AUSTRALIA
Thief foiled by chili
A quick-thinking worker at a takeaway food store in Sydney has stopped an attempted robbery by throwing a bucket of chili at a would-be thief, leaving him with minor burns, police said yesterday. They said a man walked into the store on Sunday and ordered some food, but then argued with staff over payment and walked behind the counter and attempted to open the cash register. He struck a female worker across the chest as she tried to stop him from getting to the money, police said, before she resorted to throwing the chili in his face. “It appears that she just fought back with whatever was close at hand,” Inspector Ralph Deans told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “As you can imagine with a face full of chili, he’s received some burns to his face, and he was quite red-faced at the time police arrived to arrest him.”
JAPAN
China ties never easy: Aso
The nation has never in 1,500 years had a smooth relationship with China, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso was quoted as saying on Saturday during a visit to India. “India shares a land border with China, and Japan has had maritime contacts [with China], but for the past 1,500 years and more there has never been a history when our relations with China went extremely smoothly,” Aso said, according to the Nikkei Shimbun and the Sankei Shimbun. The comments were made at a meeting with Indian business people in New Delhi in response to a suggestion that Tokyo and New Dehli should strengthen defense and maritime cooperation since both have territorial disputes with China, the Sankei said.
AUSTRALIA
Raoul Wallenberg honored
The nation made Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg its first honorary citizen yesterday in recognition of the thousands of Jews he saved from the Holocaust, many of whom came to live in Australia. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the citizenship was “an expression of deep gratitude for all that our nation gained when so many saved by Wallenberg came to these shores.” She told a ceremony in Canbera that “as the last witnesses to the horrors of World War II leave us, it is vital, it is imperative to keep alive the memory and example of individuals like Raoul Wallenberg.” Wallenberg is believed to have saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the final months of the Holocaust by providing them with protective passports. “Some of the individuals whose lives he redeemed became part of our first, great transforming wave of post-war immigration; among the first to pledge themselves to their new home after Australian nationality was formalized in 1949,” Gillard said.
CHINA
Xi meets Abbas
President Xi Jinping (習近平) met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing yesterday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to follow him later this week. Abbas’s three-day trip ends today, overlapping with Netanyahu’s five-day visit that began in Shanghai yesterday. State-run media have called Abbas’ trip a state visit, while officials describe Netanyahu’s as an “official visit.” After a full military welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People, Xi told Abbas he had “maintained the strategic choice of peace” and helped “building a country which has received the wide respect and support of the Palestinian people and international society.” The two sides signed cooperation agreements on economic technical cooperation and cultural exchange.
MEXICO
President urges unity
President Enrique Pena Nieto is commemorating Cinco de Mayo by urging his countrymen to tackle current problems with the same “unity and commitment” that defeated the French 151 years ago. Pena Nieto says the holiday celebrates principles that, in his words, “encourage the political forces and federal government to pursue a transformative reform agenda that the country demands and needs.” Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops defeated a French army, then considered the mightiest military in the world. The anniversary was marked on Sunday with a military parade in the city of Puebla, where the battle took place.
FRANCE
Ballistic missile test fails
A test of an M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile failed on Sunday as it self-destructed off the coast of Brittany, officials said. “It was a failure, the reasons will be determined by an investigation,” said Lieutenant Commander Lionel Delort, a spokesman for the Atlantic Naval Prefecture. He said the missile “self-destructed during its first propulsion phase ... for an unknown reason.” The missile was test fired, without a nuclear warhead, from the Vigilant — a strategic nuclear submarine — from the Bay of Audierne and had been due to go down in the isolated north Atlantic. The defense ministry said in a statement that it “was destroyed shortly after launch, over the ocean,” without providing further details.
UNITED KINGDOM
Freud couch needs therapy
Perhaps the most memorable item of furniture in the world — the couch in Sigmund Freud’s consulting room, sagging under the weight of more than a century of recollected dreams, terrors, traumas and phobias — needs a facelift. The Freud Museum in London has launched an appeal on the 157th anniversary of his birth for funds to reupholster the couch. Many of Freud’s most famous patients, whose psychological traumas helped him to formulate his theories of psychoanalysis, lay on the couch.
SPAIN
Jet crashes at airshow
A historic jet plane crashed into a hangar and exploded in a fireball at an airshow southwest of the Madrid on Sunday, severely injuring its pilot who later died in the hospital, officials said. A spokesman for Spain’s Defense Ministry said the pilot, Ladislao Tejedor Romero, 35, an experienced jet pilot and assistant to Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes, died of his injuries in the serious burns unit of Getafe hospital. About 3,000 people were at Cuatro Vientos airfield watching a showcase of aerial acrobatics and vintage aircraft when the plane crashed, sending a fireball and thick black smoke into the air.
VENEZUELA
Military to fight crime
The nation’s top security official announced on Sunday that the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will use the military to fight rampant violent crime, raising concerns among activists who warned the initiative could lead to human rights violations. Venezuelan Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez said personnel from the army, navy and air force will join National Guard troops as part of a forthcoming anti-crime initiative. Rodriguez did not provide details of the plan, but he said tapping the military would give the government “potential that we can use to quickly reduce the crime rate. It will be a good tool that is going to bring peace to citizens,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in