THAILAND
Dog smugglers caught
Authorities rescued more than a thousand dogs found stuffed into tiny cages and being smuggled out of the country to be cooked and eaten in Vietnam, officials said yesterday. Police intercepted four trucks stacked high with crates packed with the animals in an operation on Thursday evening in Nakhon Phanom Province in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos. Two Thai men and a Vietnamese man have been charged with trafficking and the illegal transportation of animals, police case officer Captain Prawat Pholsuwan said. “The maximum punishment is a one year jail term and a fine of up to 20,000 baht [US$670],” he said.
CHINA
Carrier exercises expected
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was yesterday scheduled to conduct an air exercise on the nation’s first aircraft carrier, unveiled earlier this week, state media reported. The maneuvers could include aircraft approaching the ship, landing and then quickly taking off again, the Global Times newspaper said, citing a military source said to be closely involved with the drills. The aircraft carrier embarked on its inaugural sea trial on Wednesday. Beijing only recently confirmed it was revamping an old Soviet ship to be its first aircraft carrier and has sought to play down the vessel’s capability, saying it will mainly be used for training and “research.” The Global Times report said that radio restrictions had been imposed in a maritime zone off the coast of Liaoning Province where the carrier is docked. The planes being used for the drills are the Shenyang J-15, a Chinese version of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker, it added. The Ministry of National Defense refused to confirm if an exercise was scheduled to take place yesterday.
INDIA
‘Rebels’ shoot at cars
Police say suspected rebels have fired guns at motorists on a highway in India’s insurgency-wracked northeast, killing one person and wounding five others. The attack came as nearly two dozen rebel groups in the region asked people to boycott India’s Independence Day anniversary celebrations next week. A police officer says the assailants fled after the firing early yesterday in Golaghat district, 300km southeast of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. No one claimed responsibility for the shootings.
AUSTRIA
Casino win was ‘faulty’
It seemed too good to be true — a slot-machine jackpot of almost 43 million euros. And maybe it was. Austrian state broadcaster ORF reports that Behar Merlaku is going to court over the refusal of the Bregenz casino to give him what he considers his win on March 26. Casino officials do not dispute that the gaming machine showed a payout of nearly 43 million euros (US$62 million). However, they say that a malfunctioning computer chip was responsible for what they say was the faulty display. Both sides are going to court.
POLAND
Mystery train smash kills 1
A passenger was killed and six gravely hurt in central Poland on Friday when an inter-city train derailed for reasons that were not immediately clear, the country’s prime minister said. “We have confirmation that one person has perished,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Poland’s TVN24 news channel. Earlier, medics had reported four casualties. “Luckily the death toll is not as high as we had originally thought,” Tusk said, adding that six people were seriously injured in the disaster which occurred near the town of Baby. Rescue workers said 56 passengers were being treated for injuries in hospital.
UNITED KINGDOM
More animals bite people
Beware of the biting dog, pig and bedbug, as hospital admissions resulting from animal-related injuries are on the rise in England, according to provisional figures released by the National Health Service (NHS) information center. Injuries from dogs caused 6,120 hospital admissions from May last year to April this year, representing a five percent increase from the previous year. “Our statistics show that the summer is a seasonal hotspot for admissions to hospital for injuries caused by dogs,” Tim Straughan, NHS information center chief executive, said. “However, the same time-frame also saw an increase in admissions for injuries inflicted by other creatures — from bugs and horses to cows and pigs,” he said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Mandela opera opens
The refined strains of Western opera and traditional Xhosa song and a sexy dose of jazz drive a new opera that opened yesterday in Johannesburg about South Africa’s former president and anti-apartheid hero, Nelson Mandela. Writer and director Michael Williams said the range of musical styles reflects South Africa’s mix of cultures. The sweeping production shows Mandela cheating on his wife, making political missteps and struggling with the burden of holding others’ lives in his hands. Aubrey Lodewyk, who plays an aging Mandela in the opera, says Mandela is “a human being, he had his faults. But yet he came out as great a man as he is.”
UNITED STATES
Rapper’s fans jam phones
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has opened a criminal investigation after the rapper The Game tweeted the number for the sheriff’s Compton station, prompting hundreds of calls and overwhelming the emergency phone system. Sheriff’s Captain Mike Parker told the Los Angeles Times that The Game told his 580,000 followers that if they wanted an internship with him, they should call the number. Parker says all of the phone lines were jammed for more than two hours. He says sheriff’s investigators are documenting the actions for possible criminal charges.
BRAZIL
Gunmen kill judge
Gunmen on Friday ambushed and killed a Brazilian judge known for taking a hard line against criminals, including corrupt police officers. The early-morning slaying of Patricia Lourival Acioli in Niteroi, across a bay from Rio de Janeiro, prompted the Supreme Court to demand a swift investigation by federal police. “Cowardly crimes against magistrates are an attack on the independence of the judiciary, the state and Brazilian democracy,” Supreme Court President Cezar Peluso said in a statement. “The preservation of the rule of law in our country demands a rapid investigation of the facts and a rigorous punishment of those responsible for this barbarous act.” A group of gunmen fired at least 16 bullets into the judge’s car as she arrived at her house, according to Brazilian media reports. The 47-year-old mother of three had been on a death list found in possession of a jailed militia leader this year, the Globo Web site quoted investigators as saying.
BRAZIL
Robber leaves his dentures
It wasn’t his fingerprints that placed alleged thief Milton Cesar de Jesus at the scene of the crime. It was his dentures. Police officer Alex Oliveira says a homeless man who witnessed a purse theft found the artificial choppers at the crime scene in the southeastern town of Severini, Brazil. The UOL Internet news portal quotes Oliveira as saying that the homeless man turned the dentures over to police and gave them a physical description matching that of de Jesus. Oliveira told UOL on Friday that De Jesus at first denied owning the dentures, but then confessed to the crime after they fit perfectly in his partially toothless mouth.
UNITED STATES
Music deters loiterers
Shoppers and employees say an Ohio convenience store has fewer people hanging around and hassling customers since the business started blaring classical music. Customers told WBNS-TV that loitering has declined quickly outside the United Dairy Farmers location in the Columbus Short North neighborhood. Workers who have also noticed a change say the new music went on earlier this week as part of upgrades at the store.
UNITED STATES
Strauss-Kahn inspires show
In a story line inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn assault case, a prominent European is arrested and accused of rape in the season premiere of US courtroom drama Law & Order: SVU, TV Guide has reported. Italy-born veteran screen and stage actor Franco Nero — who appeared in last year’s film Letters to Juliet with his wife, Vanessa Redgrave — stars as an Italian dignitary at the center of a criminal sex scandal.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion