MYANMAR
Suu Kyi warned over ‘Burma’
Government officials have told opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi that she must refer to the nation by its official name and not “Burma.” The country’s former military rulers changed the country’s English name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, but opponents and exile groups have persisted in referring to the country as Burma as a sign of protest and defiance. The national election commission issued the complaint yesterday in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, saying Aung San Suu Kyi had referred to the country as Burma during her landmark trips to Thailand and Europe.
CHINA
Blogger’s name cleared
A blogger sentenced to one year in a labor camp says a court has cleared his name in a case linked to the nation’s biggest political scandal in years. Fang Hong (方洪) said the Chongqing Third Intermediate Court overturned his conviction because of a lack of evidence and ruled his time served an illegal detention. He said he would seek compensation and an apology from government and media outlets that made the accusations again him. The retired civil servant was arrested after posting a brief poem mocking now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來).
CHINA
Tanker explosion kills 20
A tanker truck filled with gasoline has collided with a truck in the south of the country, setting off an explosion and a massive fire that left 20 people dead and 14 others hurt. Xinhua News Agency said the tanker truck was carrying 40 tonnes of gasoline when it crashed into the other vehicle early yesterday morning on an expressway in Guangzhou City. Xinhua said oil leaked from the tanker truck and triggered an explosion that set a timber mill under the expressway bridge on fire. Xinhua said one of the 14 injured was severely hurt. Most of those hurt were workers from the factory. The agency cited Guangzhou City’s Internet information office.
INDIA
Rebels killed in shootout
At least 17 Maoist rebels were killed during a gunbattle yesterday with security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of left-wing extremism, police said. The gunfight erupted in the early hours of the morning in a thickly forested area of Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, about 295km south of the state capital Raipur. Six Maoists and six members of the security forces were wounded, district police superintendent Prashant Agrawal said by telephone. Security forces are combing the area in search of more fighters, after the rebels ambushed a police patrol and shot dead six officers and a civilian in the state last month.
UNITED STATES
Colorado wildfire kills one
A body has been found in the debris from a wildfire that tore into the outskirts of Colorado Springs this week, marking the first casualty from the blaze in the western city. Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey told reporters late on Thursday night that a body was found in the rubble of the Waldo Canyon fire and that one other person was missing who lived at the same address. The fire — which destroyed 300 homes and forced about 36,000 people to evacuate — is just 15 percent contained.
UNITED STATES
Filipino made citizen at 102
A 102-year-old Filipino man who came to the US as a youth to pick lettuce has become a citizen. Only 27 people older than 100 have become citizens there over the past 50 years. Joaquin Arciago Guzman was helped out of a wheelchair by his niece so he could stand during the Pledge of Allegiance at Wednesday’s naturalization ceremony in Los Angeles.
UNITED STATES
Obama meets veterans
President Barack Obama met with wounded service members from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Obama traveled to the hospital outside Washington by helicopter a few hours after the Supreme Court ruled on his healthcare law. The White House said the president met with 52 wounded soldiers and awarded one Purple Heart during his stay. It was Obama’s first visit to the hospital since early March.
MEXICO
Missing marines found dead
The navy said all four marines aboard a helicopter that went missing a week ago were found dead inside the aircraft’s wreckage. It said in a statement that investigators reached the site of the crash on a mountaintop in the western state of Jalisco on Thursday. The Eurocopter Panther helicopter set off from the Pacific coast city of Manzanillo on June 22, headed for Morelia, the capital of Michoacan State. Military and law enforcement helicopters have been attacked with small arms fire in the area in the past. The navy said in a separate statement that marines found a methamphetamine lab about 18km from the crash site. It did not say whether the helicopter crash and the discovery of the clandestine lab were related.
BRAZIL
Child porn ring arrested
Police said on Thursday they have broken up a ring that used Internet file sharing to distribute child pornography in at least 34 countries. Inspector Diana Calazans Mann told reporters the files exchanged by members of the group were “very repugnant.” She said there were images of “infants, children and teenagers being sexually abused.” “We were extremely shocked with the images,” she added. Another officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said 15 arrest warrants had been issued in the country and that at least 12 people had been arrested. Those arrested face up to six years in jail. He also said investigators found “accounts written by members of the ring describing acts of cannibalism, as well as the rape of children by their parents, kidnaps and murders.” He said police “are trying to determine if they describe actual events or are the fruit of the imaginations of those who wrote them and posted them on their Internet chat accounts.”
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