AUSTRALIA
Backpacker killer dies
Ivan Milat, whose grisly serial killings of seven German, British and Australian backpackers horrified Australia in the early 1990s, died in a Sydney prison yesterday, ending hopes of a deathbed confession to more unsolved slayings. He was 74. The road worker had been in custody since 1994 and was diagnosed in May with terminal esophageal and stomach cancer. Milat died in the medical wing of Long Bay Prison, New South Wales state Corrective Services said. He was convicted of murder in the deaths of three German, two British, and two Australian backpackers after giving them rides while they were hitchhiking. The serial killings came to light when the mutilated corpses were found in a forest near Sydney in 1992 and 1993.
INDONESIA
Three killed in Papua
Three people have been killed in Papua region, with police saying that they were civilians, while a rebel group that took responsibility said they were undercover intelligence officers. The clash came as President Joko Widodo was to visit the region — wracked by a decades-old independence insurgency — after months of mass demonstrations and deadly unrest. Police said that on Friday rebels killed three motorbike taxi drivers in Intan Jaya, a central region in the nation’s easternmost territory. “Two of them were shot, while the other one was stabbed to death,” Papua police spokesman Ahmad Mustofa Kamal told reporters.
RUSSIA
US’ Syria action criticized
Moscow on Saturday criticized the US’ decision to send armored vehicles and combat troops into eastern Syria to protect oil fields. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that “what Washington is doing now, the seizure and control of oil fields in eastern Syria under its armed control, is, quite simply, international state banditry.” He added: “All hydrocarbon deposits and other minerals located on the territory of Syria do not belong to the IS [Islamic State] terrorists, and even less to the ‘American defenders from IS terrorists,’ but exclusively to the Syrian Arab Republic. The real cause of this illegal action by the United States in Syria lies far from the ideals that Washington has proclaimed and from the slogans of fighting terrorism.”
INDIA
Ayodhya sets lamp record
The city of Ayodhya has set a Guinness world record by illuminating hundreds of thousands of earthen lamps as part of an annual Hindu festival. Representatives from Guinness World Records on Saturday handed the certificate to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath after witnessing the lighting of 409,000 oil lamps on the banks of the Sarayu.
UNITED STATES
Cobain cardigan sold
A quarter-century after grunge’s enigmatic rhapsodist took his own life, Kurt Cobain’s iconic cigarette-singed cardigan worn during Nirvana’s 1993 “Unplugged” performance has sold for US$334,000. The tattered, olive-green, Manhattan-brand, button-up sweater, which has never been washed since Cobain wore it, came with dark stains and a burn hole. The seller, Garrett Kletjian, owner of Forty7 Motorsports, bought it four years ago for US$137,500. “This cardigan, it’s the holy grail of any article of clothing that he ever wore,” said Darren Julien, chief executive officer and president of Julien’s Auctions. “Kurt created the grunge look; he didn’t wear show clothes,” Julien told reporters in New York.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
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
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion