SOUTH KOREA
Second band member dies
A second member of the band Ladies’ Code has died from injuries sustained from a car accident. Kwon Ri-sae, 23, died yesterday morning at a hospital in Suwon, just south of Seoul, the band’s management agency said. She had been unconscious after undergoing hours of emergency brain surgery following Wednesday’s accident. Fellow band member Go Eun-bi died shortly after a van carrying the group crashed into a guard rail on a rain-drenched highway near Seoul. Police suspect that the van driver might have been speeding on the wet road to meet a tight schedule.
MYANMAR
By-elections canceled
The Union Election Commission said yesterday it is canceling by-elections that were scheduled for later this year to fill 35 empty parliamentary seats. Commission chairman Tin Aye made the surprise announcement at a news conference in Yangon. Reasons he gave included preparations for next year’s general election, the government hosting the annual ASEAN summit in November and an election law that political parties field at least three candidates or cease to exist, a requirement he described as burdensome for the country’s 67 political parties.
BAHRAIN
Activist’s detention extended
A court on Saturday ordered human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja to remain in detention for 10 more days as authorities continue to investigate her case, which stems from her decision to return home to visit her jailed father. Al-Khawaja was detained after arriving on a flight a week ago. Authorities have charged her with assaulting police after she refused to hand over her mobile phone during questioning at the airport. She denies the charge. Al-Khawaja has dual Danish and Bahraini citizenship. Lawyer Mohammed al-Jishi provided details of the court order following a hearing. He said a Danish embassy representative also attended the hearing.
AUSTRALIA
Navy hunts missing sailor
The Royal Australian Navy said yesterday it had launched a search for a Pakistani sailor believed to have disappeared overboard during a multinational military exercise in the north of the country. The navy said the sailor, who was not named, went missing earlier in the day while the Pakistani Navy ship Nasr was anchored at Darwin Harbor during the biennial Kakadu military exercises. A police spokesman told the Australian Broadcasting Corp the sailor might have deliberately jumped into the water to swim to the mainland. “A backpack was found in the water, which would indicate that the person leaving the ship did know what he was doing at the time,” Superintendent Rob Burgoyne said. “He was described as skulking in the bushes [on the mainland], so one can work out from that, probably he didn’t want to be found.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Machete accused in court
A man appeared in court on Saturday charged with the murder of an 82-year-old woman reportedly found beheaded with a machete in her suburban London garden. Palmira Silva, a grandmother who worked at her family’s cafe, was attacked in her garden in Edmonton on Thursday. Nicholas Salvador, 25, appeared at the court in Highbury with his hands cuffed behind his back and escorted by four police officers. He is also charged with assaulting a police officer and was remanded in custody ahead of another court appearance set for tomorrow.
UNITED STATES
Firm tries to smuggle fossil
Federal prosecutors say a 65-million-year-old dinosaur skull was smuggled into the US by a French company that tried to pass the fossil off as a cheap replica. Prosecutors say the skull of the Alioramus dinosaur arrived in New York in January with paperwork saying it was a cast worth about US$3,400. However, Customs and Border Protection officials and Homeland Security investigators say the company later admitted it was a genuine fossil from Mongolia worth at least US$250,000. The dinosaur is a relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex. The company, Geofossiles, on Friday denied the fossil was smuggled.
UNITED STATES
Hawaii lava flow slows
Residents in a sparsely populated neighborhood near Hawaii’s active volcano are still on alert while officials say a dangerous lava flow has slowed its advance. The Hawaii Civil Defense Agency said on Saturday that an inspection made by helicopter of the area shows the lava had flowed about 50m since Friday. The agency reported the flow advanced about 150m between Thursday and Friday. The flow was moving at almost 300m a day earlier in the week. Officials said no residents have been asked to evacuate and that the flow does not pose an immediate threat.
UNITED STATES
Wildfires rage on
An evacuation order for 300 homes near Yosemite National Park remained in effect on Saturday as firefighters battled a wildfire scorching about 120 hectares in central California. The fire broke out on Friday afternoon. Later on Friday a second blaze broke out 24km to the south in the community of Oakhurst. Nearly 300 alert calls telling residents to evacuate were sent out, the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Department said, but they were canceled when the blaze’s progress was stopped at 2 hectares. Meanwhile in far northern California, a blaze that broke out nearly four weeks ago grew to nearly 337km2.
BRAZIL
Former leader eyes return
President Dilma Rousseff, chasing re-election on Oct. 5, is keeping her Workers Party seat warm for former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to return in 2018, the party chairman said on Saturday at a meeting. Rousseff had been expected to triumph in this year’s poll. However, recent weeks have seen her stunningly overtaken by former minister of the environment Marina Silva, standing on the Socialist ticket. Veja magazine reported on its Web site that Sao Paulo regional party head Emidio de Souza had told the meeting: “The shortest and best way for Lula to return as president is for Dilma to be re-elected.”
UNITED STATES
Protection system panned
The UN Appeals Tribunal in New York City has overturned a ruling in favor of a whistleblower who accused senior colleagues of retaliating after he alleged corruption in the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. James Wasserstrom was the lead anti-corruption officer at the Kosovo Mission in 2007. He says the decision issued last weekend demonstrates that neither UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nor the Ethics Office have “a credible interest beyond words in protecting the brave individuals who come forward after witnessing wrongdoing.” The organization’s Staff Union in Geneva said the tribunal’s 2-1 decision exposes the shortcomings of the UN’s whistleblower protection system.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the