■FRANCE
Paris debates Maori heads
The National Assembly on Thursday began debate on returning up to 20 Maori heads to New Zealand, setting the stage for a vote next week to give back the tattooed warrior heads. Between 15 and 20 mummified heads of Maori warriors are stored in several museums, notably seven or eight at Paris’ Quai Branly, home to a big collection of tribal art set up by former president Jacques Chirac. A museum in Rouen in 2007 got the ball rolling when it offered to return its Maori heads to New Zealand, but the government stepped in and put the decision on hold to look at a broader national restitution of the artifacts. The Senate voted in June last year to return all of the heads under a bill that marks the first time that an entire group of artifacts will be taken from museums, as opposed to one disputed object. A vote in the National Assembly is scheduled for Tuesday and all parliamentary leaders have said they will support restitution.
■INDONESIA
Treasure hunter investigated
The government is investigating treasure hunter Michael Hatcher for allegedly plundering an undersea trove and trying to smuggle porcelain, an official said on Thursday. Fisheries ministry official Adji Sularso said the probe came after authorities seized 2,360 items dating from the Chinese Ming dynasty. “There are strong indications that Michael Hatcher has been involved in an illegal shipwreck salvage in Blanakan waters,” he told reporters. The porcelain was loaded in two ships that were intercepted in waters off West Java in September, he said. Hatcher, who was reportedly born in Britain but grew up as an orphan in Australia, has excavated shipwrecks in Indonesia since the mid-1980s. “If he’s proven guilty, he could be jailed for five years and fined 50 million rupiah (US$5,500),” Sularso said.
■INDONESIA
Monkey meat sellers nabbed
Police have arrested a couple who made meatballs from the flesh of protected monkeys, an animal conservation group said on Wednesday. The pair poached dozens of rare Javan langurs, also known as silver-leaf monkeys, from Baluran National Park on Java island, a statement animal protection group ProFauna said. “Police found 30kg [of] meat estimated to come from 20-25 individuals, two rifles and a live langur,” the statement said. “The couple admitted that they had known what they did was against the law and they hunted the monkeys for their meat because beef and chicken were more expensive than the protected monkeys.”
■AUSTRALIA
Officials sorry over graffiti
Officials apologized on Wednesday after cleaners scrubbed graffiti by famed British street artist Banksy from a city wall. Melbourne’s city council said the cleaners were simply carrying out orders to remove graffiti from unauthorized sites when they destroyed the stencil of a parachuting rat. “It is very unfortunate that this Banksy artwork has now been removed,” council chief Kathy Alexander said. “We will now be acting to implement retrospective legal street art permits to ensure other famous or significant street artworks within the city are protected.” Reports said the piece was one of several created during a 2003 visit by Banksy, whose distinctive style and provocative slogans have made him one of the world’s best-known graffiti artists.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Show boosts lingerie sales
Sales of sultry lingerie among older women are booming thanks to the glamorous 40-somethings of Sex and the City 2 and Cougar Town, retail chain Debenhams reported on Thursday. The hit TV show and forthcoming movie featuring the bedroom antics of women in their 40s and 50s and their much younger partners is being credited with a rise in demand for lingerie from women of the same age, Debenhams said. The department store said a nationwide analysis of the most popular lingerie styles from October to last month revealed that women over 40 have given the more seductive side of the lingerie industry a big boost.
■IRAQ
Flight turns into nightmare
The first commercial flight between Baghdad and London in 20 years has turned into a nightmare for Iraq after its national airline boss had his passport seized and a chartered plane was impounded. The transport ministry in Baghdad on Thursday confirmed that Iraqi Airways chief Kifah Hassan’s travel document was taken after papers were served by lawyers acting for Kuwait Airways, which says it is owed US$1.2 billion. The dispute dates back to now executed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when, according to the oil-rich emirate, 10 of its planes were plundered after its airport had been seized.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Man goes round in circles
A man who thought he was sailing along the coast of southern England had to be rescued by emergency services after his motor boat ran out of fuel while repeatedly circling a small island in the River Thames estuary. The man, who had no nautical guides and only had a roadmap to navigate by, had been trying to sail from Gillingham, about 60km east of London, to Southampton on April 19 by following the southern coast of England, but he ended simply doing laps of the Isle of Sheppey a short distance away in the mouth of the Thames. Eventually a lifeboat and coastguard were sent to rescue him after he used up all his fuel and ran aground, officials said on Wednesday. He told them he had been trying to navigate by keeping the coastline to his right.
■EUROPEAN UNION
Liquids ban to end by 2013
The EU will end restrictions on liquids in air passengers’ hand luggage by April 2013 in an overhaul of aviation security, the EU’s executive said on Thursday. European airports will have to install new technology capable of detecting liquid explosives as a result of the move. The ban on liquids came into force in Europe in 2006 after British police uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to blow up transatlantic airliners bound for North America using bombs made from liquid explosives. Three Britons were jailed for life in September for their plan to destroy at least seven planes — carrying more than 200 passengers each — using explosives hidden in soft-drink bottles. The security rules have led to scenes of frustration at airport security desks when passengers have been forced to throw away drinks containers, bottles of perfume and even tubes of sun cream before boarding planes. As a preliminary step from April next year, bottles of duty free drinks and perfumes bought at third country airports or on board third country airlines and carried in tamper-proof bags will be allowed and will be screened. Currently, these liquids are only allowed in cabin baggage if they come from four countries — the US, Canada, Singapore and Croatia.
■UNITED STATES
Man backs car through wall
A 67-year-old Oklahoma man had quite a fright after backing his car at high speed through a seventh-floor exterior wall of a parking garage. Ralph Hudson said his foot got stuck between his Mercedes’ brake and gas pedal, as he was backing up in a towering parking garage in downtown Tulsa on Wednesday. The car burst through the building’s exterior wall and sprayed debris on a parking lot below before stopping just in time. The car’s trunk and part of its back wheels were left hanging precariously out of the building, but officials were able to drive it safely back inside. Police officer Jason Willingham said Hudson was not ticketed over the incident.
■ARGENTINA
Chavez sends first tweet
President Hugo Chavez, known for his long-winded speeches, will be forced to express himself much more succinctly in his new Twitter postings, the first of which was sent out on Wednesday. “Hi, how’s it going? Here I am, just like I said I would be, at midnight,” read the firebrand leader’s first post shortly after the stroke of 12 midnight, received by some 36,000 people who follow his site. “I’m going to Brazil,” he tweeted. “I’m very happy to work on behalf of Venezuela,” he said alluding to a brief summit he had planned later on Wednesday with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Chavez posted his first tweet under the profile @chavezcandaga, which roughly translated from colloquial Venezuelan dialect, means “wild” or “naughty” Chavez.
■UNITED STATES
Whale grabbed trainer’s hair
A final sheriff’s report says a SeaWorld Orlando trainer was lying on her stomach, nose-to-nose with a killer whale when her long hair floated on the water into the animal’s mouth and she was dragged to her death. The report on Wednesday by homicide detectives said 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau had managed to free herself at first and tried to swim to the surface after she was dragged underwater by the whale named Tilikum, but the orca thwarted her attempts by striking her at least twice. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said she was then dragged to her death at the end of a Feb. 24 Dine with Shamu show. Another SeaWorld trainer told detectives he sounded an alarm when he noticed Brancheau struggling to free her hair. When he turned back, she had disappeared underwater.
■UNITED STATES
Prison finds new help
Two members of the work detail at a Connecticut state prison are expected to be penned there for life, working on the fence line to remove weeds and poison ivy. They seem to like the work and actually find the poison ivy delicious. Nibbles and Bits, a pair of goats, were taken to the Corrigan-Radgowski prison in a rural patch of southeastern Connecticut just over a year ago after being rescued as kids from separate area farms that didn’t want them. Joe Schoonmaker, the corrections officer who oversees landscaping at the 1,500-inmate prison, heard about the goats and asked the warden. “We threw the idea at him that we could use them to get into the hard-to-get areas, like the hillside and the fence line,” he said. So when it’s impossible or impractical to get a weed trimmer or lawnmower somewhere on prison property, Schoonmaker calls in Nibbles and Bits. Schoonmaker and Officer Jason Ware pay the US$20-per-month cost of feed — oats — from their own pockets. Everything else the animals need has been built by prisoners or donated.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
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