AUSTRALIA
Chef cooked lover: report
Police yesterday said they had begun a murder probe after they found human remains in an apartment, but refused to confirm reports that body parts were cooking on the stove. Authorities went to the home in Brisbane on Saturday night after neighbors reported a terrible smell. “Upon attendance there, we’ve had cause to commence an investigation in relation to a murder-suicide,” Detective Inspector Tom Armitt said. Police confirmed that human remains were found inside the apartment in Teneriffe and that a man’s body was found in a nearby street. Queensland’s Courier-Mail said the man was a 28-year-old chef who had worked on cruise ships and had recently moved into the apartment with his Indonesian girlfriend. Police would not comment on the paper’s report that the man slit his throat, or that they found parts of the woman’s body cooking in a pot on the stove.
MALAYSIA
Navy looks for lost gunboat
The navy has launched a search for seven crew members after their gunboat went missing off Borneo in rough seas, a top naval official said yesterday. The incident happened after the vessel set out for a routine sea patrol in the South China Sea on Sunday near Mengalum Island off eastern Sabah State on Borneo. “Yes, it is true. Please pray for their safety,” navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar said on Twitter when asked about the boat. The navy said the craft was on its way to the Layang Layang atoll, part of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), claimed by Taiwan, Malaysia, China, Brunei and the Philippines. Abdul Aziz said a search has been launched, but bad weather was hampering it.
AUSTRALIA
New MH370 search begins
The next phase in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 began yesterday, with a new vessel resuming the underwater hunt, said the Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the probe. Australia has been spearheading the hunt for the plane, which is believed to have come down in the ocean after disappearing on March 8 with 239 people onboard. Despite huge air and sea searches, no sign of the Boeing 777-200 has been found. In the latest phase, the Malaysia-contracted GO Phoenix will send sophisticated sonar systems up to 6,000m below sea level to search the ocean floor.
THAILAND
King’s gall bladder removed
King Bhumibol Adulyadej has had his gall bladder removed, the palace said yesterday, two days after the revered 86-year-old monarch was rushed to hospital sparking fears for his health. The world’s longest-serving monarch was driven from his coastal palace to Bangkok’s Siriraj hospital with a fever on Friday evening. Tests over the weekend found he had a swollen gall bladder, prompting the operation to remove it late on Sunday, the Royal Household Bureau said in a statement. Doctors were “satisfied” with the outcome of the surgery and the king’s condition was “improving” yesterday, the statement said.
JAPAN
Teen killer’s dad hangs self
The father of a 16-year-old schoolgirl who confessed to decapitating a classmate has killed himself, reports said yesterday. The 53-year-old, whose name was withheld, was found hanged in his Sasebo home on Sunday, Jiji Press said. His daughter was arrested in July on suspicion of murdering her 15-year-old classmate after police discovered a dismembered body in her home. “My daughter’s act can never be forgiven for any reason or cause,” her father had said in August.
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