VIETNAM
Same sex marriages mulled
The government is considering whether to allow same-sex couples to marry or legally register and receive rights, positioning it to become the first country in Asia to do so. The Ministry of Justice’s proposal to include same-sex couples in the country’s marriage law has surprised gay-rights activists. No one knows whether it will survive long enough to be debated by the National Assembly next year, but supporters say the fact that it is even being considered is a victory in a region where simply being gay can result in jail sentences or whippings with a rattan cane.
INDONESIA
Rescue effort saves whale
Rescuers and navy divers on Saturday helped a sperm whale return to the sea after it was stranded in shallow waters off the coast of West Java Province for four days. The 11m whale had been stuck near Pakis Jaya beach since Wednesday, attracting residents who paid US$0.50 each for boat rides close to the animal, thereby hampering rescue efforts. “We gradually pulled the whale into deeper waters with a tugboat. When it reached a depth of 20m we released it back into the sea,” Benvika from the Jakarta Animal Aid Network said.
CHINA
Serial killer to be executed
Xinhua news agency says a serial killer in Yunnan Province has been sentenced to death for murdering 11 people. A court in Kunming found Zhang Yongming (張永明), 56, guilty on Saturday of killing his victims between 2008 and this year. He showed no remorse in court. Xinhua said Zhang strangled his victims and used various methods, including dismembering and burning the bodies, to destroy evidence. It said he had been sentenced to death in 1979 for another homicide, but was released after his sentence was reduced. Xinhua earlier said authorities fired or disciplined 12 police officers for inadequately investigating the murders.
MYANMAR
Earthquake rattles country
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday shook an area near the Indian border. The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at a depth of 68.4km. The country’s meteorological and seismic agency put the magnitude at 5.8 with an official saying no casualties or damage had been reported. The quake occurred at 8:51am. The official said the epicenter was about 215km northwest of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. The area affected is not densely populated.
UNITED STATES
Alleged scammer arraigned
A woman who lived for months with the corpse of a companion was arraigned on Friday on charges of cashing his pension and Social Security retirement checks. Linda Chase, 71, appeared in court three weeks after police found the remains of Charles Zigler in a chair in the living room of their Jackson house, 64km south of Lansing, in southern Michigan. Police entered the home on July 6 after Zigler’s relatives said they had not heard from him and could not get inside. Chase has said she did not want to part with the body and talked to it while watching stock car races on TV. Chase is not charged with any crimes related to Zigler’s death or her failure to report it. Police believe the 67-year-old died of natural causes in December 2010, although Chase said it was last year. Chase is charged with forgery for converting checks worth US$28,000 intended for Zigler. A judge released her after advising her to appear for all court dates.
UNITED STATES
Church rejects black couple
A Mississippi couple got the shock of their lives when the pastor at the church they attended told them the wedding they planned could not be held there because they are black, ABC television reported on Saturday. Pastor Stan Weatherford told the network there had never been a wedding for blacks at the First Baptist Church in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, since it was opened in 1883. He said some of the white congregation so virulently opposed the wedding of Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson, who are black, that they threatened to have him fired. “My nine-year-old was going to the church with us. How would you say to your nine-year-old daughter, ‘We cannot get married here because, guess what sweetie, we’re black,’” Charles Wilson told ABC’s affiliate WAPT-TV. The would-be groom told WAPT that the couple intended to join the church as members after their wedding, which was planned for July 20. Until they got the bad news that forced them to move their ceremony to another church, where it was held on July 21.
PERU
Mountaineers found dead
A pair of US mountaineers who went missing on a climb earlier this month have been found dead, authorities said on Saturday. Rescuers found the remains of Ben Horne, 32, and Gil Weiss, 29, beneath the 6,200m Palcaraju peak in Ancash, in the north, police said. The pair apparently died trying to climb to the peak, but the exact cause of their death was not immediately clear.
MEXICO
Huge pot haul in graveyard
Soldiers found more than 2 tonnes of marijuana hidden in graves in a cemetery in the northeast, the defense ministry said on Saturday. Soldiers on patrol in the village of Los Villa Nueva, just outside the border town of Ciudad Camargo, found 241 packages of marijuana hidden in two graves under stone slabs. The Mexican military said the total find weighed 2,241kg. The area surrounding Ciudad Camargo is one of the most violent districts in the country, as the remnants of the once powerful Gulf drug cartel battle the paramilitary Zetas gang for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes into the US. Ciudad Camargo is about 775km north of Mexico City, just south of the Rio Grande, the river marking the border between the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and the US state of Texas.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the