CHINA
Deaths tied to coffin ban
Six elderly people reportedly committed suicide to ensure they died before new regulations banning coffin burials come into force, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Officials in Anqing, Anhui Province, ordered that all locals who die after Sunday should be cremated, the newspaper reported. It said officials began to forcibly confiscate coffins this month. Zheng Shifang, 83, killed herself after officials sawed her coffin in two in front of her, while a 91-year-old woman hanged herself on May 5 after learning of the regulations, the report said.
AUSTRALIA
Apple hack reported
Multiple users on Apple’s online support forum and Twitter have reported an unusual smartphone and tablet hack in which cyberattackers were said to have locked users’ smartphones and demanded payment in return for unlocking them. The alleged cyberattackers, first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, appeared to use Apple’s “Find My Phone” feature to lock the devices’ screens and send a message demanding that money be sent to a PayPal account. An Apple spokeswoman in Sydney said by telephone that the company did not have any details on how widespread the incident was.
SINGAPORE
Xenophobia condemned
Guest workers and expatriates are increasingly the target of “xenophobic” attacks on social media, leading activist groups said yesterday. There is evidence of the “widespread use of racist, aggressive and militarized rhetoric” against foreigners on social networks, the 12 groups said in a news release. The statement warned of a worrying trend “blaming foreigners for social ills” such as overcrowding and unemployment. The government needs to change the policies that have caused marginalization and inequality, they said.
AUSTRALIA
Cheeky photo published
The Sydney Daily Telegraph yesterday published a picture showing the Duchess of Cambridge’s bare bottom. The image was taken when Prince William and his wife, Kate, visited the country last month. It shows her blue and white dress lifted by a gust of wind when the couple got out of a helicopter in the Blue Mountains, 80km west of Sydney. The German tabloid Bild published it on Tuesday, but British newspapers reportedly refused to run it out of respect to the royals. Diane Morel, a Blue Mountains local, took the photo.
JAPAN
Warrant issued in ‘doll’ case
Police have obtained an arrest warrant for a woman for allegedly using the passport of a nurse whose body was posted in a box marked “doll,” an official said yesterday. The suspect, a 29-year-old Japanese-Brazilian, turned herself in to the Japanese consulate in Shanghai and was detained by local police for suspected immigration offences, local reports said. The mutilated body of Rika Okada, 29, was found in a storage lock-up in Tokyo after being posted from Osaka.
INDIA
Monk flees Tibet
A Tibetan monk who worked on a 2008 documentary film critical of China’s rule in the Himalayan region said he escaped Chinese police custody in 2012 and crossed the border last week after hiding out for 20 months. Golog Jigme, 44, who alleges he was beaten severely during detention, said he was held in the Labrang monastery area in Gansu Province before escaping.
SPAIN
Migrants storm Spanish city
About 400 migrants stormed across a towering, triple-layer border fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish territory of Melilla yesterday, one of the biggest crossings in nearly a decade, an official said. More than 1,000 sub-Saharans joined in the dawn assault on Melilla. About 400 of them managed to breach the three layers of 7m high border fence, the Melilla City President Juan Jose Imbroda told Spanish public radio station RNE. “The Guardia civil police deployed in large numbers, but it was hard to stop it,” he added. Melilla, which lies on the northern coast of Morocco, is enclosed by an 11km long border fence running in a semi-circle up to the Mediterranean.
SUDAN
Jailed woman gives birth
A Christian woman, sentenced to hang for apostasy in a case that has sparked an international outcry, has given birth in jail, her husband said on Tuesday. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, already has a 20-month-old son, who is also incarcerated with her. A Khartoum-area court sentenced her to 100 lashes and death on May 15. Born to a Muslim father, but raised by her Christian mother, she was convicted under Islamic Shariah law that has been in force in the country since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.
FRANCE
Oldest false tooth found
An iron tooth implant fitted about 2,300 years ago has been found in the grave of a young woman. Archeologists believe it may have been fitted to beautify her corpse, as it would have been too excruciating to have had it hammered into the living jaw. The corroded piece of metal is the same size and shape as the other incisors from her upper jaw — which did not survive as the timber tomb collapsed and crushed her skull. The implant, the oldest of its kind discovered in western Europe, is 400 years older than one from another grave found in the 1990s in Essonne, France.
RUSSIA
Protesters storm presidency
Opposition protesters stormed the presidency in Abkhazia overnight in what the leader of the Georgian breakaway state called a coup attempt, Russian news agencies said yesterday. “This is an armed coup attempt,” Abkhaz President Alexander Ankvab was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. Abkhazia is recognized only by Russia. Its capital, Sokhumi, is on the Black Sea coast. Interfax said opposition groups took over the presidency overnight following a protest by about 1,000 people, forcing Ankvab to flee. One of the leaders of the statelet’s opposition, Raul Khadjimba, told the crowd that a coordination council “was taking over the leadership of the republic.” “I haven’t left, I am still in Abkhazia,” Ankvab said in a televised address quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency.
BRAZIL
Protesters fire arrows at cops
Police fired tear gas on Tuesday to break up a protest by bow-and-arrow-wielding indigenous chiefs who joined forces with anti-FIFA World Cup demonstrators to condemn the money spent on the tournament. Wearing traditional clothing, about 500 chiefs mainly from the Amazon basin joined another 500 protesters rallying for various social causes in Brasilia’s government square and began marching toward the capital’s World Cup stadium. As mounted police moved to block the march, some of the demonstrators rushed their horses and fired arrows. A policeman was hit in the leg by an arrow.
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