■INDIA
Colleges ban jeans
Colleges in the state of Uttar Pradesh said on Wednesday that female students would be banned from wearing jeans and other Western clothes to halt sexual harassment by male classmates. “Girls who choose to wear jeans will be expelled from the college,” Meeta Jamal, principal of the Dayanand girls’ college in the city of Kanpur said. “This is the only way to stop crime against women.” A growing number of colleges in Uttar Pradesh have decided to outlaw jeans, shorts, tight blouses and miniskirts on campus in an attempt to crack down on sexual harassment. But many of the students, who are aged between 17 and 20, said the new rules punished innocent females rather than tackling the men who treated women badly.
■CHINA
Shenzhen mayor fired
The mayor of Shenzhen has been fired for “serious discipline violations,” the state news agency said yesterday. A one-sentence report by the Xinhua news agency did not immediately say what violations Xu Zongheng (許宗衡) allegedly committed. Xinhua reported earlier this week that Xu had been questioned in connection with a corruption probe centered on tycoon Wong Kwong-yu (黃光裕), founder of China’s largest electronics retailing chain, Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings. Xu is one of several officials caught up in the probe into allegations Wong committed financial crimes including manipulating the price of his company’s stock.
■JAPAN
Hello Kitty goes tartan
Hello Kitty, the Japanese-made global icon of cuteness, will mark her 35th birthday this year by going back to her British roots with a new tartan collection, her makers said on Wednesday. Sanrio Co will launch the checkered pink series — featuring handbags, trinkets, a shawl and a Kitty version of a teddy bear — in September in Japan ahead of her official birthday on Nov. 1. The British embassy in Tokyo on Wednesday threw an early party for the feline who, according to the Kitty legend, lives in suburban London.
■GUAM
Fire breaks out in cockpit
A mid-air fire forced an Australian budget airliner to make an emergency landing yesterday, just days after 228 people died in an accident involving the same type of plane. Jetstar flight JQ20 was about four hours into its journey from Osaka to the Gold Coast when the blaze broke out in the cockpit, prompting the captain to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher before diverting to Guam. “The captain saw a small flame on the right-hand window and used a fire extinguisher to extinguish the flame,” said Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan, praising the pilot’s quick reaction.
■CHINA
Dig searches for warriors
China plans to excavate more of the life-size terracotta warriors at the ancient tomb of the country’s first emperor, a newspaper said on Wednesday. Archeologists hope to uncover more figures of officers to add to the 1,000-plus statues already excavated, the China Daily newspaper said on Wednesday. The new dig is the third undertaken since the tomb was first uncovered in 1974 outside the city of Xi’an and will focus on an area lying within the tomb’s main pit that holds the main warrior force. In all, the tomb’s three pits are thought to hold 8,000 life-sized figures, including those of archers, infantry soldiers, horse-drawn chariots, officers and acrobats.
■IRELAND
Abuse victims join protest
Survivors of rape and ritual beatings at Catholic-run schools marched silently to parliament on Wednesday, carrying children’s shoes and wearing white ribbons symbolizing their lost youth. Disclosures of floggings, slave labor and gang rape in the now defunct system of industrial and reform schools have shamed people, particularly older ones who did not confront what a report last month described as endemic abuse. “It was as if you were inside prison and when you come out you don’t talk about it,” said Marina Permaul, 66, who was brought up “military style” by nuns in the western county of Galway. Local news reports said about 7,000 people took part in the march, including hundreds of victims of abuse. Organizers of the march, held to coincide with a parliamentary debate on the report, have expressed anger that the debate has been postponed to allow parliament to deal with a motion of no confidence in the government. The inquiry criticized religious authorities for covering up the crimes and the Department of Education for colluding in the silence. It noted children were also preyed upon by foster parents, volunteer workers and employers.
■UNITED STATES
US family big in Prague
How did an American family’s Christmas card photo end up in the Czech Republic, splashed across a huge storefront advertisement? Danielle Smith said on Wednesday that the photo taken of her family last year got sent to family and friends and was posted on her blog and a few social networking sites. The photo showed her and her husband Jeff holding their two young children. About 10 days ago, one of Smith’s college friends was driving through Prague when he spotted their huge smiling faces in the window of a store specializing in European food. He snapped a few pictures and sent them to a flabbergasted Smith. “It’s a life-size picture in a grocery store window in Prague — my Christmas card photo,” said Smith, 36, who lives in the St Louis suburb of O’Fallon. Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, said the photo was from the Internet. Details were sparse, but he said he thought it was computer-generated. When told it was a real photo — of a real family — he said he started taking steps to remove it. “We’ll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology,” Bertuccio said.
■KENYA
Cop faces murder charges
A police officer faced attempted murder charges on Wednesday for allegedly severing the penis of a suspected fertilizer thief. The officer was off-duty when he was interrogating the suspect, who had been detained by market vendors in Nyamira town, Nyanza provincial police chief Anthony Kibuchi said. “He is said to have taken a knife from his pocket and chopped off the man’s private parts,” Kibuchi said. The suspected thief was taken to hospital where his condition was listed as critical, while the unidentified officer faces trial once an investigation is completed.
■GERMANY
Dog finds grenade
A dog playing fetch found and delivered to its owner a US hand grenade from World War II. Police in the western town of Erkrath said on Monday they were called by the dog’s 40-year-old owner who stopped walking her pooch when she recognized the “rusty” object it was carrying was a weapon. Police summoned a munitions expert Sunday to identify and defuse the grenade. Grenades and bombs left over from World War II are still often found in the country.
■UNITED STATES
Report fingers polluters
The petroleum industry accounted for a quarter of toxic pollutants recorded across North America in 2005 by a government-backed environmental watchdog, an annual report said on Wednesday. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation — created by Canada, the US and Mexico — said 90 percent of toxic pollutants came from just over a dozen industries. Aside from oil and gas extraction, mining, wastewater treatment, electric utilities and chemical manufacturing are named as the principal offenders.
■UNITED STATES
Fire fighters rescue trout
As a lightning-sparked fire charred thousands of hectares in southwestern New Mexico, biologists and firefighters used helicopters and trucks for an unusual evacuation. They captured 250 Gila trout — a threatened species — from a creek in southwestern New Mexico and are moving them to a hatchery in the opposite corner of the state. Ranger Al Koss of the Wilderness Ranger District said on Wednesday that it was a perfect time to move the fish because the fire’s intensity had diminished and the flames were still a couple of kilometers from the South Diamond Creek. Biologists rode to the creek on horseback, then used electroshocking devices to temporarily stun the trout so they could quickly scoop them into a net.
■UNITED STATES
New arrest in dorm killing
A second man has been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting at a Harvard University dormitory, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Blayn Jiggetts, 19, was arrested just before midnight on Tuesday in New York City, said Corey Welford, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s office. Jiggetts was scheduled to be arraigned in Manhattan on Wednesday. He faces charges of first-degree murder, accessory after the fact of murder, carrying a firearm without a license and armed robbery in Massachusetts, Welford said. Cambridge resident Justin Cosby was shot inside an entranceway to Kirkland House dorm on May 18 in what authorities have said was a drug-related robbery attempt. Cosby, 21 was shot in the abdomen and stumbled down the street before collapsing.
■UNITED STATES
Coach arrested for break-in
An elementary school baseball coach in Washington state has been accused of using some of his players to help in a break-in. Prosecutors charged 31-year-old George Spady on Monday with burglary. Court documents allege he took his son, a nephew and another player from the team with him when he broke into a vacant Arlington shop and took overhead lights and other items, the Daily Herald’s Web site said. Police say Spady’s son crawled through a vent on the back side of the store and unlocked the door for his father, who then told the boys to grab things from inside. One boy told his stepfather, who called deputies.
■SYRIA
Hamas to listen to Carter
The Palestinian movement Hamas said it would “listen” to former US president Jimmy Carter and “learn about his efforts to deal with the Palestinian situation,” a Hamas senior official said on Wednesday. “There are emerging changes and a new language used especially after President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week, and Hamas will listen to what Carter [has to say] about Obama’s view and policies towards the resistance in the region,” Ossama Hamdan said. Carter was due in Damascus yesterday.
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