AUSTRALIA
Sub rejoins MH370 search
A robotic submarine searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 resumed operations yesterday after technical problems, as it enters what is expected to be its final week of scouring the Indian Ocean seabed for signs of the aircraft. The country is leading the search for the plane which vanished on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, and is using the Bluefin 21 sub until new equipment can be obtained. “The autonomous underwater vehicle, Bluefin 21, was deployed from the vessel around 2am this morning. It remains underwater on its search mission,” the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said from Sydney.
HONG KONG
Activists get protest warning
Pro-democracy activists were warned yesterday against holding mass protests as part of their campaign for the right to choose their own candidates for a poll in 2017 to elect the capitalist hub’s next leader. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said during a stormy legislative session that the authorities were ready to act if the activists pursued a campaign of civil disobedience named “Occupy Central” to seal off the city’s business district unless Beijing allows a truly democratic poll. Several radical lawmakers raised objections and called for his resignation. The activists fear that candidates will be nominated by a small election committee stacked with Beijing loyalists that would veto opposition candidates’ nominations.
UNITED KINGDOM
Debris found in yacht search
The crew of a charter boat taking part in a search for four British sailors missing in the Atlantic Ocean has found some floating debris in the area where their yacht went missing six days ago, the captain said yesterday. Patrick Michel, skipper of the Masili, said his crew had spotted a wooden plank that could be part of the cabin and some white foam or plastic in the northern part of the search area. He said the debris appeared new as it was free of barnacles, but the owner of the missing yacht, the Cheeki Rafiki, would need to confirm that the debris was from the boat.
PHILIPPINES
Chinese fishermen on trial
Nine Chinese fishermen pleaded not guilty on Wednesday before an environment court after they were allegedly caught with hundreds of marine turtles in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea. A boat unit of the Philippine National Police intercepted the Chinese fishing boat and arrested its 11 crew members this month in Half Moon Shoal (Banyue Shoal, 半月暗沙) in the disputed Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島). If convicted, the men face prison terms of 12 to 20 years. They were granted bail of 70,000 pesos (US$1,600) each.
RUSSIA
Circus croc gets rocked
A crocodile was injured when an accountant weighing 120kg fell on him during a bus trip through the arctic north, local media reported. Fedya was injured on Tuesday when the accountant for the circus to which the 2m reptile belongs tumbled from her seat as the minibus took a sharp turn. The Soviet Circus, based in the region of Murmansk, feared for the reptile’s life when the shock left him vomiting for three hours, media outlet Ria Novosti reported. The accountant escaped with only minor injuries, but has been reprimanded for not wearing her seat belt. Fedya has recovered and is waiting in Moscow to become the star of a Russian TV program, circus director Vassili Kolos said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Russia wants explanation
A senior Russian diplomat was expected to meet with British officials at the Foreign Office yesterday after Prince Charles reportedly compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions to those of Adolf Hitler, a government source said. The 65-year-old prince, during a tour of Canada, told a Jewish woman who fled from Poland during World War II that “Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler,” according to a report in the Daily Mail newspaper. Moscow has not formally commented, but Russian media said it threatened to further “complicate” relations between the two countries, already tense over the crisis in Ukraine. There was no immediate comment from the Russian embassy in London.
IRAN
‘Happy’ video singers freed
Six Iranians arrested for appearing in a video singing along to a US pop song were released on Wednesday, one day after being detained for what police called their “obscene” behavior, one of them said in an online posting. In the clip, the three women and three men dance and lip synch to Pharrell Williams’ Happy, imitating the official video of the international hit. The women are not wearing headscarves, as demanded by Islamic law. Their arrest caused outrage among fans of the song — a catchy anthem about feeling happy — who took to social media to denounce what they saw as a heavy-handed response by Tehran to a piece of harmless fun. Williams himself criticized the arrests. “It’s beyond sad these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness,” he tweeted on Tuesday.
UNITED STATES
Seventy nabbed in porn bust
Two police officers, a rabbi and a Boy Scout leader are among 70 men and one woman arrested on child pornography charges in the largest such bust in New York, officials said on Wednesday. Over five weeks investigators impounded nearly 600 computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones and thumb drives containing tens of thousands of pornographic images and videos of children. Among the defendants are one with a previous child sex abuse conviction and a woman charged with producing and distributing pornography involving her own young child, officials said. They also include two nurses, a paramedic, an au pair, and a Boy Scouts den master who served as a little league baseball coach. Officers launched the operation after arresting the head of a police department in Valhalla, New York, in January and a rabbi, who home schooled children in Brooklyn, in March. Officials said Operation Caireen, which ran from April 4 to May 15, was the largest-ever operation in New York targeting sexual predators of children.
HUNGARY
Angry coach reprimanded
Soccer coach Attila Pinter has been ordered to undergo communications training after he lost his temper with a referee at one of his son’s games. The demand was handed down by the soccer association bosses. Witnesses said Pinter, 48, challenged the referee and called him a “cheat” after his son’s team squandered a two-goal lead during an under-nine game this month. “As Hungary coach I shouldn’t have... but as a dad it was awful to watch the disappointment of my son,” Pinter said in a statement on Wednesday. “Pinter speaks clearly... but we can help his style with communications training,” Hungarian FA head Sandor Csanyi said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of