SOUTH KOREA
Human flesh pills banned
The government says it’s strengthening customs inspections in a crackdown on the smuggling of Chinese-made capsules filled with powdered human flesh. The Korea Customs Service yesterday said it has discovered 35 attempts to smuggle from China about 17,450 such capsules disguised as stamina boosters since August last year. Customs officials say the capsules were made from dead babies and infants in northeastern China, and that ethnic Koreans living there tried to smuggle them into the country. The officials say some people believe the capsules are a panacea for disease, but an investigation shows they contain superbacteria and other harmful ingredients.
AUSTRALIA
Captive begs for his life
A new video has emerged of an Australian kidnapped by suspected Muslim extremists in the Philippines, with the Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday saying it proved he was still alive in late March. Warren Rodwell, from Sydney, was seized from his home in Ipil on Dec. 5 and a January video showed the 53-year-old pleading with authorities to do all they could to secure his freedom. The department said Philippine authorities had received a second recording of the former soldier, confirming he was alive on March 26. The Australian Broadcasting Corp said the new video showed him holding up a newspaper dated March 26 while making a plea for a ransom payment to be made to save his life. In the January video, Rodwell said his captors were demanding US$2 million.
UNITED STATES
Hostage pleads to Obama
In a video released on Sunday by al-Qaeda, hostage Warren Weinstein said he would be killed unless President Barack Obama agrees to the militant group’s demands. “My life is in your hands, Mr. President,” Weinstein said in the video. “If you accept the demands, I live; if you don’t accept the demands, then I die.” Weinstein was abducted in August last year in Lahore, Pakistan, after gunmen broke into his home. The 70-year-old from Rockville, Maryland, is the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors. In a video message posted on militant Web sites in December, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri said Weinstein would be released if the US stopped airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He also demanded the release of all al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects around the world.
AUSTRALIA
‘Globetrotting’ dinosaurs
Scientists yesterday said a new fossil discovery suggested dinosaurs were cosmopolitan globetrotters, unlike the “unique weirdos” of the nation’s current wildlife. Palaeontologist Erich Fitzgerald said an ankle bone fossil found 87km from Melbourne indicated that meat-eating dinosaurs known as ceratosaurs lived in what is now Australia some 125 million years ago. He said the finding suggested that back then continent had the same large, well-known predators such as tyrannosaurs and allosaurs that are found elsewhere in the world. “The dinosaurs we see here are not unique weirdos like modern koalas and kangaroos on a global scale,” Fitzgerald said. The discovery adds to the picture about dinosaurs in eastern Gondwana, the continent which broke into Australia, Antarctica and India between 80 and 130 million years ago.
FRANCE
Vaccine targets meningitis
Researchers said yesterday they were a step closer to developing a vaccine against the type of meningitis that mostly affects Europe and North America and kills hundreds every year. A trial in adolescents in Australia, Poland and Spain showed them developing an immune response without serious side-effects, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal. After taking the drug, the test group generated antibodies that were active against 90 percent of strains in the meningitis B group affecting the US and Europe. Meningitis, an inflammation of the lining around the brain and spinal cord, mostly targets teenagers — with a fatality rate of between 5 percent and 14 percent. Many survivors suffer permanent neurological damage and limb or hearing loss.
IRAN
Eleven ‘traffickers’ executed
Nine men were hung in a prison in Tehran after they were convicted of trafficking “glass,” or methamphetamine, a statement from the Tehran prosecution office said. Seven of the men had been sentenced to death after a consignment of 500kg of the drug was seized in a cargo ship bound for Southeast Asia, the statement carried by local media said. In a separate case, two brothers, Bahman and Behzad Nabavi, were executed after being convicted of trafficking more than 420kg of “glass,” the prosecutor’s office said.
LIBYA
Leader suffers from hernia
Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Sunday he had undergone a hernia operation and a doctor at the hospital where he was treated said he was recovering well. “The doctors here agreed on what the doctors in Tripoli said — for an operation for this hernia,” the chairman of the ruling National Transitional Council, looking tired and wearing a dressing gown, told reporters at the -Benghazi hospital. Abdel Jalil said he had the operation on Saturday night. Abdel Jalil was born in 1952. He served as justice minister under former leader Muammar Qaddafi, but resigned early last year and joined the revolt.
UAE
Arab news channel launched
A new pan-Arab news channel partly backed by Abu Dhabi has hit the airwaves. Sky News Arabia began broadcasting on Sunday evening from Abu Dhabi, which hopes to rival nearby Dubai as a media hub. The Arabic-language network will compete for viewers with established services such as Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Saudi-backed Al--Arabiya, broadcasting from Dubai. Sky News Arabia is a partnership between the Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp and British Sky Broadcasting, whose biggest shareholder is media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The channel has been in the works for more than two years. It says its news management is separate from Sky’s London headquarters.
GERMANY
Police overwhelm shooter
Police say a SWAT team overwhelmed an unidentified man who fired several shots inside a church. Police say officers stormed the church in Siegen on Sunday afternoon about six hours after the man had locked himself inside the building. A church employee was initially threatened by the man, but managed to escape, leaving the attacker by himself inside the building for hours. Reports said the man was injured during the raid and was hospitalized. Police said the man fired “several shots,” but his motive remained unclear.
UNITED STATES
Wife sees husband’s death
An army nurse showed no alarm or discomfort before suddenly collapsing during a Skype video chat with his wife, who saw a bullet hole in a closet behind him, his family said on Sunday. Captain Bruce Kevin Clark’s family released a statement describing what his wife saw in the video feed recording her husband’s death in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. It was not clear how the bullet hole got in the closet. “Clark was suddenly knocked forward,” the statement from the family said. “The closet behind him had a bullet hole in it. The other individuals, including a member of the military, who rushed to the home of Clark’s wife also saw the hole and agreed it was a bullet hole.” The statement says the Skype link remained open for two hours on April 30 as family and friends in the US and Afghanistan tried to get Clark help. In the statement, Susan Orellana-Clark said she was providing details of what she saw “to honor my husband and dispel the inaccurate information and supposition promulgated by other parties.” The Pentagon said previously that Clark’s death remains under investigation.
CANADA
Israeli president visits
Israeli President Shimon Peres arrived on Sunday for a four-day visit to the close ally of the Jewish state, his embassy said. Peres plans to discuss recent developments in the region with top officials, including Iran’s controversial nuclear program and Israel’s relations with its neighbors, according to information given earlier by the president’s office. Yesterday, Peres, 88, was scheduled to meet Governor General David Lloyd Johnson — who represents Queen Elizabeth II, the titular head of the country — and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a keen backer of Israel, officials said. He is also set to meet other senior politicians and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec during his visit.
UNITED STATES
Girl, 14, arrested over killing
Indianapolis police said a 14-year-old girl found covered in blood faced a preliminary murder charge in her four-year-old cousin’s stabbing death. Police spokesman Kendale Adams said on Sunday the girl was arrested after being questioned by officers. She is being held at the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center. Prosecutors will determine whether she will be formally charged in the death of Leon Thomas III. Officers were called about 11pm on Saturday to an Indianapolis apartment, where they found the bleeding boy. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Police later found the 14-year-old girl, covered in blood and walking along a nearby street. Adams said the boy and his 11-year-old sister were at their grandparent’s apartment at the time of the attack. No additional details were released.
PERU
People warned from beaches
The Ministry of Health is urging people to stay away from Pacific beaches from Lima northward after recent large-scale deaths of pelicans and dolphins. Neither the health ministry nor the oceanographic institute has determined the cause of the deaths, and there is no indication the deaths of the birds and the mammals are related. Saturday’s warning did not indicate why it might be dangerous to visit beaches. The agricultural safety service ruled out on Friday that the pelicans could have died of avian flu, which could be contagious to humans. Since February, 877 dolphins and, more recently, at least 1,200 pelicans have been found dead on the nation’s beaches for unexplained reasons.
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