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■SOUTH KOREA

‘Right to die’ ruling enforced

A hospital yesterday removed a life-support system from a comatose patient, officials said, upholding a court ruling that approved a euthanasia request for the first time in the country. A spokesman for Seoul’s Severance Hospital said it removed a respirator from a 76-year-old woman in mid-morning. It would take some time for the patient to be pronounced dead, he said. Last month the Supreme Court, upholding a lower court decision, supported a request by the woman’s family that she be allowed to die with dignity.



■PHILIPPINES

Ferry owner to face charges

Justice officials yesterday approved the filing of criminal charges against the owner and missing captain of a huge ferry that capsized last year during a typhoon, killing hundreds of people. The charges of negligence stem from a criminal complaint filed by victims’ families accusing the owner of the 23,800-tonne Princess of the Stars of ignoring storm warnings, said Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera. Of about 800 passengers and crew, only 33 survived after the ferry overturned in the storm-swollen waves and fierce winds near central Sibuyan Island on June 21 last year. If convicted, Sulpicio Lines Inc official Edgar Go, the respondent in the complaint, could face up to six years in prison.



■KYRGYZSTAN

US, Kyrgyzstan sign deal

The US and Kyrgyzstan have signed a deal to create a center for the transit of non-military goods to Afghanistan through the Central Asian country’s Manas airbase, an official said yesterday. “The US and Kyrgyzstan agreed on the opening of a center for the transit of goods to Afghanistan at the Manas airport,” a source in the Kyrgyz government said.



■FRANCE

Black boxes not found

French investigators looking into the June 1 crash of an Air France aircraft into the Atlantic on Tuesday denied a media report that the plane’s black boxes had been located. “There are always signals detected that must be analyzed. We can not confirm that the black boxes have been found,” said Martine del Bono, spokeswoman for the Office of Accident Investigation and Analysis. Earlier on Tuesday, the online edition of the daily Le Monde reported that signals from the plane’s black boxes had been detected. According to Le Monde, the weak signals emitted by the beacons of the two recorders were detected by French ships on Monday. Guided by the signals, the French mini-submarine Nautile was diving to try and recover them.



■ITALY

Aftershock hits quake zone

A powerful aftershock hit the quake-struck areas of central Italy on Monday, rattling buildings as far away as Rome. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 4.6, according to the US Geological Survey, and was followed by two smaller aftershocks with magnitudes of 3.1 and 3.8. The epicenter was just north of L’Aquila, the Appennine city that was devastated by the April earthquake. Monday’s quake struck just before 11pm and was felt in Rome, some 120km away.



■ISRAEL

Outpost expansion planned

An Israeli group says the government plans to build 240 new housing units at an unauthorized outpost in the West Bank. The Bimkom group, an Israeli non-governmental organization, says the plan filed in April would also retroactively legalize 60 houses already built at the outpost, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Such a move would flout a US demand for a settlement freeze. It would also violate Israeli commitments to take down unauthorized outposts and not to built new settlements.



■YEMEN

Jews depart for Israel

Sixteen Yemeni Jews, including relatives of a man murdered last year, have left for Israel, a member of the Arabian peninsula state’s Jewish community said yesterday. The three Jewish families left on Sunday, the same day a Yemeni appeals court handed a death sentence to Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi for shooting dead Mashaa Yaeesh al-Nahari in December. Nahari family members were among those who left, the source said. There are an estimated 200 to 300 Jews in Yemen, mainly in Sanaa, remnants of a centuries-old community that spoke Hebrew. About 50,000 moved to Israel in an airlift begun in 1949.



■HONG HONG

Bolshoi workers jailed

Two lighting technicians with Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet began 40-month jail terms in Hong Kong yesterday for beating up and robbing a prostitute. Mark Statsev, 26, and Yury Kovrigin, 30, pleaded guilty to robbing 45-year-old Yu Yuk-kam in their hotel room while on tour with the ballet company. The pair, who were working on a production of Spartacus at the Cultural Center, met Yu outside their hotel last September after drinking heavily. They took her to Statsev’s room, where he wrapped a towel around her neck and both men beat her before taking more than US$1,000 from her handbag. Police found Yu bleeding and badly injured and she spent two weeks in hospital recovering, according to a court report in yesterday’s South China Morning Post. Lawyers for the two men said they were drunk and dissatisfied with the service they received.



■COLOMBIA

Rebels kill seven officers

At least seven police officers were killed in the nation’s southwest when leftist guerillas attacked their vehicle, authorities said on Monday. The officers were on their way back from a patrol in Valle del Cauca province when their vehicle was attacked by guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), police General Gustavo Adolfo Ricaurte said. Security forces and rebels have also been engaged in heavy fighting in other parts of the province, as police closed in on a local commander known as El Enano (the midget). News reports said 25 FARC rebels were killed in fighting over the past 24 hours.



■UNITED STATES

NASA finds cause of delay

NASA engineers think they have discovered the cause of a hydrogen leak that twice delayed a high-profile shuttle launch this month, the space agency said on Monday. It may now be all systems go for the space shuttle Endeavour, which is waiting to embark on its final mission to the International Space Station (ISS), after a dodgy gas line connection was uncovered during tests. NASA program manager John Shannon said a misaligned plate linking the hydrogen gas vent line with the external fuel tank had been causing the leak, which was first detected during fueling. The Endeavour is set to carry a seven-member crew on a 16-day voyage to install a platform on the ISS. Another launch attempt is scheduled for July 11.



■UNITED STATES

Baby sea lion rescued

A baby sea lion was rescued early on Monday after wandering onto a busy San Francisco Bay area freeway. Drivers on Interstate 880 started calling authorities at around 5:45am to report the animal “walking” in the center divider near the Oakland Coliseum, said Peter Van Eckhardt, an officer with the California Highway Patrol. He said the sea lion likely made it onto land from a nearby San Francisco Bay estuary and crossed the roadway in the middle of the night. Several officers later tried to get the animal, nicknamed “Fruitvale” for the Oakland neighborhood where it was found, into a cage, but it jumped underneath the patrol car. The pup eventually was rounded up and taken to The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, a nonprofit facility that helps sick and injured marine animals. Jim Oswald, a spokesman for the center, said the animal is active and alert but slightly malnourished.



■MEXICO

French appeal rejected

President Felipe Calderon said on Monday that a Frenchwoman convicted of kidnapping will have to serve her 60-year sentence in Mexico, rejecting appeals by France to send her home. Calderon said his government decided against returning Florence Cassez because France wouldn’t guarantee that she would serve the full sentence. “The French government said it was reserving the right to suspend, reduce or decide how to implement the sentence,” Calderon said. “That’s unacceptable to Mexico.” Cassez has acknowledged she lived at a ranch near Mexico City where three kidnap victims were held, including an eight-year-old girl. But she said she was simply dating a Mexican arrested in the case and did not know the people at the ranch had been kidnapped. One of the victims, however, identified Cassez as one of her captors, and another suspect in the case said that the Frenchwoman not only participated in abductions, but helped lead the gang that carried them out.


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