AUSTRALIA
Baby koala gunned down
Veterinarians are fighting to save the life of a baby koala who was shot by an unknown assailant in southeast Queensland. The 16-month-old female koala, nicknamed Frodo, was expected to undergo surgery yesterday to remove some of 15 shotgun pellets that hit the animal. Queensland Sustainability Minister Kate Jones condemned the attack as “sick and cruel” and warned that the person responsible could face a two-year prison term and big fines if caught and convicted under conservation laws. Veterinarians had successfully removed three pellets during an earlier surgery, but the animal’s condition was too delicate to continue.
SRI LANKA
Police hurts in prison raid
Forty-six policemen and two prison officials were injured yesterday when a drug raid at the main jail in Colombo sparked violence, officials and doctors said. Convicts beat up police as they stormed the Welikada prison to search for hidden narcotics as part of a nationwide crackdown against illegal drugs, police said. The director of Colombo National Hospital, Hector Weerasinghe, said the 46 policemen and two prison officials had been brought for treatment: “We were told that they were beaten up by prisoners when they tried to carry out a search,” Weerasinghe said. “Most of them have head and chest injuries.” It was not immediately clear if any prisoners were wounded. The clashes came as the police announced the results of an anti-narcotics drive that led to the arrest of more than 11,500 suspects and the seizure of large quantities of heroin and cannabis.
JAPAN
China-Japan distrust grows
Distrust between Japanese and Chinese people is growing, a survey showed yesterday, as a territorial row rumbles on more than two months after a boat collision in disputed waters. The Yomiuri Shimbun and a Chinese weekly magazine run by Xinhua news agency jointly carried out the poll covering about 1,040 people in each country last month. Eighty-seven percent of Japanese respondents said they “cannot trust” Chinese, up from 69 percent last year, while 79 percent of Chinese polled said they feel the same way about Japanese, up from 63 percent, the poll showed. In Japan, 80 percent of respondents noted that the territorial dispute will continue to be “a big obstacle” in Japan-China relations, while 89 percent also said they feel unease over China’s growing diplomatic clout.
ITALY
Gladiator site collapses
An ancient training center for gladiators collapsed early on Saturday in the celebrated archeological site of Pompeii, sparking sharp debate over whether it could have been saved. Located on the main road of the ancient southern city, the House of the Gladiators lay in ruins by the time guards arrived, local authorities said in a statement. The house was once owned by gladiator Marcus Lucretius Fronto, whose victories in battle and love had been scrawled in graffiti on its facade. The building collapsed following “abundant rain in recent days and the restoration in reinforced concrete” of its upper walls during the 1950s, the ANSA news agency quoted Culture Minister Sandro Bondi as saying. The incident underscores the need for “adequate resources” to conserve the nation’s “immense historic artistic heritage,” he said. However, Tsao Cevoli, president of the National Association of Archaeologists, expressed “rage and concern.”
COLOMBIA
Rebel’s sister urges surrender
The older sister of Dutch-born guerrilla Tanja Nijmeijer urged her sibling, in a video broadcast on Saturday, to abandon her life as a rebel before she is killed. Tanja Nijmeijer is a former schoolteacher who joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 2002 and has since risen to its top ranks. “Hello Sam. This is your interfering sister,” said Marloes Nijmeijer in the video, which aired on local media. “I’ve been in Colombia for some time and I’d like to tell you something: You’re alive right now, but there is a good chance that you won’t survive. You know it. I’m telling you: Leave before it’s too late,” Marloes said, speaking in Dutch. “Leave, and that way you can do something truly constructive for this country.”
BELGIUM
Archbishop hit with pie
The media says the country’s ultraconservative Roman Catholic archbishop was hit by a pie in the face during an All Saints Day service. Footage of the incident released on Saturday showed a young man approaching Archbishop Andre Leonard on Monday and smacking him with a pie. A church official says the archbishop will not press charges against his attacker. The incident came amid growing turmoil within the nation’s Roman Catholic church, which faces an investigation into hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Leonard himself shocked Catholics by sympathizing with priests accused of pedophilia and by saying that homosexuals deserved to get AIDS. On Tuesday, Leonard’s spokesman quit his job, saying he could no longer speak for a “loose canon.”
MEXICO
Mass grave bodies identified
The 18 bodies discovered in a mass grave just outside Acapulco have been identified as those of most of the 20 men who were kidnapped as they arrived last month for a brief vacation at the Pacific beach resort city, Guerrero state authorities said on Saturday. The grave held the bodies of 18 men, they said. Two had been shot; the rest were apparently beaten to death. There is still no trace of two more men who were part of the group seized by the armed kidnappers. Relatives who arrived from Michoacan to identify the men were preparing to take the remains home, the state prosecutor said. The Michoacan authorities said none of the men had police records and suggested they were victims of mistaken identities. That seemed to be confirmed last week by a video posted on YouTube showing two men who confessed to the kidnapping and the killings as part of a feud between two drug gangs. The bodies of the two self-confessed assassins were found near the mass grave, with a note saying they had killed innocent people.
UNITED STATES
Google starts border dispute
Costa Rica on Saturday stepped up pressure on international mediators to engage in its territory dispute with Nicaragua, after Google Maps was cited in an incident that saw the two countries dispatch forces to their joint border. The Internet search giant joined the fray after a Nicaraguan commander cited Google’s version of the border map in an interview with Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion to justify a raid on a disputed border area. The area is hotly disputed by the two neighbors, and Costa Rica has asked the Organization of American States to investigate the alleged violations of its territory.
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