AUSTRALIA
Swearers face being fined
Australians may have a love of plain speaking, but new laws are set to curtail some of their more colorful language, with police issuing on-the-spot fines for obnoxious swearing. The country’s second most populous state Victoria is scheduled to approve new legislation this week under which police will be able to slap fines of up to A$240 (US$257) on people using offensive words or phrases. Victorian Attorney General Robert Clark said the penalties, similar to those issued for speeding or parking illegally, would free up police time. “This will give the police the tools they need to be able to act against this sort of obnoxious behavior on the spot, rather than having to drag offenders off to court and take up time and money in proceedings,” he said.
NEW ZEALAND
PM’s son named top planker
Prime Minister John Key’s son was named the country’s “top planker” yesterday after a photo appeared online apparently showing him performing the Internet craze as his father looked on. The New Zealand Herald said the grainy picture of Max Key planking on the back of a couch in the prime ministerial residence appeared on the “Planking New Zealand” Facebook page this week, causing a stir among Internet users. In a front-page headline, it declared the 16-year-old “NZ’s top planker,” but noted the prime minister himself had not personally performed the stunt. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach with their arms against their body in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations, with photos of their exploits posted on social media sites. The fad has been linked with at least one fatality in Australia.
AUSTRALIA
Dentist survives croc attack
A dentist survived an attack by a large saltwater crocodile after it leapt into his boat and clamped its teeth around his shoulder. Bruce Rudeforth was fishing at Secure Bay in the north of Western Australia when the croc pounced, the West Australian newspaper reported yesterday. “Out of the corner of my eye, this thing came at me,” Rudeforth said. “It bit into my shoulder and I stood up and gave it one in the throat with my free elbow. I presume that’s what made it let go.” The crocodile disappeared underwater, but returned again, forcing the dentist and his friend to fend it off with an oar.
PHILIPPINES
Top prison official resigns
President Benigno Aquino III has accepted the resignation of the nation’s top prison official after a former governor convicted of killing an aide walked out of prison undetected. Aquino said on Monday that the resignation of Ernesto Diokno as director of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Corrections would initiate wide-ranging reforms in the Philippines prisons — notorious for jailbreaks, congestion and corruption among guards.
AUSTRALIA
Pageant to be held in secret
The Australian version of a US-style child beauty pageant will be held at a secret location and with bodyguards on hand after its six-year-old American guest star reportedly received death threats. Eden Wood, star of the US reality program Toddlers and Tiaras, is set to travel to Australia next month for a child beauty pageant — an idea put forward by her mother and manager Mickie Wood — but the six-year-old will be shadowed by bodyguards and the contest held in secret, with Wood saying she and her daughter had received death threats from Australians opposed to the glitzy pageant.
BELGIUM
IKEA alarm clocks detonate
Small explosives concealed in alarm clocks detonated at Ikea furniture stores in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, authorities said yesterday. The explosions in Ghent, Lille and Eindhoven caused no damage or injuries. “The information we have is that the explosions happened the same way in all locations, with booby-trapped alarm clocks that had been hidden exploding,” said An Schoonjans, spokeswoman for Ghent prosecutors. The blasts in Ghent occurred just before closing on Monday night. Two more booby-trapped clocks were detonated by remote control.
SERBIA
Mladic visits gravesite
War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was taken under police guard early yesterday to visit the grave of his daughter at a Belgrade cemetery, said Bruno Vekaric, a spokesman of the Serbian war crimes prosecutor. Ana Mladic committed suicide in 1994. Both the prosecutor’s office and the investigative judge handling Mladic’s case approved the visit, but did not want to reveal the timing due to security risks.
TURKEY
General jailed ahead of trial
A top general was jailed on Monday pending trial over an alleged 2003 plot to unseat Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government, a move that could fuel tensions two weeks before a parliamentary election. General Bilgin Balanli is the highest-ranking serving officer among nearly 200 serving and retired officers charged with involvement in the alleged conspiracy. The Istanbul court ordered Balanli be jailed on the recommendation of a prosecutor who questioned him for three hours on Monday, broadcasters reported.
GERMANY
Iran blocks Merkel flight
The government summoned the Iranian ambassador yesterday after his country briefly closed its airspace to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s India-bound plane, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. “Hindering the German chancellor’s passage over Iran is absolutely unacceptable. It shows a lack of respect towards Germany that we will not accept,” he said in a statement. The move forced Merkel’s plane to circle over Turkey for almost two hours before restoring Iran restored air rights. A journalist traveling with Merkel said Iran withdrew the rights just as the plane entered Iranian air space. A second government plane with ministers onboard reached India without any problems. Merkel and members of her Cabinet were due to meet senior members of the Indian government yesterday.
AUSTRALIA
Thaksin denies ambition
Ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra says he has no plans to return to leadership and predicts his sister will lead the opposition to victory in the July 3 elections. Thaksin told Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Lateline program on Monday from his home in Dubai that he does not want to serve again as prime minister. He says he’d rather play golf and spend time with his children. His sister is a candidate for prime minister.
VIETNAM
Land activists jailed
A court has jailed seven activists agitating for land rights and religious freedom for up to eight years, the US-based group Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party) said, in the latest of a series of verdicts against dissidents. The US said it was “troubled” by the convictions, on charges of attempted subversion, against peaceful activists.
FRANCE
Khodorkovsky wins rights
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rights were violated after his arrest in 2003 and ordered Russia to pay him 24,000 euros (US$35,000) in damages and court costs. The court in Strasbourg said yesterday it found violations in the conditions Khodorkovsky faced in court and in a remand prison, the length of time he was held pending investigation and trial, and in procedural flaws related to his detention. However, it rejected Khodorkovsky’s complaint that the prosecution against him was politically motivated. On Monday, Khodorkovsky posted a letter on his Web site asking a Moscow court to release him on parole after spending almost eight years in prison. “The articles under which I have been convicted provide for this possibility once half the sentence has been completed,” he wrote.
UNITED STATES
Banker charged over maid
An Egyptian banker was charged on Monday with sexually assaulting a hotel maid at a luxury New York City hotel, police said. Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, 74, is accused of assaulting the maid when she delivered tissues that had been requested to room 1027 at about 6pm on Sunday at the Pierre Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, police said. Omar is the former chairman of Egypt’s Bank of Alexandria.
COLOMBIA
Gang, police arrested
Prosecutors said they have arrested 37 members of a gang of drug traffickers and hitmen, including members of the police, the navy and individuals from the prosecutor’s own office. The prosecutor’s office in the northwestern department of Choco said on Monday that the 37 included “seven police, two members of the prosecutor’s office, two from the navy, a councilman and a court secretary.” It said the group was one of a number of “emerging gangs” and was behind a string of murders, extortion and disappearances. The head of the country’s police, General Oscar Naranjo, said the group was tied to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
MEXICO
Teacher rewarded for calm
Authorities on Monday rewarded a kindergarten teacher who kept a group of children calm by singing to them as shots were fired outside, after her video of the incident became an Internet hit. The footage showed Martha Ivette Rivera Alanis leading the five and six-year-olds in song as they lay on the floor at the Alfonso Reyes kindergarten in northern Nuevo Leon state on Friday, while bullets rang out in the background. Police said gunmen had shot dead five people at a taxi stand near the school on Friday. Nuevo Leon state Governor Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz recognized the teacher’s “valor, devotion and courage” and awarded her a certificate, a statement on Monday said.
SPAIN
Troops’ arrest ordered
A judge on Monday ordered the arrest of 20 soldiers from El Salvador over the 1989 murders of six Jesuits priests, five of them Spanish, and two women who worked with them. The order was the latest development to an action started in 2008 when two rights groups denounced then-Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani and 14 senior military figures for the killings. Judge Eloy Velasco had already ruled in January 2009 that there was a case to answer. On Nov. 16, 1989, Salvadoran troops shot dead the Jesuits at the Central American University. In San Salvador rights groups hailed the move as an important step toward justice.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema