BANGLADESH
First satellite to be built
A US firm will help design and launch the nation’s first satellite. Officials said Space Partnership International (SPI) signed a US$10 million consultancy deal with the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Thursday. SPI managing director Bruce Kraselsky said his Maryland-based company would design the satellite and hire a company to build and launch it. The government said the satellite would improve telecommunications services, collect meteorological data for disaster warnings and map natural resources.
AUSTRALIA
Faceless portrait wins prize
A painting of a faceless man by Tim Storrier yesterday won the nation’s most prestigious portraiture prize, the Archibald, along with a check for A$75,000 (US$78,000). The work, entitled The Histrionic Wayfarer (After Bosch), features a pith-helmeted figure carrying a backpack with his dog Smudge perched on top. The figure has glasses but no face. Storrier, who beat 40 other finalists, said it was a self-portrait. “It is a journey through the landscape of the artist’s mind, accompanied by Smudge, the critic and guide of the whole enterprise,” he said.
FIJI
Flooding forces evacuations
Flash flooding cut highways and forced evacuations yesterday, with residents sheltering from rising waters on rooftops as authorities scrambled to find rescue boats. Heavy rains caused rivers to burst their banks in the west of the main island Viti Levu, taking water levels higher than those experienced during a six-day deluge in January which claimed 11 lives, meteorologists said. Police said they were not aware of any deaths in the latest disaster, which cut off the town of Nadi, home to the international airport, as well as other centers including Ba, Lautoka, Rakiraki and Sigatoka. Most flights to and from Nadi were canceled, national carrier Air Pacific said.
AUSTRALIA
Fake bomber trial date set
An investment banker who chained a fake bomb to a 18-year-old woman’s neck in a bizarre extortion attempt will be sentenced on June 21. Paul Douglas Peters pleaded guilty this month to aggravated breaking and entering and committing a serious indictable offense by knowingly detaining Madeleine Pulver. Pulver was alone in her family’s Sydney home in August last year when Peters broke in and tied a bomb-like device to her neck along with a note demanding money and then left. It took a bomb squad 10 hours to free her. Peters fled to the US and was arrested at his ex-wife’s home in Kentucky.
ROMANIA
Remains found at airport
Security agents at Bucharest’s international airport on Thursday found human remains in the luggage of a passenger preparing to leave for Italy, the general prosecutor’s office said. “Baggage checking operations led to the discovery of a fragment of a human lower limb,” prosecutors said. The owner of the luggage was a Chinese man, Mediafax news agency said. “All possible leads are being examined,” prosecutors added, stressing that prosecutors, police and criminologists had been sent to the scene. “The fragment of a human body was discovered during the first security check on the airport and the owner of the bag was held on the spot,” intelligence service spokesman Sorin Sava said.
CANADA
Penny finally dropped
The country has announced it is scrapping the penny. The humble C$0.01 piece is set to disappear from Canadian pockets, a victim of inflation. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced in the federal budget on Thursday that the Royal Canadian Mint will strike the last of the little coins this fall. The budget says the cost of minting a penny has risen to C$0.016 or C$11 million (US$11.03 million) a year. The budget says some consider the penny more of a nuisance than a useful coin. Pennies will still be legal tender, but as they slowly vanish from circulation, prices will have to be rounded up or down.
CHILE
Hate crime sparks furor
The independent human rights arm of the Organization of American States urged the country on Thursday to launch a “serious” investigation into the beating death of a gay man, allegedly at the hands of neo-Nazis. “Impunity for a hate crime promotes social tolerance of this phenomenon,” the Inter-American Human Rights Commission said in a statement. The group expressed concern over the March 3 beating of 24-year-old Daniel Zamudio, who died of his injuries on Tuesday after more than three agonizing weeks in a Santiago hospital. Prosecutors have said that of the four men detained in the case, three have criminal records for “xenophobic and homophobic attacks.”
MEXICO
Police unsafe at home
Authorities say gunmen killed five local police officers in the border city of Ciudad Juarez a day after members of the force left hotels where they had been staying since last month for protection. City spokesman Manuel del Castillo said two other officers were wounded. He said the officers were attacked on Wednesday night during a gathering at the house of a female police officer who is among the dead. The city’s 2,500 police officers were ordered to stay in hotels in February after attackers killed five officers and then messages signed by the New Juarez Cartel appeared threatening to kill an officer a day unless the police chief resigned. Officers were allowed to return home on Tuesday.
SWITZERLAND
Six-legged calf beats odds
A six-legged calf has defied the odds by thriving despite a vet’s prediction at birth that it would not survive. Seven-week-old Lilli is now a minor celebrity after local media were splashed with images of the calf frolicking across a sunny field. Farmer Andreas Knutti from Weissenburg, 30km south of the capital Bern, says he could not bring himself to euthanize the animal because she was “so full of life.” He told Swiss daily Blick on Thursday that a curve in her spine means Lilli may never become a normal milk cow, but Knutti says if the calf stays healthy she will still be allowed to join the others when they head for their Alpine pastures this summer.
IRELAND
Elephant flees bath
An elephant called Baby did not want a bath. Instead, the 40-year-old pachyderm bolted from a circus in southern Ireland on Tuesday, causing some alarm to customers in a coffee shop where keepers caught up with the runaway. No one was injured, but a video shot from a nearby office showed that the keepers had trouble keeping up with Baby as he headed away from the coffee shop in Blackpool in County Cork.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was