■ PAKISTAN
Fighter plane crashes
The air force said one of its fighter jets crashed on a training flight. An air force spokesman said the Chinese-made FT-7 aircraft went down because of technical problems near the eastern industrial city of Faisalabad early yesterday. He said the pilot and his trainer ejected from the plane safely. There were no reports of injuries or damage on the ground. Earlier this month, a T-37 air force jet crashed near the northwestern city of Mardan, killing the pilot.
■ BANGLADESH
Tiger beaten to death
A news report said villagers and forest guards have beaten to death a protected Royal Bengal tiger after it killed three people near the world’s largest mangrove forest in the southwest. The United News of Bangladesh agency said the tiger strayed into Kadamtala village late on Friday and killed three people. The tiger also injured a fourth person and killed five goats in the area. Villagers and officials surrounded the tiger and waited until morning to kill it. The Sundrabans mangrove forest, 176km southwest of Dhaka, is a UN-declared world heritage site and home to Royal Bengal tigers.
■ PHILIPPINES
Police injured by grenade
Four policemen have been wounded in a grenade attack in the south, police said yesterday. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday night at the municipal police station in the town of Kabansalan on Mindanao, regional police chief Jaime Caringal said. Various armed groups are known to operate in the area. Meanwhile, three people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at public market in Zamboanga City. The suspect fled the scene and the motive was not immediately known, police said.
■ JAPAN
Crew members rescued
All five crew members of a Japanese freighter were rescued early yesterday after it sank following a collision with a Hong Kong container ship off Japan’s Pacific coast, a coast guard official said. The 300-tonne freighter Takasago No. 2 collided with the Hong Kong vessel late Friday off the Izu Peninsula, some 130km southwest of Tokyo, the official said. The five Japanese, drifting in a raft, were rescued by Ji Feng’s crew three-and-a-half hours after the crash. “The crewmen were all in good health and not injured,” the official said.
■ CHINA
Couples queue to say 'I do'
More than 1,000 couples queued for hours for marriage licenses to wed on Aug. 8, the date of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, state media said yesterday. The couples crowded marriage registration offices on Friday, the Beijing Daily said, the first day that applications to get married on Aug. 8 were being accepted. The number eight is auspicious in Chinese, as it is pronounced like the word “fa,” which is part of the expression meaning “to get wealthy.” “Marriage registration offices in Beijing predict more than 9,000 couples will get married on Aug. 8 this year,” Xinhua news agency said.
■ SINGAPORE
Gurkhas injured over pay
Eight members of the elite Singapore police Nepalese Gurkha Contingent were injured in a disturbance that followed a discussion about their pay, police said in a statement late on Friday. They said the group of off-duty Gurkhas was “involved in an incident of disorderly and boisterous behavior in the compounds of their residence” after a discussion among a large number of officers over their salary scale. “No one was grievously injured and eight were treated in the camp for their injuries,” the statement said.
■ MALAYSIA
Two die after eating fish
The health department in the southern state of Johor has issued a warning against consuming puffer fish after two Malaysian women died from eating the poisonous fish, a news report said yesterday. “We seriously caution people from eating the fish, and have circulated posters and fliers warning people about eating it,” department head Mohamad Khairi Yakub said. Khairi said two women, aged 54 and 83, have died from eating the fish, which is widely sold in markets in the state. “Our officers are monitoring premises and markets in the affected areas, and we are stopping the sale of the fish anywhere it is found,” he was quoted as saying by the Star daily.
■ VIETNAM
US ship on medical mission
Doctors aboard a US Navy hospital ship that anchored in a Vietnamese harbor on Friday started treating local patients in a show of medical diplomacy with the former enemy nation. Staff from the US military, charities and partner countries were planning to treat hundreds of patients aboard and onshore during the 10-day stay of the USNS Mercy off the southern resort town of Nha Trang. The converted supertanker, painted white with large red crosses, was docked off Nha Trang near Cam Ranh Bay, which was a major US military base during the war that ended with the 1975 fall of Saigon. The USNS Mercy, designed to support troops in war and provide disaster relief, has a trauma facility, X-ray and CAT scan units, a dental surgical suite, an optometry and lens laboratory, a burn care center and a blood bank.
■ SOMALIA
Downtown fighting kills 40
More than 40 civilians have been killed in Mogadishu this week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on Friday. About 20 civilians were killed on Thursday as Ethiopian and Somali soldiers battled insurgents in Mogadishu, the agency said in a weekly report on Somalia. The abduction of a Somali staff member of CARE International last Monday has raised the number of aid workers kidnapped in Somalia to eight, the UN agency said. In a statement on Friday, CARE International said it is suspending operations in the south central Somalia region of Galgudud following the abduction.
■ FRANCE
Police teargas graduates
High school students celebrating the end of their final exams went on a rampage near the Eiffel Tower in Paris early yesterday, resulting in 15 arrests and two policemen being injured, one seriously. Thousands of young people gathered in the Champ de Mars, a grassy area next to the tower, but as their celebrations became boisterous police used tear gas to disperse them and they moved to a nearby shopping district, looting one shop and breaking windows in others. Police said a few “troublemakers” among the 5,000 young people celebrating the end of their baccalaureate exams threw bottles and 15 were arrested.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Police spot UFO: tabloid
Alien enthusiasts got a boost on Friday when Welsh police confirmed that one of their helicopter crews had spotted an “unusual aircraft” flying over Cardiff earlier this month. An investigation into the sighting had been launched, they said. The police clarification came after tabloid newspaper The Sun reported a UFO had “attacked” a police helicopter, following it for several kilometers over the Bristol Channel. The helicopter crew had described the object as “flying saucer-shaped and circled by flashing lights,” it said. That description was more dramatic than the official version, which said: “South Wales Police can confirm its air support unit sighted an unusual aircraft.”
■ IRAN
Press reports hanging
A murderer was hanged in a prison in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, a press report said yesterday. The man identified only as Farzad was sent to the gallows on Thursday after being found guilty of murdering a man and injuring another in an attempted robbery about six years ago, Etemad newspaper said. It gave no further details. The hanging brings to at least 113 the number of executions carried out in the country so far this year, according to a wire agency count. Amnesty International reported that last year the country applied the death penalty more often than any other country apart from China, executing 317 people during the year.
■ SERBIA
War criminal extradited
Authorities yesterday flew Serb Stojan Zupljanin, accused of genocide in the Bosnian War in the 1990s, to the Netherlands for handover to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Tanjug news agency said. The arrest and extradition of war crime suspects is a key requirement for the country’s further progress to EU membership. Zupljanin, 56, was arrested on June 11 in Pancevo, an industrial town near Belgrade. He was a prominent member of a group accused of carrying out the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.
■ MEXICO
Raid ends in tragedy
At least nine youths and three police were trampled to death on Friday during a police raid on a nightclub in Mexico City, security officials said. Police entered the nightclub to break up the illegal sale of alcohol to minors and a stampede ensued, Joel Ortega, a local security official, said. “Unfortunately, the person in charge of the nightclub took the microphone and announced a police operation was underway,” Ortega said. People panicked and rushed to get out, causing a stampede. Some 20 people were hospitalized. Around 1,000 people had packed inside the disco to celebrate the end of the school year. Beer cases were blocking the emergency exit, officials said.
■ UNITED STATES
Wildfires burn homes
A fast-moving fire erupted along the Northern California coast, burning homes, forcing residents to flee and backing up traffic for kilometers on a scenic highway. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials said that the 200-hectare fire was 50 percent contained by Friday evening. About 600 firefighters had been called in to battle the blaze near Watsonville, about 145km south of San Francisco. A 9.6km stretch of Highway 1 was closed for much of the day, although southbound lanes reopened in the early evening.
■ UNITED STATES
S Carolina inmate executed
A South Carolina man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents was executed in the state’s electric chair after a last-ditch effort to halt the sentence was denied by the US Supreme Court. James Earl Reed was pronounced dead at 11:27pm on Friday in the state’s death chamber in Columbia. The execution, first scheduled for 6pm, had been put on hold as defense attorneys successfully obtained a stay from a federal judge, only to see it vacated by the 4th US Circit Court of Appeals. Their attempt to get the US Supreme Court to block the execution was subsequently denied. Reed, 49, was the first person executed by electric chair in the US in nearly a year. He had been on death row since 1996, after being convicted of murdering Joseph and Barbara Lafayette two years earlier.
■ UNITED STATES
Cars plow into crowds
Two cars veered onto crowded sidewalks in two separate accidents on Friday in Manhattan, striking a total of nearly 20 people and seriously injuring two of them. A 60-year-old driver in Chinatown accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brakes, authorities said. His car mounted the curb leaving two people in serious but stable condition. Five others were treated for less serious injuries. Later in the day, an unlicensed driver hit 10 people in the Garment District. Six people were taken to hospitals. The driver was ticketed for not having a license.
■ UNITED STATES
Campers come under fire
A man pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment after shooting into a lake in the direction of a campground, not realizing his bullets were bouncing off the water and forcing campers to seek cover, authorities said. Clark County sheriff’s deputies responding to frantic 911 calls last weekend drove around Yale Reservoir and arrested Jacob Michael Johnson, 25. No one was injured. Johnson said he had been shooting at the water and an island between his campsite and the campground, the report said. Told his bullets were ricocheting into the campground, Johnson said he didn’t know they could do that.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
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