■ UNITED STATES
Man sentenced for spying
The brother of a jailed Chinese-American engineer has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his role in a family conspiracy to export defense technology to China. US District Court Judge Cormac Carney handed down the sentence on Monday in Santa Ana, California. Tai Mak’s brother, 67-year-old Chi Mak, was sentenced to 24 years in prison last month. Tai Mak and his wife were arrested by FBI agents at Los Angeles International Airport in 2005 as they were heading to China with encrypted CDs that contained sensitive documents on naval technologies. Prosecutors say Chi Mak stole the information from his employer, defense contractor Power Paragon.
■ HONG KONG
‘Kitty Hawk’ to make stop
The USS Kitty Hawk battle carrier group will soon make its first stop in the region since it was denied access by Beijing over the Thanksgiving holiday, a US official said yesterday. “The Kitty Hawk will stop in Hong Kong over the next few days,” US consulate spokesman Dale Kreisher said. Around 7,000 sailors from the carrier and up to six support ships will visit Hong Kong during the stay. China barred the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying ships in November last year, leaving thousands of servicemen unable to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with relatives who had come to join them. The move caused a diplomatic spat between the two countries.
■ AUSTRALIA
Toxic spiders infest hospital
A tiny hospital is closing temporarily because of an infestation of poisonous spiders. The Baralaba Multi Purpose Health Service will close for 24 hours starting today so officials can fumigate the building to get rid of redback spiders that have been found in large numbers in the main part of the hospital. Three or four patients will need to be moved to another hospital while the building is closed, Queensland state health officials said. The statement said warm weather had caused more redback spider eggs to hatch than usual.
■ CHINA
Impotence drug kills two
Two men have died and 48 have fallen sick after taking unregistered drugs claiming to cure impotence over the last six months, health officials said yesterday. The men, aged between 44 and 86, all became ill with low blood sugar after taking pills said to treat erectile dysfunction. All sought help from a hospital, where two died. A Department of Health spokesperson said some of the men admitted to taking pills claiming to treat erectile dysfunction that they had bought in Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
■ CHINA
Coal reserves at 12 days
The country only has enough coal for 12 days of consumption, three days less than a month ago, state media reported yesterday, sounding the alarm bells over the country’s most important source of energy. In certain areas, such as Hebei Province, reserves are down to less than a week, Xinhua news agency said, citing the China Electricity Regulatory Commission. Since last month, coal reserves have slumped by 12 percent to 46.7 million tonnes, the commission said. Reasons for the shortage were “multi-dimensional,” the commission was quoted as saying. The country counts on coal for about 70 percent of its energy, a proportion that has stayed almost unchanged for nearly three decades.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
US woman awarded medal
Linda Biehl, of Newport Beach, California, was awarded one of the country’s highest state honors on Tuesday for forgiving the men who stoned her daughter to death in the dying days of apartheid. Biehl was among some three dozen South Africans and others President Thabo Mbeki awarded state honors at a ceremony in Pretoria. Biehl and her husband Peter (who died in 2002) publicly forgave the killers of their daughter Amy Biehl. The 26-year-old Fulbright scholar died on Aug. 25, 1993, after driving into a township outside Cape Town to drop off three black friends. She was attacked by a mob, who chased, stoned and stabbed her to death as she begged for mercy. Four black youths convicted of the crime were released from prison in 1998 after they were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Biehls later hired two of the men to work in a charity they set up.
■ NETHERLANDS
Convictions overturned
A UN appeals panel overturned the murder conviction and reduced the sentence on Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993. Enver Hadzihasanovic was convicted in March 2006 of one count of murder for failing to prevent the mujahidin volunteers from killing two prisoners, and refusing to punish them afterward. The UN court’s appeals chamber ruled that the foreigners were beyond the control of Hadzihasanovic’s 3rd Corps of the regular Bosnian Muslim army. It also overturned part of his conviction for failing to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of prisoners held at makeshift camps. Hadzihasanovic’s deputy, Amir Kubura, had one conviction overturned for failing to prevent the mujahidin from plundering.
■ RUSSIA
Space trio were ‘very lucky’
The three astronauts who returned to Earth this week were lucky to survive a dangerous re-entry, Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a source close to an investigation into the incident. “The fact that the crew members remained unharmed, in one piece, was very lucky. Everything could have ended much worse,” the source was quoted as saying. The source said the Soyuz landing capsule was facing the wrong direction when it entered the atmosphere, depriving it of the protection of its heat-resistant shield. “If the hatch had been burnt through and the nearby... parachute damaged, the crew might not have survived,” the source was quoted as saying.
■ NIGERIA
Ex-president faces probe
Parliament launched an investigation on Tuesday into former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s management of the oil and gas industry, the latest probe into his eight-year tenure. The House of Representatives said it would scrutinize operations of the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp and the Department of Petroleum Resources from 1999 to last year. A similar probe into the power sector under Obasanjo’s tenure is already under way.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Elvis made secret trip
Elvis Presley secretly visited London in 1958, a theater producer accidently revealed in a radio interview, putting an end to the belief that the only time he was in the country was a transit stop in Scotland in 1960. Bill Kenwright said Presley, then 23, managed to go sightseeing in London with Cockney singer Tommy Steele. Steele told reporters he would not discuss the trip.
■ UNITED STATES
Medalist’s drink drugged
A mysterious substance that Russian Olympic medalist Oksana Grishuk, 36, found in her drink during a business meeting in California tested positive for the date rape drug GHB, police said on Tuesday. The skater, who won Olympic gold for ice-dancing in 1994 and 1998 while performing under the name Pasha Grishuk, discovered what looked to be a partially dissolved pill in her glass of wine on April 12. “She was attending a business meeting with at least one other man” at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, 97km south of Los Angeles, an Orange County sheriff spokesman said. “She started feeling weird and sick and, when she went to drink from her wine glass, she noticed a partially dissolved pill,” he said. “She poured the rest of the drink out of the glass, took the pill out and called the police.”
■ UNITED STATES
‘Beautiful Bulldog’ crowned
Buddy is a sleeping beauty. Reddish brown, he’s usually asleep on his back, snoring loudly with his large tongue lolling out. He was wide-awake on Monday, though, when he was crowned winner of a “Beautiful Bulldog” contest in Des Moines, Iowa. “He doesn’t have a good stamina to him ... he’s been laying around all winter,” said George DuBois from Ankeny, Iowa, who owns Buddy with his wife, Cindy. “Just in the last 10, 15 days we’ve done some walking. We’ve been getting in shape for this.” The DuBois’ three-year-old dog was among 50 bulldogs from mostly midwestern states who came to compete. The contest honors Drake University’s mascot.
■ UNITED STATES
Alligator found in kitchen
Authorities say an Oldsmar, Florida, woman found a 2.4m alligator prowling in her kitchen late on Monday night. Sandra Frosti, 69, says the alligator must have pushed through the screen door on the back porch and then walked through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. The alligator apparently then strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen. A trapper removed the alligator.
■ MEXICO
Hitler ad ordered off the air
The country’s top electoral body ordered broadcasters to stop running a controversial TV ad on Monday that compares a firebrand leftist leading a siege of Congress to dictators Hitler and Pinochet. The TV ad, funded by a Mexican businessman angry at a blockade of Congress by opposition lawmakers trying to derail an oil reform plan, says the antics of protest leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are endangering democracy. Leftists seized Congress podiums on April 10 to block a government proposal to lower barriers to private investment in the oil sector, controlled by the state since 1938.
■ UNITED STATES
Droopy pants bill killed
A Louisiana Senate panel in Baton Rouge rejected a bill on Tuesday that would make it a crime to wear one’s pants too low. Senator Derrick Shepherd’s bill would have made it illegal to wear, in public, clothing that “intentionally exposes undergarments or intentionally exposes any portion of the pubic hair, cleft of the buttocks or genitals.” Violators would have faced a fine of up to US$175 and eight days of community service. Senator Yvonne Dorsey, a Democrat, said she disliked the look of baggy pants but added, “when we begin to take the freedom of speech away ... I think we’re doing something that’s just not right.”
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
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