JAPAN
Storms disrupt trains, flights
High winds and rain generated by two low-pressure systems disrupted train and flight operations over wide areas of the country for a second day yesterday, with further storms forecast. Some flights departing from Sapporo were canceled, All Nippon Airways Co said on its Web site. Operations on parts of eight rail lines on Hokkaido were canceled or delayed, Hokkaido Railway Co said. The north and east of the country will experience strong winds through today with some areas receiving heavy rain, the Japan Meteorological Agency said yesterday. One low-pressure system in the Japan Sea and another in the Tokyo region were expected to merge near Hokkaido by this morning, the agency said. Winds as strong as 126kph may hit the north, with some areas of Hokkaido seeing up to 50mm of rain per hour, the agency said.
SINGAPORE
Elevator ‘toilets’ arouse ire
Elevators in public-housing blocks are still sometimes being used as toilets, infuriating residents, despite the government’s long campaign to eradicate the habit, the Sunday Times said yesterday. The Tampines Town Council has put up notices showing a bare-bottomed woman apparently urinating in an elevator and a man smoking in another, the paper said. The images from closed-circuit cameras were published blurred as a warning. The council said that if similar “anti-social” acts continue, it will publish clear pictures of offenders and submit them as evidence for prosecution under the Environmental Public Health Act. The paper said the smell of urine and cigarette smoke is the most persistent problem in elevators, but it can get worse. “Sometimes there’s feces as well,” housewife Jo Neo, 40, said. “What happened to civic-mindedness?”
GREECE
Insulting ad to be withdrawn
An e-ticket ad will be withdrawn from television after managing to insult both the country’s truckers and its gay community, Ta Nea daily said on Saturday. In the ad that aired this past month, a hitchhiker boards a trailer truck hoping to reach Turin, Italy. As soon as the door shuts behind him, the driver flicks a switch, a neon-lit pink divan with cuddly bears and pillows appears in the recess of the cabin, and he blows the passenger a suggestive kiss. “Do you want to travel cheaply, and end up paying for it dearly?” the ad says. “You have ridiculed truckers brutally and without provocation,” the haulers’ association said in a complaint filed against the e-ticket company, airfasttickets. Meanwhile, the main association representing homosexuals also complained that the ad typecast gay men. “Gay men are presented as devious and sex-obsessed people trying to seduce unsuspecting youths,” the OLKE association said.
UNITED STATES
Lawsuit over teen’s death
The parents of slain black teenager Trayvon Martin have settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the homeowners association of the Florida neighborhood where he was shot, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Martin, 17, was killed on a rainy night in February last year by George Zimmerman, 29, a volunteer night watchman. Zimmerman had followed Martin into a gated community in Sanford, in central Florida, and said he shot the unarmed teen in self-defense following an altercation. The newspaper, citing court documents, said Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, and the homeowner’s association had agreed to keep the settlement amount confidential. Under the terms of the settlement, the homeowner’s association did not admit wrongdoing or liability, saying: “The monies being paid hereunder is consideration for avoiding litigation, the uncertainties stemming from litigation as well as to protect and secure the good name and good will of the released parties.”
COLOMBIA
Army suspends operations
The army has suspended operations in the country’s southwest, a military source said on Saturday, in a move reports said was meant to allow Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Pablo Catatumbo to exit the country to attend peace talks in Cuba. “Yes, military operations have been suspended,” one military official said, without providing details, other than to confirm that the interruption in fighting had been ordered by top government officials. The government and the rebels are one week into a three-week break in their negotiations, although technical teams for both sides are continuing to hold talks. Reports said military operations were interrupted from Friday through yesterday in a large area between the provinces of Valle and Cauca.
UNITED KINGDOM
Filmmaker’s death probed
Police are investigating the death of a young filmmaker who was sleeping rough while making a documentary about the homeless, they said on Saturday. The body of Lee Halpin, 26, was found in a derelict building in Newcastle on Wednesday, just three days after he began the project. Police said they had arrested two men, aged 26 and 30, in connection with his death. Both were later bailed. A postmortem into the cause of his death is due to be carried out tomorrow. Speaking on a YouTube video the night before he began sleeping rough on March 31, Halpin said he wanted to “interact with as many homeless people as possible and immerse myself in that lifestyle as deeply as I can.”
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