■INDONESIA
Bengal cub tiger mauls girl
A young Bengal tiger mauled a three-year-old girl after breaking free from its handlers at a zoo, a spokeswoman said yesterday, leaving the toddler with head injuries that required surgery. The 10-month-old male tiger, Ony, attacked Angelica Rosa while it was being transferred between enclosures at Taman Safari Prigen zoo in East Java on Monday morning, park spokeswoman Tisa Ananda said. “It seems that the tiger, who’s only 10 months old, was excited to see the girl and wanted to play with her,” Ananda told reporters.
■MALAYSIA
Military student hazed, dies
A student died at the top military college, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, after he was allegedly hazed and authorities were investigating five schoolmates, one of whom had been expelled, officials said yesterday. The 17-year-old boys are being investigated for suspected murder in connection with the death of Mohammed Naim Mustaqim Mohamad Sobri, 16, district police chief Abdul Rahim Hamzah Othman said. Media have reported Mohammed Naim apparently collapsed after being kicked in the abdomen while doing push-ups, but police and school officials declined to confirm the details.
■MYANMAR
Rare white elephant seen
A rare white elephant, historically considered an omen of political change, has been captured, state media reported yesterday. The female pachyderm was captured by officials on Saturday in the coastal town of Maungtaw in Rakhine State, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. She is aged about 38 and more than 2m tall, the English-language paper said, although it did not mention where she would be kept.
■ICELAND
PM takes same-sex spouse
Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, has married her long-term partner, her office said on Monday, making her the world’s first national leader with a same-sex spouse. Sigurdardottir, 67, married writer Jonina Leosdottir on Sunday, the day a new law took effect defining marriage as a union between two consenting adults regardless of sex. The two had had a civil union for years and changed this into a marriage under the new law, which was approved by parliament earlier this month.
■RWANDA
Two arrested over murder
Rwanda arrested two men on Sunday in connection with the murder of a journalist who had linked the government to the shooting of an exiled general in South Africa last week, police said. Jean Leonard Rugambage, acting editor of the vernacular Umuvugizi newspaper, was shot twice outside his home in Kigali on June 24 and died on the spot. A national police statement dismissed accusations that Rugambage’s death was related to his work as a journalist and suggested that it was probably revenge for alleged crimes committed during the 1994 genocide. President Paul Kagame said Rugambage’s death was unacceptable.
■RUSSIA
Official flings out millions
A fisheries official suspected of accepting bribes tossed 10 million rubles (US$322,000) from his car after a police chase and a crash on a busy Moscow highway, investigators said on Monday. Pursued by police, Federal Fisheries Agency official Boris Simonov crashed his Cadillac on Friday and frantically flung 10 million rubles into the wind, local media reported. State-run First Channel television showed scores of large-denomination ruble notes being collected by police and cast into a torn, grimy cardboard box beside a thoroughfare in south-central Moscow. A spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee said Simonov’s boss, Roman Postnikov, who oversaw two Moscow rivers, was arrested on suspicion of forging a contract that allowed a fishing firm to operate without the proper documents. Both fishery officials will be jailed for two months pending further investigation, the committee said.
■SWITZERLAND
Mr Swatch dies at 82
Nicolas Hayek, chairman and former chief executive of the giant Swiss watch-manufacturing firm Swatch, has died. He was 82. Swatch Group said Hayek died unexpectedly of heart failure on Monday at his office in Biel, Switzerland. “Nicolas G Hayek’s greatest merit was his enormous contribution to the saving of the Swiss watch industry and the foundation and the commercial development of the Swatch Group,” the company said in a statement. The self-styled Mr Swatch is credited with reinventing Swiss watch-making in the 1980s by introducing radical cost-saving moves after he was asked to help close it down. SMH started to produce a plastic wristwatch — the Swatch — which revolutionized the industry.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Flight attendant charged
A South African Airways flight attendant has been charged with trying to smuggle 3kg of cocaine into Britain through London’s Heathrow airport, the UK Border Agency said on Monday. Elphia Dlamini, 42, was arrested after arriving on a flight from Johannesburg on Saturday. The UK Border Agency said officers found the cocaine, worth an estimated £120,000 (US$181,000), on Dlamini during crew clearance checks.
■MEXICO
Famous singer shot dead
A singer famous for ballads lauding drug traffickers has been shot dead on the way to a concert in the northwest of the country, officials said on Monday. Unidentified attackers fired several times on Sergio Vega, or “El Shaka,” in his car late on Saturday as he was traveling to a concert in Sinaloa State, deputy local prosecutor Ramon Ignacio Rodrigo told journalists. Moments earlier, the 40-year-old singer had asked a friend to call the police because his car was being followed, according to the national Reforma daily. “When help arrived, it was already too late,” Ana Luisa Gomez told Reforma. The singer died at the scene after being hit by five bullets, Rodrigo said. Although the motive for the attack was unclear, El Shaka had the risky profession of singing narcocorridos — ballads lauding the exploits of drug traffickers — in Sinaloa, the state at the heart of Mexico’s illegal drugs industry.
■UNITED STATES
Fan beats toddler to death
A Texas man accused of fatally beating his two-year-old stepdaughter when she wouldn’t stop crying as he watched a World Cup game has been charged with capital murder. McAllen Police Sergeant Joel Morales said 27-year-old Hector Castro was charged on Monday after his arrest on Saturday. Castro is being held on US$1 million bond at the Hidalgo County jail, where a booking clerk said he does not yet have an attorney. Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Castro told investigators the toddler wouldn’t stop crying while he was trying to watch the US-Ghana match on Saturday. Rodriguez said the child was severely beaten and suffered several broken ribs. Police said a screw or bolt was forced down her throat in an apparent attempt to make it look like she choked to death.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted of hate crime
A New York City jury has convicted a man of murder as a hate crime in the beating death of an Ecuadorean immigrant. Jurors deliberated for about seven hours on Monday before convicting Keith Phoenix in the December 2008 death of Jose Sucuzhanay. Phoenix was also convicted of attempted assault as a hate crime in the attack on Sucuzhanay’s brother. He was retried on the charges after the first jury ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors said Phoenix and Hakim Scott mistook the brothers for gay men and yelled slurs. Scott was convicted in May of manslaughter, but was acquitted of a more serious murder charge.
■UNITED STATES
Actor Klein facing jail term
Los Angeles prosecutors said they have charged American Pie actor Chris Klein with drunken driving. City Attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said Klein faces two misdemeanor driving under the influence charges and will be arraigned on July 9. Mateljan said Klein faces a minimum of three days in jail and up to a year sentence if convicted because of a prior drunken driving case. Klein played Chris “Oz” Ostreicher in 1999’s American Pie and in the 2001 sequel.
■UNITED STATES
Former champ misses out
Serious eaters are getting ready to scoff their way to glory in New York’s 95th annual hot dog eating contest on Sunday, but a famous contestant will be missing. Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi has won the contest six times. Major League Eating president Richard Shea said contract negotiations broke down this year. Kobayashi was champion from 2001 to 2006. He lost the last three years to Joey Chestnut of San Jose, California.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS