■SOUTH KOREA
‘Right to die’ ruling enforced
A hospital yesterday removed a life-support system from a comatose patient, officials said, upholding a court ruling that approved a euthanasia request for the first time in the country. A spokesman for Seoul’s Severance Hospital said it removed a respirator from a 76-year-old woman in mid-morning. It would take some time for the patient to be pronounced dead, he said. Last month the Supreme Court, upholding a lower court decision, supported a request by the woman’s family that she be allowed to die with dignity.
■PHILIPPINES
Ferry owner to face charges
Justice officials yesterday approved the filing of criminal charges against the owner and missing captain of a huge ferry that capsized last year during a typhoon, killing hundreds of people. The charges of negligence stem from a criminal complaint filed by victims’ families accusing the owner of the 23,800-tonne Princess of the Stars of ignoring storm warnings, said Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera. Of about 800 passengers and crew, only 33 survived after the ferry overturned in the storm-swollen waves and fierce winds near central Sibuyan Island on June 21 last year. If convicted, Sulpicio Lines Inc official Edgar Go, the respondent in the complaint, could face up to six years in prison.
■KYRGYZSTAN
US, Kyrgyzstan sign deal
The US and Kyrgyzstan have signed a deal to create a center for the transit of non-military goods to Afghanistan through the Central Asian country’s Manas airbase, an official said yesterday. “The US and Kyrgyzstan agreed on the opening of a center for the transit of goods to Afghanistan at the Manas airport,” a source in the Kyrgyz government said.
■FRANCE
Black boxes not found
French investigators looking into the June 1 crash of an Air France aircraft into the Atlantic on Tuesday denied a media report that the plane’s black boxes had been located. “There are always signals detected that must be analyzed. We can not confirm that the black boxes have been found,” said Martine del Bono, spokeswoman for the Office of Accident Investigation and Analysis. Earlier on Tuesday, the online edition of the daily Le Monde reported that signals from the plane’s black boxes had been detected. According to Le Monde, the weak signals emitted by the beacons of the two recorders were detected by French ships on Monday. Guided by the signals, the French mini-submarine Nautile was diving to try and recover them.
■ITALY
Aftershock hits quake zone
A powerful aftershock hit the quake-struck areas of central Italy on Monday, rattling buildings as far away as Rome. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 4.6, according to the US Geological Survey, and was followed by two smaller aftershocks with magnitudes of 3.1 and 3.8. The epicenter was just north of L’Aquila, the Appennine city that was devastated by the April earthquake. Monday’s quake struck just before 11pm and was felt in Rome, some 120km away.
■ISRAEL
Outpost expansion planned
An Israeli group says the government plans to build 240 new housing units at an unauthorized outpost in the West Bank. The Bimkom group, an Israeli non-governmental organization, says the plan filed in April would also retroactively legalize 60 houses already built at the outpost, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Such a move would flout a US demand for a settlement freeze. It would also violate Israeli commitments to take down unauthorized outposts and not to built new settlements.
■YEMEN
Jews depart for Israel
Sixteen Yemeni Jews, including relatives of a man murdered last year, have left for Israel, a member of the Arabian peninsula state’s Jewish community said yesterday. The three Jewish families left on Sunday, the same day a Yemeni appeals court handed a death sentence to Abdul-Aziz al-Abdi for shooting dead Mashaa Yaeesh al-Nahari in December. Nahari family members were among those who left, the source said. There are an estimated 200 to 300 Jews in Yemen, mainly in Sanaa, remnants of a centuries-old community that spoke Hebrew. About 50,000 moved to Israel in an airlift begun in 1949.
■HONG HONG
Bolshoi workers jailed
Two lighting technicians with Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet began 40-month jail terms in Hong Kong yesterday for beating up and robbing a prostitute. Mark Statsev, 26, and Yury Kovrigin, 30, pleaded guilty to robbing 45-year-old Yu Yuk-kam in their hotel room while on tour with the ballet company. The pair, who were working on a production of Spartacus at the Cultural Center, met Yu outside their hotel last September after drinking heavily. They took her to Statsev’s room, where he wrapped a towel around her neck and both men beat her before taking more than US$1,000 from her handbag. Police found Yu bleeding and badly injured and she spent two weeks in hospital recovering, according to a court report in yesterday’s South China Morning Post. Lawyers for the two men said they were drunk and dissatisfied with the service they received.
■COLOMBIA
Rebels kill seven officers
At least seven police officers were killed in the nation’s southwest when leftist guerillas attacked their vehicle, authorities said on Monday. The officers were on their way back from a patrol in Valle del Cauca province when their vehicle was attacked by guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), police General Gustavo Adolfo Ricaurte said. Security forces and rebels have also been engaged in heavy fighting in other parts of the province, as police closed in on a local commander known as El Enano (the midget). News reports said 25 FARC rebels were killed in fighting over the past 24 hours.
■UNITED STATES
NASA finds cause of delay
NASA engineers think they have discovered the cause of a hydrogen leak that twice delayed a high-profile shuttle launch this month, the space agency said on Monday. It may now be all systems go for the space shuttle Endeavour, which is waiting to embark on its final mission to the International Space Station (ISS), after a dodgy gas line connection was uncovered during tests. NASA program manager John Shannon said a misaligned plate linking the hydrogen gas vent line with the external fuel tank had been causing the leak, which was first detected during fueling. The Endeavour is set to carry a seven-member crew on a 16-day voyage to install a platform on the ISS. Another launch attempt is scheduled for July 11.
■UNITED STATES
Baby sea lion rescued
A baby sea lion was rescued early on Monday after wandering onto a busy San Francisco Bay area freeway. Drivers on Interstate 880 started calling authorities at around 5:45am to report the animal “walking” in the center divider near the Oakland Coliseum, said Peter Van Eckhardt, an officer with the California Highway Patrol. He said the sea lion likely made it onto land from a nearby San Francisco Bay estuary and crossed the roadway in the middle of the night. Several officers later tried to get the animal, nicknamed “Fruitvale” for the Oakland neighborhood where it was found, into a cage, but it jumped underneath the patrol car. The pup eventually was rounded up and taken to The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, a nonprofit facility that helps sick and injured marine animals. Jim Oswald, a spokesman for the center, said the animal is active and alert but slightly malnourished.
■MEXICO
French appeal rejected
President Felipe Calderon said on Monday that a Frenchwoman convicted of kidnapping will have to serve her 60-year sentence in Mexico, rejecting appeals by France to send her home. Calderon said his government decided against returning Florence Cassez because France wouldn’t guarantee that she would serve the full sentence. “The French government said it was reserving the right to suspend, reduce or decide how to implement the sentence,” Calderon said. “That’s unacceptable to Mexico.” Cassez has acknowledged she lived at a ranch near Mexico City where three kidnap victims were held, including an eight-year-old girl. But she said she was simply dating a Mexican arrested in the case and did not know the people at the ranch had been kidnapped. One of the victims, however, identified Cassez as one of her captors, and another suspect in the case said that the Frenchwoman not only participated in abductions, but helped lead the gang that carried them out.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
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