AUSTRALIA
No sign of missing plane
The intensive underwater hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has so far turned up just a few shipping containers, but no sign of the jet, the head of the agency leading the search said yesterday. Australian Transport Safety Bureau Commissioner Martin Dolan said that while several manmade items have been detected during a sonar search, they had found nothing resembling debris from the jet that vanished a year ago on Sunday carrying 239 people en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Authorities have narrowed the search area to a vast 60,000km2 zone — and they have so far scoured around 40 percent of it, Dolan said.
JAPAN
Abe admits to donations
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday said he received donations from firms that got government subsidies, the first time he himself has faced questions about potentially improper donations, after having lost three Cabinet members to scandals. Kyodo news agency and the Sankei Shimbun said a branch of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in his home constituency received a total of ¥620,000 (US$5,165) from chemical companies that got government subsidies in 2012 and 2013. Donations by firms within a year of awards of government subsidies are illegal, but Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi told a parliamentary panel there was no legal problem if the politician was unaware of the subsidies at the time.
UNITED STATES
Terror case nears end
A Pakistani man who is acting as his own attorney at a terror trial told a federal court jury in closing arguments on Monday that he was busy chasing women on the Internet at the time of his arrest — not plotting death and destruction at a British shopping mall. “Abid is innocent,” said Abid Naseer, referring to himself in the third person. In her closing argument, Assistant US Attorney Zainab Ahmed told the jurors in New York City that the arrests of Naseer and other members of an alleged terror cell in Manchester, England, in 2009 averted mass murder there. Washington alleges Naseer had received bomb-making instruction in Pakistan in 2008 and conspired to provide material support to al-Qaeda.
NIGERIA
Video hints at beheadings
Boko Haram released a video purporting to show it beheading two men, its first online posting using advanced graphics and editing techniques reminiscent of footage from the Islamic State. The film, released on Monday, shows militants standing behind the two men who are on their knees, their hands tied behind their backs, with a man armed with a knife standing over them. The film moves to another scene showing their decapitated bodies. It was not possible to confirm the film’s authenticity or date.
PAKISTAN
Vaccines go to waste
Two health officials have been suspended after US$3.7 million worth of pentavalent vaccines donated by UNICEF were wasted. National Health Services Regulation and Coordination Minister Saira Afzal Tarar yesterday said the vaccines — which protect against five diseases with a single shot — spoiled because they were not stored at the proper temperature due to “departmental conflicts... It appears that one person was switching off the generator when it was turned on apparently to save fuel.” Meanwhile, police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday arrested more than 450 parents for refusing to vaccinate their children against polio.
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,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.