■AUSTRALIA
The iceberg cometh
Authorities yesterday issued a shipping alert over a gigantic iceberg almost twice the size of Hong Kong island that is gradually approaching the nation’s southwest coast. The Bureau of Meteorology said the once-in-a-century cliff of ice, which dislodged from Antarctica about a decade ago before drifting north, was being monitored using satellites. Experts believe the iceberg — known as B17B — is likely to break up as it enters warmer waters nearer Australia, creating hundreds of smaller icebergs and posing a hazard to passing ships.
■JAPAN
City girls farm in style
Tokyo’s most fashionable city girls have ventured into unfamiliar territory, crouching in muddy rice paddies to help make dying farms cool again. Shiho Fujita, a 24-year-old model, has led a group of kawaii (cute) “gal farmers” to do their bit to revitalize rural Japan. But since she didn’t like the clothes, “I have come up with the idea of designing cute ones myself,” Fujita said. Her new overalls are made from stretch denim and, crucially, have pockets for key accessories, a mobile phone and an iPod.
■SINGAPORE
Lee tells Japan to open up
Japan has to take in more foreigners despite fears of racial dilution in order to make up for its fast-aging population, the Straits Times yesterday quoted former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) as saying. Lee told the local Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday that Singaporeans were also uneasy over a growing number of foreign workers and immigrants, but both countries need them as birth rates are too low. “An aging population does not consume much. Old people don’t change cars every year or television sets, or change golf clubs,” Lee told a forum.
■ITALY
Victims; families protest
Thousands of asbestos victims’ relatives, activists and protesters converged on a Turin courthouse on Thursday for the start of the long-awaited trial of a Belgian and a Swiss man accused of negligence in hundreds of asbestos-related deaths. Stephan Schmidheiny of Switzerland and Jean-Louis de Cartier of Belgium were ordered to stand trial for their role as key shareholders in Eternit, a Swiss construction company that is alleged to have spread asbestos fibers over wide swathes of the north by allowing powder left over from the production of roof coverings and pipes to waft through the air. Prosecutors allege the two were ultimately responsible for the asbestos-related deaths of several hundred workers at Eternit factories and residents of neighboring towns.
■NETHERLANDS
Man reports stolen ecstasy
A 46-year-old man who says he spent two decades collecting ecstasy pills of all colors and shapes as a hobby has turned to police for help after they were stolen — because he says some of them are poisonous. It was not immediately clear why about 40 red-and-white pills out of the 2,400-pill-strong collection would be poisoned, but the police say they fear the drugs could be lethal if swallowed. “That’s really the main reason he came to the police,” said police spokeswoman Esther Naber, adding the man “knows he’s not going to get his collection back.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
English give whisky a go
It is hardly whisky galore, but English whisky will go on sale next week, the first time in more than 120 years that a distillery south of the Scotland border has produced the drink. The St George’s distillery in Roudham, Norfolk, makes a single malt that has received favorable reviews in its pre-whisky form — the spirits have to mature for three years before being officially designated whisky. Andrew Nelstrop, managing director of the English Whisky Company, recently took the product to Paris for the Whisky Live show and came back heartened by the response. “With enormous relief, not one person showed disdain,” he said. “Given the French are normally not shy in showing their disapproval, I have declared the show a roaring success!”
■ITALY
‘King of paparazzi’ jailed
A notorious photographer has been jailed for three years and eight months after trying to extort thousands of euros from celebrities in return for not selling embarrassing photos of them to gossip magazines. “King of the paparazzi” Fabrizio Corona was found guilty on Thursday of blackmailing sports stars. Corona has always said he was doing the celebrities a favor by offering them the photos at the same rates he would have asked from the gossip magazines. “I offered the photos at a good price just to my friends,” he said. “I could have earned a lot more,” he said.
■SUDAN
Kidnappers threaten to kill
A group claiming to have kidnapped three French citizens in Chad and the Central African Republic threatened on Thursday to kill one of the hostages if Paris fails to start negotiations within a week. “We met [on Thursday] and have decided that if in one week France doesn’t agree to negotiate with us, we will kill one of the hostages we are holding,” Abu Mohammed al-Rizeigi, spokesman for the kidnappers, told reporters by telephone.
■ UNITED STATES
Johnny Hallyday conscious
Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday has woken up after surgery in Los Angeles to treat complications from a back operation, a spokesman said on Thursday, after he was reportedly in an induced coma. Hallyday woke up a few hours after the operation and “the situation is stable,” the spokesman said. French radio station RTL cited the singer’s producer Jean-Claude Camus as saying Hallyday was conscious and had recognized his wife Laeticia.
■PANAMA
Police nab cache of cocaine
Police uncovered 2.4 tonnes of cocaine aboard two Colombian-registered speed boats in the largest single drug seizure in the country so far this year, officials said on Thursday. The drugs, believed to have been bound for North Africa, were in bags emblazoned with drawings of the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry. The find near Colon, a major sea port on the Caribbean coast, is “the largest seizure of the year,” said prosecutor Martin Quijada, urging locals to provide information to government agencies to help fight the drug trade.
■CANADA
Fake witch busted
A woman is to appear in court on Christmas Eve for posing as a witch in order to defraud a grieving Toronto lawyer in a case that invokes a century-old law, police said on Thursday. Vishwantee Persaud was charged under a very rarely used section of the criminal code with allegedly pretending to practice witchcraft to convince a man that she was the embodied spirit of his deceased sister. She did so, say police, in order to defraud him of tens of thousands of dollars. The bogus witching law was enacted in 1892 when witchcraft was no longer a punishable offense, but fears persisted that it could be used as a cover for fraud. It makes it illegal for anyone to fraudulently pretend to exercise witchcraft or sorcery or enchantment.
■UNITED STATES
Gene Barry dies at age 90
Gene Barry, who played the well-dressed man of action in the TV series Bat Masterson, Burke’s Law and The Name of the Game, has died at age 90 of unknown causes, his son said. Fredric James Barry said on Thursday that the actor died on Wednesday at a retirement home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills. Gene Barry essentially played the same character in all three series, which spanned the 1950s to the 1970s.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted of 11 killings
A Chicago man has been convicted of killing 11 women in a string of attacks that terrorized a south side neighborhood in the 1990s. Jurors deliberated for about 10 hours over two days before convicting 47-year-old Andre Crawford of murder on Thursday. They’ll now be asked to determine whether Crawford should be sent to death row. Crawford was arrested in 2000 and accused in the series of rapes and killings between 1993 and 1999.
■UNITED STATES
Frazetta’s son steals works
A man used a backhoe to break into a museum owned by his father — the pioneering fantasy artist Frank Frazetta — in an attempt to steal 90 paintings valued at US$20 million, police said on Thursday. State police charged Alfonso Frank Frazetta, 52, with theft, burglary and trespassing after they say he was caught loading the artwork into his trailer and SUV.
■ UNITED STATES
Johnny Hallyday conscious
Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday has woken up after surgery in Los Angeles to treat complications from a back operation, a spokesman said on Thursday, after he was reportedly in an induced coma. Hallyday woke up a few hours after the operation and “the situation is stable,” the spokesman said. French radio station RTL cited the singer’s producer Jean-Claude Camus as saying Hallyday was conscious and had recognized his wife Laeticia.
■PANAMA
Police nab cache of cocaine
Police uncovered 2.4 tonnes of cocaine aboard two Colombian-registered speed boats in the largest single drug seizure in the country so far this year, officials said on Thursday. The drugs, believed to have been bound for North Africa, were in bags emblazoned with drawings of the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry. The find near Colon, a major sea port on the Caribbean coast, is “the largest seizure of the year,” said prosecutor Martin Quijada, urging locals to provide information to government agencies to help fight the drug trade.
■CANADA
Fake witch busted
A woman is to appear in court on Christmas Eve for posing as a witch in order to defraud a grieving Toronto lawyer in a case that invokes a century-old law, police said on Thursday. Vishwantee Persaud was charged under a very rarely used section of the criminal code with allegedly pretending to practice witchcraft to convince a man that she was the embodied spirit of his deceased sister. She did so, say police, in order to defraud him of tens of thousands of dollars. The bogus witching law was enacted in 1892 when witchcraft was no longer a punishable offense, but fears persisted that it could be used as a cover for fraud. It makes it illegal for anyone to fraudulently pretend to exercise witchcraft or sorcery or enchantment.
■UNITED STATES
Gene Barry dies at age 90
Gene Barry, who played the well-dressed man of action in the TV series Bat Masterson, Burke’s Law and The Name of the Game, has died at age 90 of unknown causes, his son said. Fredric James Barry said on Thursday that the actor died on Wednesday at a retirement home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills. Gene Barry essentially played the same character in all three series, which spanned the 1950s to the 1970s.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted of 11 killings
A Chicago man has been convicted of killing 11 women in a string of attacks that terrorized a south side neighborhood in the 1990s. Jurors deliberated for about 10 hours over two days before convicting 47-year-old Andre Crawford of murder on Thursday. They’ll now be asked to determine whether Crawford should be sent to death row. Crawford was arrested in 2000 and accused in the series of rapes and killings between 1993 and 1999.
■UNITED STATES
Frazetta’s son steals works
A man used a backhoe to break into a museum owned by his father — the pioneering fantasy artist Frank Frazetta — in an attempt to steal 90 paintings valued at US$20 million, police said on Thursday. State police charged Alfonso Frank Frazetta, 52, with theft, burglary and trespassing after they say he was caught loading the artwork into his trailer and SUV.
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