AUSTRALIA
Naked rower hits head
An Irishman attempting to row across the Indian Ocean naked was rescued yesterday after he was hit by a large wave and banged his head. Keith Whelan, 30, was trying to become the youngest man, and first Irishman, to complete the 6,000km crossing, but came to grief in rough seas off Western Australia. He was picked up by a Japanese ship 206km northwest of Geraldton. “He was hit by a wave overnight and sustained a large cut to his head,” a spokeswoman at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. “He made a satellite phone call to a contact in the United Kingdom who then contacted Australian authorities and we diverted a merchant ship to pick him up.” On his Web site, Whelan said he was attempting the epic voyage naked to raise money for Keep a Child Alive, a charity dedicated to helping children and families affected by HIV/AIDS.
CHINA
Hit-kill-and-runner executed
A news agency said authorities executed a college student who ran into a young mother with his car and then stabbed her to death to avoid paying any compensation. The case sparked a public outcry. The Xinhua news agency says Yao Jiaxin (藥家鑫) was executed yesterday in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province. Yao, 21, was a student at the Xian Conservatory of Music. Yao was sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court in Xian on April 22 for the murder of Zhang Miao (張妙), 26, in October last year. The student was driving his car when he ran into Zhang, who was on a bicycle. Fearing Zhang would remember his car plate number and track him down for compensation, Yao stabbed her to death.
AUSTRALIA
Rape victim sues Canberra
A woman who was jailed for adultery in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after she told officials she had been raped is suing Canberra. The woman spent eight months in a UAE jail for adultery and drinking without a permit after she told officials she was drugged and raped by several coworkers at a Fujairah hotel in 2008. The woman said consular officials never warned her she could be charged with adultery if she complained of being raped by a married man. It is illegal to have sex outside of marriage in the UAE.
SINGAPORE
IATA unveils new system
An industry group has unveiled plans for an airport security system intended to sharply reduce check-in time. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said at its annual meeting yesterday the new system would feature iris scanners to match a passenger’s eye to his passport and information chips inside passports to identify passengers who might pose a security risk. Travelers would pass through one of three 6.1m tunnels and be subject to different degrees of searches depending on the level of security risk. The system should be in place within five years.
CHINA
Guizhou floods kill 14
Rain-triggered floods in the southwest have killed 14 people and left 53 missing while destroying roads and bridges and thousands of homes, officials said yesterday. About 45,000 residents in Guizhou Province’s Wangmo County have been evacuated since flood waters inundated the area on Monday, said Tang Quanshu of the county’s flood prevention office. She said another 3,000 people were still stranded. Meanwhile, the waters toppled 300 houses and left 2,400 submerged, while 5,500 hectares of farmland were under water, Tang said.
FRANCE
Social media ruling panned
The Superior Audiovisual Council said on May 27 that broadcasters may not use promotional lines like “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook.” The regulator said that citing social media by name could violate a government ban on secret advertising on the airwaves. Many bloggers have ridiculed and bemoaned the ruling. The council’s press office said on Monday that it had advised broadcasters to instead use the generic term “social media” when promoting their online offerings and refer to Facebook or Twitter only when a report or program merits a specific reference. The ruling — in response to a TV station’s query — went largely unnoticed in traditional media until bloggers picked up on it.
UNITED NATIONS
Mladic evasion probe urged
The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslavia war crimes court said on Monday there were “troubling questions” about how Ratko Mladic escaped capture for 16 years in Serbia. The Serbian government must urgently carry out promises to investigate and try the networks that helped hide the Bosnian Serb general for so long, Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), told the UN Security Council. Mladic’s arrest was an “excellent result,” Brammertz told the council, while highlighting the 16 years that the man accused of 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war escaped international justice. Brammertz said Serbia still had to reinforce its fugitive hunting system. “We want the remaining ICTY fugitive — Goran Hadzic — apprehended without delay.” Hadzic, leader of Croatian Serb rebels during the Balkan wars, is the last of 161 people indicted by the court who is still on the run. Serbian Ambassador to the UN Feodor Starvevic told the council the hunt for Hadzic would remain a government priority. “No impunity will be allowed and no issue in relation to cooperation with the tribunal will remain unsolved,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Hitler letter to be shown
A letter by Adolf Hitler believed to contain his first written comments on his anti-Semitic vision was to be unveiled yesterday. The letter, dated September 1919, has been obtained by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. The center was to reveal the letter’s full contents at a press conference at the Museum of Tolerance in New York. It said Hitler’s letter called for a strong government that could handle the “Jewish threat” and bring about the “removal of the Jews altogether.” Around this time in 1919, the 30-year-old Austrian-born Hitler was a World War I veteran living in Munich, Germany, where he joined a small nationalist and anti-Semitic party that eventually became the Nazi party.
UNITED KINGDOM
Kate’s gown on display
Kate Middleton’s wedding gown will be on display to the public this summer at Buckingham Palace. Officials say the dress, designed by Sarah Burton of the Alexander McQueen fashion house, will be displayed from July 23 to Oct. 3. Royal collection officials said on Monday that the veil, tiara, wedding shoes and diamond earrings Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, wore on her wedding day to Prince William will be part of the special exhibit. The wedding display will be part of a popular tour of some of the palace’s state rooms offered to visitors during the summer months.
UNITED STATES
Wrinkles linked to fractures
Wrinkles on a woman’s face may be able to predict how likely she is to suffer from bone fractures, according to a study released on Monday. That’s because the level of proteins in the skin and bones are linked, so if a woman’s face and neck are severely wrinkled, she faces a higher risk of bone breakage due to bone density loss, Yale University researchers said. Researchers examined 114 early post-menopausal women, whose last menstrual period was within three years, as part of an ongoing clinical trial. They measured the women’s skin at 11 locations on the face and neck to assess how rigid the skin was on the forehead and cheek. Bone mass and density were measured with a portable ultrasound and X-ray. “We found that deepening and worsening skin wrinkles are related to lower bone density among the study participants,” said Lubna Pal, associate professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at Yale School of Medicine. “The worse the wrinkles, the lesser the bone density, and this relationship was independent of age or of factors known to influence bone mass.” More resilient skin was linked to better bone density, the study found.
UNITED STATES
Nose stud a religious right
A North Carolina high school student will be able to wear a nose stud to class as long as she remains a member of a religious group that practices body modification. Officials with the Johnston County Schools said on Monday they’re dropping their appeal of a federal judge’s order allowing freshman Ariana Iacono to attend class with the nose piercing. The school dress code forbids facial piercings. However, Iacono belongs to the Church of Body Modification, which uses piercings and tattoos as elements of its religious practice. The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says the resolution is a victory for religious freedom.
MEXICO
Ex-mayor could face charges
Prosecutors say they are considering organized crime charges against a gambling magnate and former Tijuana mayor who is accused of keeping 88 guns in his house. The attorney general’s office says it will hold Jorge Hank Rhon and 10 of his employees and associates for another two days while officials weigh the charges. Hank Rhon was arrested on Saturday and soldiers said they found 40 rifles, 48 handguns, 9,298 bullets, 70 ammunition clips and a gas grenade at his home. He said in a letter published on Monday that the guns weren’t his and he had never seen them before.
UNITED STATES
Sea lions’ deaths probed
Authorities in Alaska on Monday were investigating a series of suspicious deaths to marine mammals, one found with a bullet in its skull, near the small southeast town of Skagway. Two dead Steller sea lions and three dead harbor seals have been found over the past five months, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service spokeswoman said. Four of the animals had head trauma, and one of them, a harbor seal, had a bullet lodged in its skull, she said. Except for the seal that was shot, officials are unsure of causes of death. One of the dead sea lions was a pregnant female, the spokeswoman said. The Fisheries Service has issued a plea to the public for information about the animals, asking citizens to call its law-enforcement hotline. Only Alaska Natives may hunt the animals, and only for traditional subsistence purposes, under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
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