■AUSTRALIA
Sabotage led to boat blast
Three Afghan asylum seekers set fire to their boat in a deliberate act of sabotage last year, causing an explosion that killed five people, a coroner ruled yesterday. Northern Territory Coroner Greg Cavanaugh said he would refer his findings to police and they would decide whether criminal charges should be brought against the three men. Cavanaugh found that Ghulam Mohammadi, Arman Ali Brahimi and Sabzali Salman were probably trying to cripple the boat to prevent it from possibly being returned to Indonesia.
■AUSTRALIA
Cyclone threatens resorts
Hundreds of people started evacuating resort islands off the east coast yesterday as officials braced for a powerful cyclone packing winds of up to 168kph. About 300 people were being ferried from the Great Barrier Reef islands of Heron and Lady Elliott, north of Brisbane, with Tropical Cyclone Ului about 1,200km offshore and likely to make landfall on Saturday or Sunday. Cyclone Ului, which has already brought strong winds and rough seas to the Queensland coast, was moving slowly but heading towards the mainland and was likely to hit between the towns of Bowen and Gladstone. Conditions would worsen as the cyclone, currently at the second highest level of Category Four, approaches.
■NEPAL
Tibetans go on hunger strike
Nearly two dozen Tibetan exiles jailed for protesting against Chinese rule in their homeland began a hunger strike yesterday demanding their immediate release. Police have been put on alert to rush the exiles to hospitals if their health deteriorates, Katmandu police Chief Ganesh Chettri said. The 23 Tibetans were arrested on March 10 and on Sunday for defying the government’s ban on anti-China protests by trying to storm the Chinese embassy’s visa office. They were ordered held for 90 days under the public security act, which allows authorities to take action against those determined to be a threat to the public.
■AFGHANISTAN
Suicide attackers shot dead
Two suicide attackers were shot dead yesterday as they attempted to enter the compound of a US-linked international aid organization, an official said. The bombers were wearing explosives-packed vests and were killed at the gates of International Relief and Development in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. Lashkar Gah is 20km away from a major US-led offensive in Helmand.
■CHINA
Ministry closes zoo
A zoo in the northeast has been shut after a spate of Siberian tiger deaths as reports yesterday said dozens of the dead animals may have been used to make a virility tonic. The forestry ministry has ordered the Shenyang Forest Wildlife Zoo in Liaoning Province to suspend operations and urged the local government to step up a probe into the deaths of 13 of the endangered tigers, the state-run Global Times reported. Authorities are investigating whether the Shenyang zoo was harvesting tiger parts to produce ingredients for the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market, the Beijing News said. The newspaper quoted an unnamed zoo official saying between 40 and 50 tigers may have died at the privately operated zoo since 2000 and that it was an “open secret” that the zoo was producing tiger-bone liquor.
■EGYPT
Ancient statues unearthed
A team of archeologists unearthed two large red granite statues in the south at the mortuary temple of one of the most powerful pharaohs, who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the culture ministry said on Tuesday. A ministry statement said the team discovered a 4m statue of Thoth, the ancient god of wisdom and the top part of a statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III standing next to another god. Both were found buried in the pharaoh’s mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile in the southern temple city of Luxor.
■EUROPE
Butterflies under threat
Hundreds of butterflies, beetles and dragonflies are at risk of extinction across Europe, with almost one-third of 435 butterfly species in decline, scientists have warned. The loss of habitat caused by intensive farming, climate change, forest fires and the expansion of tourism is threatening with extinction 14 percent of dragonflies, 11 percent of saproxylic beetles and 9 percent of butterflies within Europe, the International Union for Conservation of Nature report said.
■SWITZERLAND
Naked man escapes fire
The daily Blick reported that a fire in an apartment used for transsexual prostitution forced a naked man onto a window ledge. Firefighters rushed to the scene and put out the flames, but not before the man was photographed in all his glory against the modern building. Blick printed the photograph on Tuesday and quoted Markus Melzl from the Basel prosecutor’s office as saying the apartment was used for the sex business.
■FRANCE
Officer dies in shootout
A policeman died on Tuesday in a shootout southeast of Paris with Basque-speaking gunmen linked by the media to the Basque armed separatist group ETA. “Several leads were being explored” yesterday, said sources close to the inquiry, with the “most serious” implicating ETA after one of the men involved in the shootout was arrested and gave a Basque identity. The firefight broke out near Dammarie-les-Lys, 50km southeast of the French capital, after a police patrol checked the identities of a group that had stolen cars from a garage.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Climate change ads banned
The nation’s advertising watchdog has banned two government advertisements for overstating the threat from climate change, it said yesterday. The adverts used nursery rhymes including Jack and Jill to highlight the impact of global warming, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said they exaggerated the risk. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought,” read the copyline on one of the ads. “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense,” warned the advert, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The adverts were part of a DECC campaign last year that attracted 939 complaints. Upholding the complaints, the ASA said that forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “involved uncertainties” that the adverts failed to reflect. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said: “The science tells us that it is more than 90 percent likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act. In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema