■ PHILIPPINES
US sorry about flag blunder
The US government said on Sunday it made an “honest mistake” when it displayed an inverted Philippine flag — which wrongfully signified that the Philippines was in a state of war — in a meeting hosted by US President Barack Obama. The flag was displayed upside down behind Philippine President Benigno Aquino III when ASEAN leaders met Obama in New York on Friday. “This was an honest mistake,” US embassy spokeswoman Rebecca Thompson said in a statement. Foreign affairs department spokesman Ed Malaya said the government understood that it was “an honest error” that “should not detract from the true significance of the summit, which showed the unprecedented cooperation between the ASEAN and the US.”
■ JAPAN
Three injured in mayo spill
A load of mayonnaise falling off the back of a truck caused an eight-vehicle pile-up, leaving three people injured, police said yesterday. The accident, involving a motorcycle, two trucks and five cars, closed part of a two-lane highway for five hours early on Saturday in Hyogo Prefecture, police official Masaaki Miyazaki said. None of the injuries were serious. Witnesses reported seeing boxes filled with bottles of mayonnaise fall off the back of the truck, he said. The sauce’s ingredients of eggs, vinegar and oil mean “it is more slick and dangerous than snow,” he said, adding that police were searching for the truck driver.
■CHINA
Arrests for fake vaccines
Eight people have been arrested in the south for producing and selling fake rabies vaccines that were used by local clinics and led to the death of a four-year-old boy, the China Daily said yesterday. Authorities in the Guangxi region earlier this year uncovered more than 1,260 doses of the illegal vaccines, most of which had been used in hospitals and clinics in the city of Laibin, the report said. The vaccines were produced in an underground workshop and sold for a total of 330,000 yuan (US$49,250). The boy, who had been bitten by a dog, died in December last year after receiving six rabies shots.
■ CHINA
Two held over ‘black jails’
Police are investigating a Beijing security company linked to the unauthorized but lucrative practice of holding citizens in so-called “black jails,” or illegal detention centers, the China Daily said yesterday. Police have detained Zhang Jun, chairman of Beijing-based Anyuanding Security and Prevention Technical Support Service, and his general manager, Zhang Jie, for “illegal detention and unlawful operation,” the daily reported, but did not say when the two men were taken into custody. The company was profiled in a hard-hitting expose this month by the financial magazine Caijing, which described the practice of illegally locking up citizens to prevent them from filing formal complaints with the central government.
■CHINA
Work on Tibet line starts
Work has begun on an extension of the railway network connecting Tibet with the rest of the country, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The spur line will link the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, with the region’s second-largest city, Shigatse, it said. The 253km project is expected to take four years to complete and has a budget of 13.3 billion yuan, Xinhua said. China opened the trunk line from Beijing to Lhasa in 2006 as part of a push to develop the Himalayan region’s infrastructure.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Ancient texts go online
One of the world’s most important caches of Greek manuscripts is going online, part of a growing number of ancient documents to hit the Web in recent years. The British Library said yesterday that it was making more than a quarter of its 1,000 volume-strong collection of handwritten Greek texts available online free of charge, something curators hope will be a boon to historians, biblical scholars and students of classical Greece alike. Although the manuscripts — highlights of which include a famous collection of Aesopic fables discovered on Mount Athos in 1844 — have long been available to scholars who made the trip to the British Library’s reading rooms, curator Scot McKendrick said posting them on the web was opening antiquity to the entire world. London could be an expensive place to spend time poring over the Greek texts’ tiny, faded script or picking through hundreds of pages of parchment. “Not every scholar can afford to come here weeks and months on end,” he said.
■ IRAQ
Security forces targeted
Seven people, including five security force members and an anti-corruption watchdog employee, were killed in violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas on Sunday, security officials said. In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomb in the town of Garma, 50km west of the capital, killed three policemen including a lieutenant colonel, according to Lieutenant Colonel Hatif al-Dulaimi. The blast, which targeted a police checkpoint in the town, in mainly Sunni Anbar Province, occurred at about 1pm and wounded six others, including three policemen. Also on Sunday, Laith Mohaned, an employee of Iraq’s anti-corruption watchdog, was shot dead by unidentified attackers along the airport road, an interior ministry official said. The road, referred to as Route Irish by US forces, was long one of the most dangerous in the country, and was persistently the site of attacks by Sunni militants.
■ TURKEY
Bus crash kills three
The state-run news agency says an Iranian passenger bus has overturned in southeastern Turkey, killing three people on board and injuring 50. The Anatolia news agency says the accident occurred yesterday in Sanliurfa Province, close to the Syrian border. It was not known what caused the accident. The agency says the bus was on its way to Syria from Iran. The agency says the injured passengers were transported to nearby hospitals. Thousands of people are killed in traffic accidents on Turkey’s roads each year because of careless driving or poor road conditions.
■ FRANCE
Ex-minister makes cock-up
Former justice minister Rachida Dati on Sunday confused oral sex with rising prices as she launched an attack on foreign investment funds. “When I see some of them [funds] looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent...,” she said during an interview on Europe 1 radio. In French the word is “fellation,” which shares some syllables with inflation, which in French is the same as in English. Dati was dropped from the French government last year after her penchant for designer dresses and appearing on the covers of celebrity magazines prompted criticism that a senior minister should not engage in such frivolity. She is now a member of the European parliament.
■UNITED STATES
Affluent effluent makes mess
Ah, Malibu, California, paradise on the Pacific. Sun, sand, surf, Pamela Anderson bounding through the dunes, beautiful people leading holistic, healthy lives; but wait. There is something else in the air of the celebrity haven. Or rather, in the water. Peer deeply into the pristine ocean and you will see it is murky and grey. At Broad Beach, workers struggle to erect a barrier to stop the might of the Pacific Ocean carrying off the contents of their septic tanks. For in the twin capital of detox and Botox, one bodily function remains to be conquered: defecation. At the center of the mess is one of the most elite of the old Hollywood retreats: Malibu Colony, which suffers from a high water table. Like all of Malibu, it is served by septic tanks, rather than sewers. A high water table and a septic tank by the beach is not a happy combination. With staph infections raging among surfers and contamination in the local waterways, last week, the decision came from on high: Malibu must phase out septic tanks in the central area of the city and install mains sewage. The need for septic systems has acted as a brake on development, allowing the community to preserve its rustic charm and protect its exclusivity. Install sewers, and the bluffs of privilege that line the coast would become the playthings of the plebs. The affluent will have to take their effluent elsewhere.
■PUERTO RICO
Volunteers clean beaches
Thousands of volunteers scooped up beer cans, syringes, plastic bags and other trash on Puerto Rico’s coastline on Saturday in an event intended to both clean the beaches and call attention to what activists and government officials say is a growing garbage problem. The US territory is not meeting its own legally mandated recycling goals. Calls to ban plastic bags that choke waterways and tumble along roads have gone unheeded. And the landfills — often ill-managed and polluting — are near overflowing. With space on the island limited, environmentalists say, Puerto Rico is simply generating too much trash and running out of places to put it. “Puerto Rico must, must take action,” Environmental Quality Board Director Pedro Nieves Miranda said. “The island is not growing.” The problem begins with a consumer-driven population on an island that produces one of the highest amounts of trash per capita when compared with US mainland states, according to the Sierra Club. Of the 10,000 tonnes of garbage Puerto Rico generates per day, only 11 percent is recycled — far short of the 35 percent rate mandated by law — said Eli Diaz Atienza, executive director of Solid Waste Management. His agency blames poor recycling habits among islanders for failing to meet the target.
■UNITED STATES
Elmo attacked, not tickled
Elmo was not tickled — he was in a tussle. Police in central Florida say a man dressed as the Sesame Street character was attacked on Saturday at a music store in Winter Park, but he was able to fend off the attacker. The fight broke out about 3pm. The costumed man had been hired to perform as Elmo at a children’s event at Guitar Center, but police say the attacker began throwing punches at Elmo. The performer fought back, even breaking a few fingers on his attacker’s hand. Police haven’t released the names of either man. Officers broke up the fight and took the attacker to the hospital, where he was treated and detained for a mental health evaluation. Police say Elmo was unhurt and that no children saw the fight.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number