■AUSTRALIA
Police probe family deaths
Police were investigating the death of a young mother who crashed her car shortly after her baby was shot dead and her partner was critically injured. The infant was found in a pool of blood by a neighbor after the father, 36, staggered out of their home in Gracemere with a gunshot wound to his stomach, witnesses said. “A man went in there and found the little fella on the floor,” said Jodiee Bennett, who lives across the street. “They thought he had hit his head on the tiles, but apparently that was one of the gunshot wounds that the baby copped in the head.” The mother died in hospital after smashing her car into a tree about 10km from the house. A small handgun was found in the vehicle.
■NEW ZEALAND
Fish ‘talk’ to each other
University of Auckland marine scientist Shahriman Ghazali says fish can “talk” to each other. Fish communicate with noises including grunts, chirps and pops, Ghazali told the New Zealand Herald in a story published yesterday. “All fish can hear, but not all can make sound — pops and other sounds made by vibrating their swim bladder, a muscle they can contract,” he said. Fish are believed to communicate with each other to attract mates, scare off predators or orient themselves.
■JAPAN
Foreign resident count falls
The number of foreign residents fell for the first time in nearly half a century last year as a severe recession hit jobs in the auto and other industrial sectors, government data shows. A total of 2.186 million people were listed as foreign residents at the end of last year, down 1.4 percent from a year earlier, ending a rising streak for the 47 consecutive years since 1962, the justice ministry said.
■GAZA STRIP
Hamas rounds up spies
A Hamas security official said security forces are rounding up suspected collaborators with Israel. He said so far five people have been arrested in overnight raids. He said suspects will go to trial and that no mercy will be shown to those who spy on other Palestinians. He spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the arrests. In April, the Hamas government executed two accused collaborators. It was the first time the death penalty had been carried out in Gaza since the Islamic militant Hamas violently seized power there in June 2007.
■ITALY
Money snarls traffic
Money may make the world go round, but in this case it brought highway traffic to a halt. A truck carrying some 2 million euros (US$2.5 million) in coins overturned in the south, unloading its contents onto the highway and leading motorists to hit the breaks and dig in. Police in Foggia, where the accident occurred on Monday, said on Tuesday it was impossible to establish how much money had been stolen, as many of the 1-euro and 2-euro coins remained in piles on the highway. However, motorists acting quickly before police arrived made off with at least 10,000 euros. Police said the truck’s driver and one passenger suffered minor injuries.
■CANADA
Pop signer N Korea-bound?
An online contest to decide where pop star Justin Bieber should go on tour next has been hijacked by a Web prank group that has been encouraging voters to send him to North Korea. With just a few hours left to vote, North Korea was the top vote-getter on Tuesday in the “My World Tour” contest with more than 625,000 votes, followed by Israel with 608,000 votes and Poland with 513,073 votes. The BBC said the campaign to garner votes for an unlikely tour to notoriously isolated North Korea by the 16-year-old singing sensation was launched by users of the Internet bulletin board 4chan. Users of 4chan have carried out a number of stunts in the past involving Bieber and previous 4chan pranks include getting the founder of the site, Christopher Poole, on to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people.
■IRAN
Swiss official summoned
Tehran has summoned the Swiss charge d’affaires to protest the “abduction” of a nuclear scientist by US intelligence agents, a report on the state television Web site said yesterday. The Swiss mission in Tehran handles US interests as Washington has had no diplomatic ties with Iran for more than 30 years. “The Swiss charge d’affaires [Georg Steiner] was summoned on Tuesday following the release of new documents relating to the abduction of Shahram Amiri by American security forces,” the report said, quoting a foreign ministry statement. Iran’s foreign ministry said on Sunday it had presented to the Swiss embassy “evidence” that Amiri, who has been missing since last year, was abducted by the CIA.
■ISRAEL
Father seeks Turkey’s help
The father of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas more than four years ago, called for Turkey’s help in pressuring the Islamist militant group to release him, Milliyet newspaper said. Noam Shalit, in an interview with Milliyet editor Cinar Oskay at a benefit concert in Kfar Aza, Israel, suggested Turkey’s relations with Hamas could be used to pressure the organization to release his son, Milliyet said. Gilad Shalit has been held since June 2006, when he was captured in a raid.
■UNITED STATES
Lindsay Lohan going to jail
A judge sentenced Lindsay Lohan on Tuesday to 90 days in jail and an inpatient rehab program after finding the actress had violated her probation in a 2007 drug case by failing to attend alcohol education classes. The actress burst into tears after the ruling. Superior Court Judge Marsha Revel issued the sentence after listening to testimony from employees of an alcohol treatment program that Lohan had been ordered to attend. Lohan had missed seven classes since December, which led to the judge’s harsh rebuke moments after the Mean Girls star offered a tearful apology. “I did do everything I was told to do and did the best I could to balance jobs and showing up,” Lohan told the judge. “It wasn’t vacation, it wasn’t some sort of a joke.”
■PERU
Jailed rebels may wed
Jailed for life, Shining Path guerrilla leaders Abimael Guzman and Elena Yparraguirre can get married, albeit by proxy, since for security reasons neither can be moved from their jails, the justice minister said on Tuesday. “We’ve already told the couple the wedding has to be carried out by proxy for security reasons. We’re waiting for their decision,” Peruvian Justice Minister Victor Garcia told reporters. Arrested in 1992 and convicted of murder and leading the Shining Path guerrillas, who are blamed for more than 70,000 deaths in the country from 1980 to 2000, group founder Guzman, 75, and Yparraguirre, 65, were sentenced to life in prison in 1992. Held in separate prisons — he in a naval base in Callao, she in a women’s prison in Lima — the couple had been requesting permission to marry for some time.
■COLOMBIA
Twelve leftist rebels killed
Armed forces killed 12 leftist guerrillas on Tuesday in an early morning raid on rebels in a northwestern mountainous region of the Andean nation, President Alvaro Uribe said. Rebels continue to stage attacks in Latin America’s No. 4 oil producer, but violence is down after a US-backed military offensive under Uribe pushed illegal armed groups into remote regions of the country. “Today at four in the morning after a great action by intelligence and the Colombian air forces, 12 bandits were killed and six captured,” Uribe told reporters.
■MEXICO
Gay weddings popular
Mexico City has seen 271 gay and lesbian couples get married since it enacted the first law in Latin America explicitly allowing same-sex marriages. The city government says there have been 142 marriages between men and 129 between women in the four months since the law went took effect on March 4. The government said on Tuesday that 18 foreigners were among those married, and the rest were Mexican citizens.
■UNITED STATES
Guns stolen from security
Four guns went missing and were believed to have been stolen from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security detail after American Airlines lost luggage containing the weapons, NBC reported. It said the Glock 9mm guns had been placed in checked baggage — as security protocol dictates — at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and were supposed to be placed on a flight to Washington for Israeli agents assigned to Netanyahu, who was meeting US President Barack Obama on Tuesday. However, workers mistakenly sent the luggage to Los Angeles where it was learned the guns were missing, and police said they believe they were stolen.
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