INDONESIA
Python smugglers foiled
Officials said yesterday they had foiled an attempt by two Kuwaitis to smuggle 40 pythons in their luggage. Suspects Yaqub Ebrahim and Ali Hasan were caught on Friday at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport as they tried to carry the sedated serpents onto an Emirates Airlines flight to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “From many foiled cases, people often use the flights to Dubai to smuggle illegal animals,” Salahudin Rafi, operational and technical director at airport operator Angkasa Pura II, said in an e-mailed statement.
INDIA
Fake pilot case progresses
Police said yesterday they had arrested four people, including a government aviation official, in connection with a growing scandal over pilots flying with fake qualifications. Cases of pilots exaggerating their flying time while training and other irregularities have emerged since a captain who made several bad landings was found to have submitted faked paperwork to gain her license. “Four persons including an official from the Directorate of Civil Aviation [DGCA] were arrested on Friday,” New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. “A former assistant director who worked in the licensing division has been arrested.” DGCA director-general Bharat Bhushan said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Baboon mugger to be killed
A notorious baboon named Fred known for burglarizing parked cars and mugging tourists at a scenic Cape Town look-out has been captured and will be euthanized, conservation officials said on Friday. “The Baboon Operational Group had to make the difficult decision to euthanize a raiding baboon in the Smitswinkel Bay area, commonly known as Fred,” the city of Cape Town said in a statement. Fred, a brazen alpha male baboon, was targeting cars with bags and visible food, but it is his ability to open closed car doors that surprised passersby along the scenic route to Cape Point. “This baboon’s aggression levels had recently escalated to the point where the safety of tourists, motorists and other travelers along the road past Smitswinkel Bay was being threatened,” the city said. Last year, Fred physically attacked and injured three people, of which two required medical attention.
AUSTRALIA
Oven grounds Qantas plane
Qantas said a Perth-bound plane returned to Adelaide yesterday after smoke entered the cabin from a malfunctioning oven. The Boeing 737 carrying 124 people turned back in line with the airline’s safety policy, a -Qantas spokeswoman said. “It was just smoke coming from the oven,” she said. “The crew turned the oven off, but we took the plane back to Adelaide.” The incident comes just days after a cockpit fire caused by an electrical fault forced a Qantas Airbus A330-200 bound for Manila from Sydney to make an unscheduled landing. In that instance, the pilots used an extinguisher to douse the fire and diverted to Cairns, where they landed safely.
AFGHANISTAN
NATO airstrike hits civilians
NATO said an airstrike on two vehicles initially believed to be carrying Taliban fighters in Helmand Province accidentally killed an unspecified number of civilians. The international alliance said it is investigating the strike, which occurred on Friday in Naw Zad District. It said that the airstrike followed intelligence suggesting a Taliban leader and his associates were in the vehicles.
EL SALVADOR
Alleged ‘coyote’ arrested
Police on Friday arrested a man accused of running a human smuggling ring that transported some of the victims in the massacre of 72 migrants in northern Mexico last August. Carlos Ernesto Teos Parada, along with two others detained in December, allegedly arranged trips to the US for at least six of the 14 Salvadorans who died in the attack blamed on Mexico’s Zetas cartel, Attorney General Romeo Barahona said. Authorities said victim interviews and documents linked Teos Parada and Salvadorans Francis Erick Escobar and Jose Raul Alegria to the ring, which charged migrants US$6,000 each for trips to the US.
UNITED STATES
Army blamed for diet death
A 20-year-old man trying to get into the army lost 28kg in less than four months — an extreme diet that helped lead to his death — and the army says it is now investigating his mother’s allegation that military recruiters coached him on how to shed weight. Wilsey’s mother, Lora Bailey, said her son told her he was following recruiters’ advice, including self-induced vomiting. Bailey said that her son once weighed as much as 127kg but had trimmed down to about 118kg by December when he contacted recruiters and started dieting in earnest. He enlisted on Feb. 11, but his weight delayed his deployment. He weighed 89.3kg at the time of his death.
UNITED STATES
Suspected cop killer nabbed
A man charged in the shooting death of a police officer in the state of Georgia surrendered on live TV late on Friday after he emerged from an apartment with five people whom police say he had been holding captive. Jamie Hood, 33, walked out shirtless and with five other people, including a 13-year-old girl, all holding their hands in the air. Hood turned himself in after Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Vernon Keenan went before TV cameras and promised that he would not be hurt if he gave himself up unarmed and freed the remaining hostages.
CANADA
Seal hunt quota increased
The government on Friday announced an increase in the number of seals to be killed in a controversial commercial hunt off its Atlantic coast. The quota was hiked 20 percent from last year’s 388,200 seals to a total of 468,200. The nation’s 6,000 sealers once made an average of US$10 million from the annual hunt, with a quarter of it from exports to Europe, according to the government, but a lack of sea ice in one of the warmest winters on record and a European ban on seal products, according to Ottawa, ruined what was to be a banner seal hunt last year.
UNITED STATES
Asian population soars
The number of Asians living in the nation has grown by nearly half over the past 10 years, the US Census Bureau said on Thursday. The Asian American population totaled 14,674,252 as of last year, a rise of 43 percent from a decade earlier, the bureau said. Asians who identify with only one race now make up 4.8 percent of the population. Growth has been much more tepid among non-Hispanic white people, whose numbers rose by just 1 percent over the past decade. They now make up 69 percent of the population. California, the most populous state and a major Asian hub, is “majority minority” with 53.3 percent belonging to minority groups. Texas, with a burgeoning Hispanic population, has also become majority minority according to the latest census, joining California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Washington.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was