INDONESIA
Would-be bomber sentenced
Would-be suicide bomber Dian Yulia Novi was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for plotting to bomb a guard-changing ceremony at Indonesia’s presidential palace in Jakarta, her lawyer said yesterday. The lawyer, Kamsi, said that her 28-year-old client will give birth within days and does not plan to appeal. Novi was among four suspected militants, that included her husband, Solihin, arrested In December last year one day before the planned attack. Prosecutors had sought a 10-year prison term for Novi, a former migrant worker in Singapore and Taiwan. In a separate trial at the same court, the judges sentenced a second woman, Tutin, to three-and-a-half years in prison for hiding information about the plot from authorities. Prosecutors have requested 15 years in prison for Solihin and eight years for a fourth suspected militant whose verdicts are expected next month.
CHINA
Landslide engulfs township
A landslide yesterday caused part of a mountain to collapse on to a remote township in Guizhou Province, state media said, killing at least two people, with 25 missing. The landslide sent rubble sweeping over 34 homes in Zhangjiawan township in the city of Bijie. Video footage broadcast by media outlets showed large blocks of a mountain collapsing from a great height, leaving a dense plume of grey smoke and a long trail of rubble. The footage also showed rescue workers pulling survivors from collapsed homes in the aftermath, with shocked residents surveying the scene. Rescue workers had pulled out four people alive from the rubble by the afternoon, Xinhua news agency said.
SINGAPORE
All ‘McCain’ bodies found
Divers have recovered the remains of all 10 US sailors who went missing after their warship collided with tanker on Monday last week, the US Navy said yesterday. Eight sailors were retrieved by divers searching flooded compartments of the USS John S. McCain, it said. The discovery of two bodies was announced last week.
NEW ZEALAND
Family rescued from reef
The captain of a sailboat that rescued a British family of four from a remote reef in the South Pacific Ocean yesterday said that the family was resting and recovering from their overnight ordeal. Martin Vogel said the family’s catamaran was a wreck after it ran aground in heavy seas at about 2:30am on Beveridge Reef. Vogel said he was able to communicate by radio with the family overnight and rescue the boy and girl, aged about 13 and 11, and the adults using a life raft when daylight broke a few hours later. “They were pretty distressed, but they’re all sleeping now,” Vogel said from a satellite phone aboard the Dona Catharina.
SOUTH KOREA
Rumor brings sentence
A 73-year-old man has been fined for spreading rumors online that the 94-year-old widow of former president Kim Dae-Jung was to marry US hip-hop legend Dr Dre, reports said yesterday. The 52-year-old founder of Death Row Records and Lee Hee-ho appear to be an unlikely couple, but were linked by an unidentified man who posted on his blog in January that Lee was to marry the rapper to “launder the late president Kim’s slush funds.” The Seoul Western District Court on Friday dismissed the rumor as “groundless” and fined the man 5 million won (US$4,400) for defamation. “The defendant violated the honor of the deceased and the bereaved,” the ruling said.
FRANCE
Macron’s popularity tumbles
Most voters are now dissatisfied with Emmanuel Macron’s performance, a poll showed on Sunday, a dramatic decline for a president who basked in a landslide election victory less than four months ago. The poll, conducted by Ifop for newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, showed Macron’s “dissatisfaction rating” rising to 57 percent, from 43 percent last month. Forty percent expressed satisfaction with the centrist leader — down 14 points from last month. Government spokesman Christophe Castaner said the ruling party was going through a tricky time, but added that displeasing some people was a price worth paying if the government wanted to push through reforms. The Ifop poll showed the cumulative drop in Macron’s popularity ratings since May was bigger than that of previous Socialist president Francois Hollande over the same period.
LEBANON
Remains of soldiers found
The remains of eight soldiers kidnapped by the Islamic State group three years ago were located on Sunday, a senior official said, in a negotiated deal that followed a military offensive to drive the militants out of the border area with Syria. General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim said six bodies buried near the border with Syria were removed. He said the operation continued to pull out two more bodies, but the fate of a ninth soldier remained unknown. The soldiers’ remains were transported later on Sunday to Beirut’s military hospital for DNA tests to determine their identities.
AUSTRIA
Five climbers killed
Five climbers were killed and one seriously injured on Sunday after a mountain accident in Salzburg state, the Austrian Press Agency reported. The tragedy involved a group of climbers in the so-called Mannlkarscharte, a gap in the mountains southwest of Salzburg at about 3,000m above sea level. One climber slipped on an icy area, causing the rest of the roped group to fall 200m into a glacier crevasse. The accident was observed by another group of climbers. The survivor is in critical but stable condition in a Salzburg hospital.
GERMANY
Gun seller on trial
A man accused of selling a pistol to a teenager who killed nine people and then himself in a shooting rampage in Munich last year has gone on trial. The defendant, identified only as Philipp K. in line with the nation’s privacy rules, is charged in the trial that opened yesterday with unauthorized trading in weapons and ammunition. He also faces nine counts of causing death by negligence and five of causing injury by negligence. Prosecutors said he sold the 18-year-old Munich shooter the Glock 17 pistol over the darknet, an area of the Web accessible only by using special software, in May last year.
UNITED STATES
Horror-movie director dies
Tobe Hooper, the horror-movie pioneer whose low-budget sensation The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took a buzz saw to audiences with its brutally frightful vision, has died. He was 74. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office on Sunday said Hooper died on Saturday in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles. It was reported as a natural death. Hooper also directed 1982’s Poltergeist from a script by Steven Spielberg, and helmed the well-regarded 1979 miniseries Salem’s Lot, from Stephen King’s novel. Hooper also directed a more comic sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1986.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema