NORTHERN IRELAND
UK legislator: no joint status
The party that supports Britain’s minority government dismissed the idea of giving Northern Ireland joint EU and UK status after Brexit as at best contradictory, one of its lawmakers said, adding that the idea had not been raised with the party. The plan, aimed at allowing the UK province to trade freely with both countries, is one of several being discussed in a bid to break a deadlock in Brexit talks and might not be proposed to the EU, a government official said on Friday. “These convoluted arrangements only arise because of the government’s failure to make it clear to the EU that regardless of EU negotiators’ attempts to keep us in the customs union and the single market, we are leaving,” Democratic Unionist Party Legislator Sammy Wilson said in a statement.
JAPAN
Locker baby’s mom arrested
A mother who allegedly delivered and killed her newborn baby at a Tokyo cafe before dumping the corpse in a locker was arrested yesterday, police said. Officers last month found the decomposing body of an infant, who appeared to have been choked to death, in the locker after unpleasant smells were reported there. The 25-year-old mother, Mao Togawa, was detained on suspicion of abandoning a body, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said. The suspect is likely to also later face a murder charge as she largely admitted to the allegations, local media said.
ETHIOPIA
‘Law and order restored’
Ethiopia’s Cabinet has approved a draft law aiming to lift the country’s state of emergency that was imposed in February after months of widespread anti-government protests. It would be the most significant change so far under the country’s young new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has spoken openly about the need for reforms. “The Council of Ministers ... reviewed the security situation of the country. It noted that law and order has been restored,” the prime minister’s chief of staff, Fitsum Arega, said yesterday on Twitter. The draft law is to be sent to parliament for consideration.
THAILAND
Space trip for smelly fruit
It is one small step for the nation, one giant leap for Southeast Asia’s smelliest fruit. Bangkok plans to shoot durian into orbit to test its durability in a project that could see the staple “king of fruits” consumed in zero-gravity conditions. “In the future we want astronauts to be able to eat Thai food,” a spokesperson for the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency said. “We want to see whether there are any physical changes after it returns to Earth, for example it might get smaller or cracked.” The fruit is infamous for its pungent smell. The test is to use a dried and vacuum-sealed version of the fruit, which packs much less of an odor. Liftoff is scheduled for July.
UNITED STATES
Puppy killer charged
An Idaho teacher accused of feeding a sick puppy to a snapping turtle in front of several students has been charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty. Preston Junior High School science teacher Robert Crosland was charged on Friday. He faces up to six months in jail and a US$5,000 fine if convicted. The school is in rural Preston, where the 2004 teen cult classic film Napoleon Dynamite was set. Several parents came forward to say Crosland fed the puppy to the turtle on March 7.
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