NORTH KOREA
China treaty celebrated
A senior Chinese official has arrived to mark the 50th anniversary of a treaty of friendship between the two allies. Footage from Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang shows Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang (張德江) greeted by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hyong-jun after arriving yesterday. State media say Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has sent a letter to leader Kim Jong-il that says strengthening ties is Beijing’s “unshakable strategic policy.” Kim traveled to China in May and Beijing and Pyongyang have recently begun a new joint economic project.
CHINA
Two trapped miners rescued
Media say two coal miners have been rescued one week after being trapped in a mine collapse. Xinhua news agency and state TV say the two miners were found early yesterday in the mine in the southern Guangxi region. They spent more than 180 hours, or about seven and a half days, underground. The Guangxi Heshan Coal mine collapsed on July 2. Xinhua said rescuers were using tools and their bare hands to dig through rubble for 16 other missing miners.
NIGERIA
Taiwanese jailed for drugs
A Nigerian court on Friday jailed two men from China and Taiwan for 15 years for bringing 450.4kg of cocaine into the country, the second-largest such haul on record, an anti-drug agency said. A Federal High Court judge convicted Richard Wang of China and Fong Chiu-sen from Taiwan, over the drugs seized a year ago at the country’s largest port in Lagos. The duo were operating as clearing agents at the port. The court acquitted three Nigerians suspected to be accomplices. The half-tonne cocaine haul, imported from Chile, was worth 4.2 billion naira (US$27.5 million), the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said. It was the second-largest haul of the drug on record in the country, following the seizure of 14.2 tonnes at the same port in 2006, the agency said.
SOUTH KOREA
Officers punished for shooting
The military said yesterday it would punish two commanders for failing to prevent a shooting rampage by a marine last week that left four soldiers dead. A 19-year-old corporal on Monday last week went on a shooting spree at an elite Marine Corps unit near the tense sea border with North Korea, killing four soldiers and wounding another. The corporal, only identified as Kim, was also injured after detonating a grenade in an apparent suicide attempt. A colonel and a lieutenant colonel from the unit at Ganwha Island west of Seoul will be removed this week from their positions as commanders, the Marine Corps said in a statement. “The two will be waiting for further actions by the disciplinary committee,” a Marine Corps spokesman said. The military last week arrested a private for allegedly helping Kim steal ammunition.
THE PHILIPPINES
Japanese fugitive arrested
Immigration agents arrested a Japanese man wanted for bank fraud back home and are to deport him, the agency said yesterday. Taketoshi Hisada, 42, was arrested just outside the Japanese embassy on July 1 after the immigration bureau was informed by Japanese diplomats that a court in Nagoya had ordered his arrest. The suspect, who arrived in the country as a tourist on June 29, 2008, was holding an expired passport, allowing for his summary deportation, the bureau said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Fighters intercept planes
US fighter jets intercepted two small planes over Camp David, the US presidential retreat in Maryland, in separate incidents on Saturday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said. A Cessna 210 was intercepted at 6:56pm, the command said. The fighters escorted the plane to the Carroll County Regional Airport where it landed and was met by law enforcement officials. According to NORAD, the first interception was carried out at approximately 12:17pm, though it did not disclose details of the aircraft except to say it was out of radio communication.
UNITED STATES
Amputee veteran dies in fall
A veteran who lost both legs in Iraq died at an amusement park in upstate New York after he fell from a 60m-tall roller coaster, the Buffalo News reported on Saturday. James Hackemer, 29, died on Friday night at the Darien Lake Theme Park Resort near Buffalo after falling from the “Ride of Steel” roller coaster, the paper said. The park has closed the roller coaster closed pending an investigation into the death. Hackemer was released from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in March following three years of rehabilitation after losing both legs and a hip to a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2008, the paper said. He was at the amusement park with his two daughters, aged three and four.
UNITED STATES
Indonesians win right to sue
Indonesian villagers can sue ExxonMobil over killings and torture allegedly committed by security forces protecting one of the company’s gas projects, a federal court in Washington ruled on Friday. The decision reversed a 2009 ruling that held that the Indonesians had no right to sue Exxon in the US. The 11 anonymous villagers filed the suit in 2001, alleging that Indonesian soldiers working for Exxon committed torture, rape and murder while protecting the gas project in Aceh Province. In her ruling in favor of the villagers, federal judge Judith Rogers that they could sue under a 1789 law called the Alien Tort Statute.
AUSTRIA
Al-Qaeda suspect probed
Prosecutors in Vienna have opened an investigation into a young Austrian suspected of being a senior member of al-Qaeda, according to a report yesterday in Austrian Die Presse. The suspect, known as “Driss,” is thought to have led a group of fighters of Austrian origin on the Afghan-Pakistan border, says the report, citing a US specialist on terror groups, Paul Cruickshank. Intelligence agents picked up on “Driss” in 2005 and believe he had become a close aide to Saleh al-Somali, who was one of al-Qaeda’s most senior figures before he was killed by a US drone in 2009. “Driss” is understood to be a convert to Islam and was born in Vienna in 1983, the paper said.
UNITED STATES
University sues for painting
The University of Texas system and actor Ryan O’Neal are sparring over ownership of an Andy Warhol portrait of the actor’s longtime companion, Farrah Fawcett. The system’s board of regents sued O’Neal in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, asking a judge to order him to turn over the painting. The portrait is one of two that Warhol made of the actress and the university claims she bequeathed it to their Austin campus. O’Neal’s spokesman Arnold Robinson blasted the lawsuit in a statement.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of