■ AUSTRALIA
Court pardons hanged man
Eighty-six years after he was hanged for raping and strangling a schoolgirl, Australian saloon owner Colin Campbell Ross was yesterday granted a posthumous pardon by the government. Ross was 28 when he was executed in Victoria in 1922 for the murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke. He went to the gallows protesting his innocence. The pardon was granted after testing revealed that hairs found on a blanket at Ross’s house, key to his conviction, could not have come from the girl. Ross’s descendants said they were pleased with the pardon, which followed an inquiry by judges that found there had been a miscarriage of justice.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Police bust poachers
Officers arrested 65 people in coordinated raids in four towns yesterday as they busted an abalone poaching ring after a 12-month undercover operation. The Ministry of Fisheries said an undercover officer who infiltrated the gang monitored the sale of more than nine tonnes of abalone, known as paua. The commercial catch of paua, which is the country’s fifth most valuable seafood export, is strictly controlled and private divers are allowed to take only 10 a day. The ministry said the paua was sold to gangs and most was illegally exported, particularly to Hong Kong and Taiwan where it fetches up to NZ$1,000 (US$790) a kilogram. A total of 72 arrested men face nearly 300 charges, which carry heavy fines and five-year prison sentences.
■ INDONESIA
Ex-leader seeks 'boyfriend'
Former president Megawati Sukarnoputri said yesterday she is looking for a “cool boyfriend” as her running mate in her comeback bid for the presidency next year, a report said. “As a presidential candidate I’ve been asked who I’m going to team up with. I say it’s hard to look for the most appropriate candidate,” Sukarnoputri said. “I’m a woman so I want a cool boyfriend. So I’ll wait first and look for the appropriate person. If the guy is ugly I don’t want him.” Megawati was president from 2001 to 2004 when she lost to former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the country’s first direct presidential vote. Yudhoyono used his honeyed voice and penchant for penning lilting love songs to win support from housewives in the 2004 poll.
■ JAPAN
Sapporo plans 'space beer'
A brewery said yesterday it was planning the first “space beer,” using offspring of barley once stored at the International Space Station. Japanese brewery Sapporo Holdings said it would make beer using the third generation of barley grains that had spent five months on the International Space Station in 2006. It has enough space grain to produce about 100 bottles of beer but has no immediate plan to make it a commercial venture, Sapporo officials said.
■ THAILAND
Radical monks join protest
A radical sect of Buddhist monks yesterday joined an anti-government protest, camping out in Bangkok’s historic district in a scene reminiscent of demonstrations that led to a coup two years ago. Hundreds of members of the so-called “Dharma Army” set up camps along with protesters who began a demonstration late on Sunday, calling on Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to drop his plans to amend a military-backed Constitution. The 10,000 members of the Santi Asoke sect live in self-sufficient communes based on strict monastic discipline, abstaining from sex and alcohol and eating just one vegetarian meal a day.
■ ITALY
Drugged tourist killed
Railway police say a US tourist was hit and killed by a train at a Rome station as he was walking on the tracks in a daze after being drugged and robbed. Police official Giovanni Piccolantonio said on Monday that 74-year-old Frank Phel from California died early on Friday at the suburban Tiburtina station. Piccolantonio said Phel and his wife drank drugged cappuccinos offered by a man who later robbed them and left them wandering around the station in a confused state. Phel ended up on the tracks by accident. The suspected robber was arrested on Saturday near the station.
■ GUINEA
Soldiers seize general
Soldiers in Conakry fired into the air and seized the deputy army chief in a mutiny over pay on Monday, stoking tensions in a week-old political crisis in the world’s top bauxite exporter. The mutiny in the West African state’s biggest army base increased fears of unrest following President Lansana Conte’s surprise sacking of a consensus prime minister last week, which has infuriated opposition unions and political parties. The latest mutiny broke out on Monday at the Alpha Yaya Diallo base, where the country’s elite commando and ranger units are housed. There was no immediate report of casualties and authorities were negotiating with the protesting troops.
■ CZECH REPUBLIC
Site found for WWII soldiers
A final resting place for around 4,000 German soldiers who died on Czech soil during World War II was agreed on Monday, ending a drawn-out and embarrassing search for a burial place. Germany’s war graves authority signed an agreement for the soldiers’ remains, until now kept in storage, to be buried at a specially arranged graveyard in the western Czech town of Cheb, town spokesman Tomas Ivanic said. Most of the remains were discovered during the previous 10 years at sites across the Czech Republic, sometimes in mass graves, the German war graves authority said.
■ ISRAEL
Man says gave Olmert cash
A US businessman at the center of a bribery case against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday testified that he gave the Israeli leader cash in envelopes but without expecting any favors in return. “I didn’t expect anything from the prime minister, and I didn’t receive anything,” Morris Talansky was quoted by Israeli reporters as telling the Jerusalem District Court, which limited the number of journalists allowed to attend the session. Talansky said he handed over sums, ranging from US$5,000 to US$15,000 at a time, in Israel or during visits Olmert made to New York before becoming prime minister, journalists said.
■ TANZANIA
Singer linked to massacre
Prosecutors on Monday demanded life imprisonment for Rwandan singer Simon Bikindi, accused of inciting mass murder through song during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Bikindi, a 54-year-old member of the Hutu ethnic group and a singing star in Rwanda, is on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. He has pleaded not guilty to six counts of genocide and related charges including complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, murder and persecution. He was famous, powerful and a major force mobilizing the Hutu ethnic group against the Tutsi minority, prosecutor William Egbe said.
■ PERU
Former general testifies
The former general who revealed the existence of a military death squad testified on Monday that he is convinced former president Alberto Fujimori was behind two massacres, but acknowledged he has no direct evidence. General Rodolfo Robles is a key witness in the five-month-old trial of Fujimori, who faces charges of homicide, kidnapping and causing grave injuries due to attacks in 1990 and 1991 in which the Colina death squad killed 25 people. Robles was the third-ranking officer in the military when he revealed the existence of the death squad within the armed forces in 1993. He then sought protection at the US embassy and later asylum in Argentina.
■ MEXICO
Poor to receive subsidies
President Felipe Calderon said on Monday the government would give small monthly cash subsidies to 26 million poor — about a quarter of the population — to compensate for rising food prices. The cash payments of about 120 pesos (US$11.55) per month are aimed at offsetting price increases caused by rising demand in India and China, higher oil prices and the use of grain to produce biofuels such as ethanol, Calderon said in a nationally televised speech. The subsidy program is expected to cost about US$433 million, he said. The government also will use record-high oil profits to help maintain below-market prices for gasoline, diesel and natural gas, Calderon said.
■ MEXICO
Gang advertises targets
A drug gang has pinned up hit lists across a northern city that names police officers it wants to murder, law authorities said on Monday. Police said they found three banners with the names of 21 state police officers hung on road bridges on Sunday in Chihuahua city, the capital of Chihuahua State, near Texas. The banners displayed the names of the police in black ink and were signed by the Gente Nueva (New People) gang, a break-away group from the powerful Gulf cartel from the east, a police spokesman said.
■ CHILE
Former brass, spooks held
About 100 former soldiers and secret police from Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship were ordered detained on Monday in the biggest single mass arrest for abuses during the period, judicial sources said. Investigating judge Victor Montiglio ordered the detentions in a probe into the kidnapping and killing of 42 people during “Operation Colombo” early in the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship, during which 119 Pinochet opponents, many of them leftists, died. Some of those held worked for Pinochet’s infamous DINA intelligence service, which ran torture centers where hundreds of people were either killed or kidnapped without a trace during one of the darkest periods of contemporary Latin American history.
■ CANADA
Fate of stolen art unknown
It is not known if thieves who raided a museum plan to sell the precious art they stole or simply want to melt the jewelry down for its gold, police said on Monday. The thieves who forced their way into the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, British Columbia, over the weekend made off with 12 pieces of jewelry crafted by famed Haida artist Bill Reid, nearly all of which were made from gold. The thieves also stole three gold Mexican necklaces, prompting fears from museum officials and Reid’s widow that the art was destined to be melted down for its precious metal rather than sold to collectors.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
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