear and used the scent of a queen bee to collect the rest.
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
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the