AUSTRALIA
Drugs in chili jars seized
Four men have been arrested after police seized 400kg of crystal meth, or “ice,” worth an estimated A$300 million (US$207 million) concealed in bottles of hot chili sauce from the US. A search of an air cargo consignment that had arrived at a Sydney freight depot from the US on Oct. 15 found 768 bottles of chili sauce, “with presumptive testing returning a positive indicator for methylamphetamine,” New South Wales State Police said in a statement yesterday. Police arrested a 36-year old on Sunday and made two more arrests on Monday in the parking lot of a hotel in Sydney’s central business district.
INDIA
FB a ‘megaphone for hate’
Facebook (FB) is failing to rein in a “tsunami” of hate posts inflaming ethnic tensions in Assam State, with content about “criminals,” “rapists,” “terrorists” and “dogs” shared nearly 100,000 times, campaign group Avaaz said on Wednesday. The dehumanizing language — often targeting Bengali Muslims — was similar to that used on Facebook about Myanmar’s Rohingya before an army crackdown and ethnic violence forced 700,000 Rohingya to flee in 2017 to Bangladesh, Avaaz said. “Facebook is being used as a megaphone for hate, pointed directly at vulnerable minorities in Assam, many of whom could be made stateless within months,” Avaaz campaigner Alaphia Zoyab said.
PHILIPPINES
Third quake in weeks hits
A powerful earthquake struck the south yesterday, killing at least four people and sparking searches of damaged buildings that had already been rattled by two previous deadly tremors in recent weeks. The magnitude 6.5 quake hit the island of Mindanao, the US Geological Survey said, causing locals to run to safety in the same area where a strong tremor killed eight people on Tuesday. The powerful shaking caused serious damage to a condominium building in Davao, which was about 45km from the epicenter.
MYANMAR
Satirists get year in jail
A court on Wednesday sentenced five members of a traditional theatrical troupe to a year in prison for their gibes about the military. The members of the Peacock Generation thangyat troupe were arrested in April for performances during New Year celebrations in which they poked fun at military representatives in parliament and military involvement in business. Thangyat combines dance and music with verse that often has a satirical edge. The five were convicted under a law prohibiting the circulation of information that could endanger or demoralize members of the military. “Punishing people for performing a piece of satire speaks volumes about the dire state of freedom of expression in Myanmar,” Joanne Mariner of Amnesty International said.
MONGOLIA
Police arrest 800 Chinese
Police in capital Ulan Bator have apprehended 800 Chinese and confiscated hundreds of computers and mobile phone SIM cards as part of an investigation into a cybercrime ring, local security authorities said. The arrests took place after police raided four locations on Tuesday, and followed two months of investigations, General Intelligence Agency Director Gerel Dorjpalam said at a news conference yesterday. He did not go into specific details of the offences, but said they involved illegal gambling, fraud, computer hacking, identity theft and money laundering.
SWITZERLAND
Syria charter talks begin
Russia is to underscore its role in the political future of Syria as the Moscow-backed Syrian constitutional committee on Wednesday met for the first time under UN auspices to chart a political settlement to end the eight-and-a-half-year civil war. The meeting in Geneva is being overseen by UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Syrian opposition cochair Hadi al-Bahra said: “The memory of 1 million victims must guide us out of this dark tunnel.” He added that it was “time for us to believe that victory in Syria is achieving justice and peace, not winning the war.”
FRANCE
Eel smugglers sentenced
A court on Wednesday sentenced two Chinese nationals who tried to smuggle 60kg of live baby eels in their luggage onto a flight to China. Young European eels can fetch about 5,000 euros (US$5,580) a kilogram in China. The 20-year-old woman and 44-year-old man were stopped on Monday at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport on a transit stop from the city of Toulouse in southwest France. Inside their four suitcases, officers found plastic bags with water carrying the eels. The court sentenced the pair to a 10-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 7,000 euros each. A kilogram of baby eels costs about 250 euros in the nation.
BELGIUM
12 migrants found in truck
Police on Wednesday found 12 migrants alive in a refrigerated truck at a motorway parking area in the north after the driver alerted the authorities, a federal police spokeswoman said. The driver, who was transporting fruit and vegetables, called police after he found 12 adult men — 11 Syrians and one Sudanese — in the truck on Wednesday morning after a stop for the night. Police took them to the immigration office in the city of Antwerp. All were in good health, police said.
FRANCE
Climate flooding risk high
Coastal areas currently home to 300 million people would be vulnerable by 2050 to flooding made worse by climate change, no matter how aggressively humanity curbs carbon emissions, scientists said. Using a form of artificial intelligence known as neural networks, new research reported in the journal Nature Communications corrects ground elevation data that has up to now vastly underestimated the extent to which coastal zones are subject to flooding during high tide or major storms. “Sea-level projections have not changed,” said coauthor Ben Strauss, chief scientist and CEO of Climate Central, a US-based nonprofit research group. “But when we use our new elevation data, we find far more people living in vulnerable areas than we previously understood.”
UNITED STATES
Military dog to meet Trump
The military working dog who was part of the raid that ended in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is to get a hero’s welcome from the president at the White House. President Donald Trump, who earlier had said the dog’s name was classified, revealed in a Twitter post that the Belgian Malinois is called “Conan.” The dog “will be leaving the Middle East for the White House sometime next week,” Trump said in the Twitter post that showed a falsified photograph of the president giving the animal a medal. Conan, who was hurt in the raid, has returned to active duty, the Pentagon said earlier this week.
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
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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