AUSTRALIA
Two arrested in drugs bust
Two Malaysians were arrested and charged yesterday with importing heroin with a street value of more than A$50 million (US$53 million) — the country’s biggest haul in a decade. Customs officers working at Port Botany in Sydney were tipped off about a suspicious furniture shipment from Malaysia earlier this month and uncovered 42kg of the drug hidden inside. The Malaysians, aged 30 and 34, were seized in raids on Sydney addresses and face life behind bars if convicted. The successful raids followed the arrest of four people and the seizure of 239kg of methamphetamine earlier this month in the country’s biggest haul of its kind.
MALAYSIA
Police hunt acid attackers
Detectives are hunting two men who have been throwing acid on pedestrians in a sting of attacks that have sent shockwaves through the capital, police said yesterday. Kuala Lumpur has been plagued by attacks on at least 22 people since February, terrifying residents across the city and its suburbs. City police chief Zulkifli Abdullah said the pair, who ride a motorcycle, have targeted mostly women and children. “We are doing more patrols and we hope people are more alert,” Zulkifli said. “We will take very firm action against this irresponsible act.” In the latest attacks last weekend a woman with a one-year-old baby was splashed, while another was reportedly hospitalized with burns to her face.
BANGLADESH
Court lifts ban on ‘fatwas’
The Supreme Court yesterday lifted a ban on issuing Islamic religious edicts, or fatwas, but said extrajudicial punishments in the name of Islam were illegal, the attorney general said. The High Court banned fatwas in 2001 after a series of cases of Muslim women being beaten and caned, but the ruling was appealed by a group of Islamic preachers who argued fatwas were integral to Islamic practice. “Fatwas on religious matters may be given only by properly educated persons and may be accepted only voluntarily,” Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said, quoting the Supreme Court ruling. “No punishment, including physical violence and or mental torture in any form, can be imposed or inflicted by anybody in pursuance of fatwas.”
AUSTRALIA
‘Planking’ comes under fire
An Internet craze known as “planking” has come under fire from authorities after the arrest of a man for sprawling on a police car. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations, with photographs of their exploits shared through social media sites. Facebook page Planking Australia currently has almost 10,000 fans and hundreds of photos of people lying on train tracks, escalators, fire hydrants, motorbikes and other objects. However, the craze has landed one 20-year-old in court in Queensland State after he was allegedly found “planking” on a police car on Wednesday. Planker Michael Brannon defended the so-called sport and accused police of overreacting. “Bloody ridiculous if you ask me, just a bit of harmless fun and they are wasting their time on this instead of catching [criminals],” he wrote on Facebook.
PAKISTAN
Drone attack kills five
A US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Pakistan’s tribal district of North Waziristan yesterday, killing at least five suspected militants, local security officials said. It was the third such attack reported on the Afghan border, which the US has dubbed the headquarters of al-Qaeda.
UNITED STATES
Economic optimism grows
Americans are growing more optimistic about the economy, a sentiment that is benefiting President Barack Obama despite public disenchantment with his handling of rising gasoline prices and swollen government budget deficits. An Associated Press-Gfk poll found that more than two out of five people believe the economy will get better, while a third think it will stay the same and nearly a fourth think it will get worse, a rebound from last month’s more pessimistic attitude. And for the first time since the 100-day mark of his presidency, slightly more than half approve of Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Both findings represent a boost for Obama, though he still must overcome ill will over government red ink and the high cost of gas at the pump.
UNITED STATES
Journalists in Libya visited
The employer of one of two US journalists being detained by forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi says they have been allowed a visitor for the first time after more than a month in captivity. James Foley was covering the conflict in Libya for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost when he was captured on April 5. Foley has been detained with Clare Morgana Gillis, a freelance journalist who wrote for the Atlantic and USA Today. A GlobalPost spokesman said on Wednesday an intermediary visited Foley and Gillis in Tripoli and said they were in good health and being treated well.
HONDURAS
Journalist shot, killed
Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a journalist outside his home in a city in the north, officials said on Wednesday. Francisco Medina, a 35-year-old television reporter, was ambushed on Tuesday night in the city of Morazan, 120km north of the capital, said Santos Galvez, a member of Honduras’ College of Journalists press group. Galvez called Medina’s slaying work-related and said he had received death threats. In his reporting, Medina was critical of the national police and of private security firms contracted by ranchers in the area, where drug traffickers operate. Medina is the 11th journalist to be killed in 18 months in the country.
UNITED STATES
Trump surprised by scorn
Real-estate magnate Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday it’s not much fun flirting with the idea of running for president in the face of relentless attacks and ridicule. “Nobody said it was going to be easy, but I had no idea I would get hammered in the way I’ve been hammered the past few weeks,” Trump said. The billionaire host of NBC-TV’s Celebrity Apprentice has hinted for months that he will run for next year’s Republican nomination. However, Trump has slipped badly in surveys taken since President Barack Obama released his birth certificate confirming he was born in the US.
UNITED STATES
‘Granny Bandit’ arrested
The “Granny Bandit” wanted in a series of armed robberies outside department stores was arrested on Wednesday after a crime analyst spotted the suspect during her lunch break, police said. Dodi Wasbotten, 51, was taken into custody hours after a woman with a child reported being held up outside a Target store by a woman who was wearing a muumuu and covered her face with a scarf. After grabbing the victim’s purse, she took off in a dark sedan with missing front hubcaps. A woman matching the suspect’s description was involved in three other stickups in Fontana, California, since Sunday.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the