INDONESIA
‘Hijacking’ a potty run?
An Australian passenger who sparked a hijack alert on a flight to Bali has denied being drunk and claimed he banged on the door of the cockpit after mistaking it for the toilet, Indonesian police said yesterday. Matt Christopher Lockley also said he was in a state of depression during the Virgin Australia flight on Friday to the resort island, as he was searching for his Indonesian wife with whom he had lost contact, they said. Lockley, wearing flip-flops, white shorts and a T-shirt, was dragged off the plane by heavily armed air force personnel and arrested by police. Indonesian officials initially said he had been drunk, but police said yesterday that the 28-year-old, who is in custody and hospitalized for fatigue, has denied being under the influence of alcohol. He told police that before flying, he had taken two pills of Voltaren, four pills of Panadol — both painkillers — and drank two bottles of Coca-Cola, Bali police spokesman Hery Wiyanto told reporters. “According to him, he was not drunk, but suffering from depression due to a family problem,” the spokesman said, adding that while police were waiting for alcohol test results, there was no smell of alcohol on his breath when he was detained.
TONGA
Offshore temblor hits
A strong magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck off the Pacific nation yesterday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, but there was no immediate tsunami warning or reports of significant damage. The undersea quake hit 71km northeast of the capital, Nuku’alofa, at a shallow depth of 10km, the USGS said. Residents reported a “short, very violent” jolt at around 6am GMT that knocked items off shelves and sent people fleeing for higher ground.
MYANMAR
Imams sentenced after fire
Two imams have been sentenced to eight years in prison for negligence over a fire at a religious school that killed 13 boys, state media said yesterday. About 70 children, some orphans, were sleeping in dormitories at the school inside a mosque complex in Yangon when the blaze broke out in April last year. A court in Yangon said in its ruling on Friday that the fire was caused by the overheating of an electrical regulator and that the door of the school was locked, according to the New Light of Myanmar newspaper. The victims died of suffocation when they were unable to escape.
SOUTH KOREA
Obama would save Putin
It’s official: even though they are involved in the worst East-West clash since the Cold War, US President Barack Obama would save Russian President Vladimir Putin from drowning. Obama on Friday delivered his answer to a question posed to Putin during a live television appearance earlier this month — would his US rival come to his rescue? Putin answered by saying that though he did not have a special personal relationship with Obama he thought the US leader was “a decent and brave person … and of course, he would.” In a rare moment of humor at an alarming moment of the Ukraine crisis, Obama confirmed he would indeed throw the Russian leader a lifeline, when questioned by a US journalist. “I absolutely would save Mr Putin if he were drowning,” Obama said. “If anybody is out there drowning, I would save them… I used to be a pretty good swimmer; I grew up in Hawaii,” Obama said, before adding “I am a little bit out of practice.”
CANADA
Military to probe sex abuse
The military was ordered on Friday to investigate and take action after shocking allegations of widespread sexual assaults within its ranks. One in 10 female soldiers reported being sexually assaulted, according to cover stories by MacLean’s magazine and its French-language sister publication L’Actualite, which cited military records obtained during an eight-month investigation. The two magazines, whose stories prompted the internal review, estimated the figure is actually far higher by as much as 10-fold when adding in unreported cases. In total, the military received an average of one sexual assault complaint every other day or 178 annually from 2002 to 2012, the publications reported. Chief of the Defense Staff General Tom Lawson called the revelations “disturbing” and said sexual assault is an “abhorrent and corrosive act that goes against the entirety of our military ethos.”
AUSTRIA
Conwoman jailed
A court jailed for two years on Friday a Romanian call girl with a doctorate in nuclear physics who conned a smitten Canadian businessman out of 230,000 euros (US$318,000). The 37-year-old woman, who has not been named, also worked as a presenter on breakfast television in her home country, is a keen rally driver and was once engaged to a Jordanian prince, according to the Austria Press Agency. The 57-year-old Canadian businessman told the court in Salzburg, western Austria, where the woman lives, that he first “booked” her for a week-long holiday in the Caribbean in 2011. Telling him that she had breast cancer and was in debt from the funeral of her disabled daughter, the man gave her ever larger sums of money, which she spent on a beauty salon that went bankrupt and an Audi TT sports car.
SOUTH AFRICA
Escaped cannibal recaptured
Police have captured a 27-year-old prison escapee from Lesotho who has confessed to multiple murders and cannibalism, after a two year cross-border manhunt involving Interpol. Makhele Scott admitted to killing and eating two people in Lesotho in 2012, but escaped from Maseru Central Prison while awaiting trial. Earlier this month, agents from Lesotho, South Africa and Interpol tracked Scott to a church outside Durban, where he was living and playing in the church band. Scott earlier admitted to killing and eating a 13-year-old student who went missing in January 2012 and villagers later found his limbs, a torso and head. In July 2012, a 22-year-old man went missing from the same village. “Police responded to a tip-off and at the house discovered a Corsa bakkie [pickup truck] in which two human arms, a leg, penis and testicles were found,” the statement said. When confronted Scott confessed to the murders, and to cooking and eating some of the body parts. He led police to a shallow grave where a torso and thigh were found and to a primary school pit toilet containing a human head, two feet, lungs, heart and intestines.
SAUDI ARABIA
Five more die of virus
The Ministry of Health says five more patients who contracted a potentially fatal Middle East virus related to SARS have died in the kingdom as the number of reported infections from the disease there rises past 300. The ministry on Friday said the deaths were among 14 new cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome detected in the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca. Two other deaths were recorded a day earlier.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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