TURKEY
Cops deny killing student
Four policemen on Monday denied beating to death a 19-year-old student in mass anti-government protests that rocked the country in June last year, as they went on trial amid heavy security. “I had my truncheon, but not a baseball bat, as claimed by the prosecution,” Savan Gekvunar, head of the police unit accused of killing Ali Ismail Korkmaz on June 2, told the court in Kayseri. “I took part in no arrest and I didn’t hit anyone... I wasn’t there when the events took place.” His colleague, Mevlut Saldogan, accused of administering a kick to the head that gave Korkmaz a brain hemorrhage, also denied the charges, as did two other policemen. However, baker Ebubekir Harlar, one of the four other defendants, told the court the officers had “beaten to death” the student.
GERMANY
Germans reject church bans
Responding to a worldwide Vatican survey, the country’s Catholic bishops on Monday said that many Church teachings on sexual morality were either unknown to the local faithful or rejected as unrealistic and heartless. They said that the survey showed that most local Catholics disputed Church bans on birth control, premarital or gay sex, and criticized rules barring the divorced from remarriage in church. A statement from the German Bishops’ Conference called the results “a sober inventory of what German Catholics appreciate about Church teaching on marriage and the family, and what they find offputting or unacceptable, either mostly or completely.” However, the bishops’ report said many Germans still respect the Church’s ideal of stable marriages and a happy family life.
LEBANON
Suicide bomber strikes bus
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a passenger van in Beirut’s Choueifat District on Monday, wounding at least six people, the state news agency said. The blast, which took place during the evening rush hour, appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks in the country linked to the civil war in Syria. TV stations broadcast video showing the charred, mangled wreckage of the minibus and pieces of flesh scattered on the street. One security official cited one of the wounded as saying a man blew himself up after boarding the minibus and confirming that it was heading to a predominantly Shiite area in southern Beirut.
LEBANON
Joan Mondale passes away
Joan Mondale, the wife of former vice president Walter Mondale and a champion of the arts, died on Monday, her family said in a statement. She was 83. Mondale died with her family members at her side, the statement released through the family’s church said. Mondale’s support for the arts spanned more than six decades, from her study and work in college through her promotion of arts programs and artists during and after her husband’s terms as a senator, vice president and ambassador.
CAR
Religious strife kills dozens
At least 70 people have been killed and dozens of houses torched in clashes between Muslim and Christian communities in the town of Boda, local police officials said on Monday. Elie Mbailao, police commissioner of Mbaiki, about 100km from the area around Boda, said that Christians attacked Muslims after the Seleka alliance of militias passed through. “The mayor [of Boda] has told me that there were more than 70 dead and over 30 houses burned,” Mbailao said of the violence that began late last week.
NORTH KOREA
Abe labeled ‘Asian Hitler’
Pyongyang yesterday denounced Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an “Asian Hitler” intent on amassing military power under the guise of ensuring regional stability. The attack in an editorial carried by KCNA news agency, entitled “Is this the emergence of an Asian Hitler?” said the Japanese leader was fueling fears of the nation’s missile and nuclear threats in order to justify Japan’s military expansion. “There is no difference between the fascist maniac Hitler, who waged battle against communists to justify another war, and the reckless Abe who is using confrontation with North Korea to justify Japan’s new militarist ambitions,” it said.
CHINA
Jealous husband arrested
Police yesterday said they captured a man accused of killing six people in a jealous rage on the eve of the Lunar New Year festival. A local government spokesman said Shao Zongqi was caught on Monday after four days on the run. The 38-year-old is suspected of killing two men he believed were having affairs with his wife, along with the men’s wives, two boys and an elderly man. The killings took place on Friday. The victims and killer were residents of Yunnan Province’s Tengcheng County.
CHINA
Navy concludes exercises
A three-ship navy squadron has concluded exercises in the Indian Ocean and sailed on to the western Pacific, showing off the growing reach of the country’s seagoing forces. State broadcaster CCTV yesterday said the squadron includes the nation’s largest amphibious landing ship, the Changbaishan, along with a pair of destroyers. It said they reached the Indian Ocean on Wednesday last week and carried out a series of drills.
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
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.