AUSTRALIA
Oil-for-food director fined
A former managing director of a wheat exporter has been fined A$100,000 (US$106,000) and banned from being a company director for two years for his role in paying U$200 million in kickbacks to Iraq’s former regime under the discredited UN oil-for-food program. Andrew Lindberg, former head of the now defunct monopoly wheat exporter AWB Ltd, was yesterday sentenced for breaches of corporate law. It was part of a plea deal with corporate regulator Australian Securities and Investments Commission that ends a case that began in 2007.
PHILIPPINES
Gunmen kill soldiers, child
Gunmen believed to be followers of a local political warlord killed three soldiers in an ambush in the south that also left a child dead, the military said yesterday. The soldiers were aboard a military truck on routine security patrol in the mainly Muslim city of Marawi when they were attacked on Wednesday night, regional army battalion commander Colonel Daniel Lucero said. He said the ambush triggered a 30-minute gunbattle, during which three soldiers were killed and 10 wounded. A child aboard a vehicle that was caught in the crossfire was also killed, while three civilians were wounded, the army said. Lucero said the men behind the attack were believed to be members of a private militia controlled by a local political warlord he did not name.
FRANCE
Bel sorry over gaffe
For a company that produces a cheese called The Laughing Cow, its sense of humor seemed in poor taste. The processed cheese giant Bel has narrowly avoided a mass boycott by shoppers after a supposedly humorous summer promotion was slammed as offensive to people with learning difficulties. With its famous Mini Babybel — round, red wax-covered processed cheeses ubiquitous in lunchboxes worldwide — the company was giving away ink stamps for children. One read: “Des vacances de malade mental,” meaning loosely “having a mental holiday” or literally “holidaying like a mentally ill person.” Associations for parents of children with learning disabilities immediately expressed outrage and threatened a boycott of the company and all its products. Company director Etienne Lecomte told Le Parisien he profusely apologized for the “extremely clumsy” campaign.
RUSSIA
Underground sect found
Seventy members of an Islamist sect who have been living in an underground bunker without heat or sunlight for nearly a decade have been discovered living on the outskirts of the city of Kazan, local media said. The sect members included 20 children, the youngest of whom had just turned 18 months. Many of them were born underground and had never seen daylight until the prosecutors discovered their dwelling on Aug. 1 and sent them for health checks. A 17-year-old girl turned out to be pregnant. The group — known as the “Fayzrahmanist” sect — was named after its 83-year-old organizer Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state, according to a report by state TV channel Vesti. Satarov was described as a former deputy to a Sunni Islamic cleric in the 1970s. His followers were encouraged to read his manuscripts and most were banned from leaving their eight-story underground bunker, Vesti said. Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the sect. No arrests have been made although police are likely to look into suspicions that some of the children were being abused.
RUSSIA
Cow goes to new heights
A cow which was not “in the mood” ambled to the top story of an apartment building to escape a bull which was, and had to be led back down by firefighters, authorities said. The cow was discovered bellowing on the top of a stairwell in the five-story building in the village of Lesogorsk last month, with the probable cause of the cow’s distress an amorous bull at the bottom. “The bull was very loving and had paid excessive attention to the cow during the summer grazing,” the Irkutsk regional branch of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. It took firefighters about three minutes to get the cow downstairs by roping its horns and pulling, according to the statement, which suggested members of the crowd that gathered should have done the job themselves. “When we arrived there were dozens of people outside the building. There were members of the local administration, police and many bystanders,” it quoted fire station shift chief Yevgeny Smirnov as saying. “In principle, they could have done without us.”
UNITED STATES
Policeman saves moose
A moose was freed from a strange backyard entanglement thanks to a brave Utah deputy and a pair of cutters. Sergeant Lane Findlay found himself face to face with the moose whose antlers were wrapped up in a backyard swing set in Ogden, 64km north of Salt Lake City, this weekend. He said the moose appeared in distress and was bleeding. Findlay said he handed his mobile phone to an onlooker and asked the person to shoot video, telling him: “If something happens to me, give this to my wife.” The video shows the moose twisting in an attempt to free its antlers from the metal chains of the swing as Findlay cautiously approaches with the cutters. He clips the chain links one by one until the moose finally pulls free and wanders off with minor injuries. “Pretty crazy stuff,” he said. “This is certainly a first for me, and hopefully a last.”
UNITED STATES
Romney ‘quip’ offends state
Mitt Romney jokingly said the government needs to do a better job managing debt or it could end up like Greece, or closer to home, California. The Republican presidential hopeful told an audience in Iowa that he worries the US is on a pathway to crippling debt and is scaring off foreign investors. Romney pointed to problems in Italy and Spain. He then suggested that Californians know a thing or two about debt. The state is facing the prospect of tax increases and spending cuts to deal with its budget problems. Romney aides say he had made the joke before and clearly was kidding. California was not laughing. A spokesman for the state’s Democratic governor dismissed Romney’s quip as “a paper-thin Republican talking point” that does not stand up to scrutiny.
UNITED STATES
Teen wins texting contest
The reigning 17-year-old champion of cellphone texting has retained the title of fastest texter in the country. Austin Wierschke of Wisconsin won after eight rounds at the texting competition on Wednesday in New York’s Times Square. He gets US$50,000 in prize money, which he said he will put away for college. Eleven contestants from around the US competed, all using the same type of phone. The competition tested three skills: speed, accuracy and dexterity. There were three rounds, including texting while blindfolded and with hands behind their backs. The annual competition is sponsored by cellphone maker LG Electronics.
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