UNITED STATES
Monkey denied copyright
An Indonesian monkey that achieved Internet celebrity with a grinning selfie cannot own the photograph’s copyright, a federal judge said this week. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had argued in District Court in San Francisco that the rights to the photograph, which was snapped using a photographer’s unattended camera, rightfully belonged to the monkey, a crested macaque, as it had pushed the shutter button. In a tentative opinion on Wednesday, Judge William Orrick disagreed. “While Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the copyright act,” he said. The images were taken during a trip by British photographer David Slater in 2011. He put his camera on a tripod amid a troop of macaques, setting it so it would automatically focus and wind, and waited for the animals to get curious. The images were widely shared online, including without permission by Wikipedia. When Slater asked the Web site to remove the image, it refused under much the same rationale as PETA: Slater did not press the shutter release, so the image was not his. The photographer’s lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that a monkey lacks legal standing. Its motion, at times, struck a mocking tone. “A monkey, an animal-rights organization and a primatologist walk into federal court to sue for infringement of the monkey’s claimed copyright. What seems like the setup for a punch line is really happening,” it said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Royals to visit Bhutan
Kensington Palace says the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will visit Bhutan this spring, the royal couple’s first visit to the landlocked Himalayan kingdom. The palace said on Friday that Prince William and his wife, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, will be making the visit at the request of the Bhutanese government. The royals are also to visit India on the trip. Prince William’s father, Prince Charles, visited Bhutan 1998. Prince Andrew visited in 2010. Meanwhile, Prince Harry is also to visit south-central Asia in the spring, taking on an official visit to Nepal.
CROATIA
Serbian commander charged
Prosecutors on Friday charged a former Serbian paramilitary commander, extradited from Australia last year, with the torture and murder of civilians and prisoners of war during the nation’s 1990s conflict. Dragan Vasiljkovic, nicknamed “Captain Dragan,” was indicted for the detention and torture of civilians and police in the ethnic Serb rebel stronghold of Knin, the prosecutors said. As the commander of a Serb paramilitary unit he did “nothing to prevent and punish such crimes,” which occurred in 1991, and personally took part in them, a prosecutor’s statement said.
SRI LANKA
Giant sapphire to be sold
A gem merchant claiming to have the world’s biggest star-blue sapphire is ready to sell the precious stone, which he says is worth at least US$300 million. The Gemological Institute of Colombo certified the gem as weighing 1404.49 carats. The institute’s chief gemologist Ashan Amarasinghe says that according to available data, the stone could be the world’s biggest blue-star sapphire. The oval-shaped gem is as large as a man’s palm. It was mined from a pit near the central town of Ratnapura, which is known as the nation’s “gem city.” The present owner bought the sapphire in September last year.
MALI
Woman kidnapped again
A Swiss woman who had been briefly abducted in 2012 was kidnapped again by suspected extremists who scaled the walls of her home in northern Mali in the middle of the night, authorities said on Friday. Stockly, a Christian, remained in Timbuktu even after it fell to al-Qaeda-linked extremists in 2012. She was abducted that April and ended up in the hands of extremist group Ansar Dine. She was freed about 10 days later after a mediation effort led by neighboring Burkina Faso, and ultimately returned to Timbuktu.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Hotel fire selfie duo let go
Authorities said they have released two young men who were detained over their selfie in front of a New Year’s Eve hotel fire. The Emirates’ state-run WAM news agency reported the news late on Friday, citing Dubai Attorney General Essam al-Humaidan. He said the two unidentified men were released after investigators found “no evidence of criminal intent.” The 63-story Address Downtown luxury hotel caught fire just before a fireworks display at the nearby Burj Khalifa. The hotel burned through the fireworks display and into the new year.
SRI LANKA
Sirisena pardons insurgent
The president has pardoned a former Tamil Tiger insurgent accused of conspiring to kill him 10 years ago. President Maithripala Sirisena on Friday set free Sivaraja Jenivan, which was the first anniversary of Sirisena being elected to office. Attorney U.R. de Silva said Jenivan was arrested in 2005 inside a passenger bus leaving Sirisena’s hometown, Polonnaruwa. He was convicted last year of being an accomplice to a Tamil Tiger rebel who was planning to assassinate Sirisena.
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
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
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