■PHILIPPINES
Police probe assassinations
Two officials were gunned down in separate incidents on Wednesday, leaving police searching for motives with no groups claiming responsibility for the attacks. Unknown gunmen shot dead Rogelio Penera, the health department’s chief epidemiologist for the southern region, on his drive home to Davao city, police spokesman Superintendent Antonio Rivera said. The doctor’s 15-year-old daughter was also wounded in the attack, Rivera said. It was not clear if the shooting was related to his official duties. Also on Wednesday, Laguna Councilor Danny Yang was gunned down on the outskirts of San Pablo city, provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Manolito Labador said. Two members of his party were also shot dead, while at least two other people were wounded, Labador told reporters, describing the attackers as possible “guns for hire.” Yang’s bodyguard returned fire and killed one of the unidentified suspects, police said. Four other suspects fled on foot, and one of them is believed by police to be wounded.
■JAPAN
Swine flu cases hit 1,000
The nation’s tally of swine flu cases hit 1,000 yesterday after two new infections were reported, but there have been no deaths from the A(H1N1) virus, the health ministry said. The virus was first reported in the country early last month and quickly spread through high schools in the western cities of Kobe and Osaka before infecting a wider population. The WHO in a global update on Wednesday reported 55,867 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu in 109 countries and 238 human deaths from the disease since late March.
■CHINA
Drug traffickers executed
Two men convicted of trafficking heroin from Myanmar were executed in northeastern China this week, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The two, Liu Fuying and Sun Yulong, were given the death penalty for masterminding a gang effort to smuggle 8kg of heroin on various trips from Myanmar to Liaoning Province since 2002, Xinhua said. Calls to the Liaoning provincial government office rang unanswered yesterday. Xinhua did not say how many members were in the gang or how it operated. China is believed to carry out most of the world’s court-ordered executions, putting to death hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people each year for crimes ranging from murder to such nonviolent offenses as tax evasion.
■AUSTRALIA
Legal battle hits sour note
One of the nation’s most famous schoolyard songs and a rock tune widely accepted as the nation’s unofficial anthem are at the center of a bitter legal battle over a flute riff. Music company Larrikin is suing iconic band Men at Work in Federal Court for allegedly ripping off a section of Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree in the flute solo of their song Down Under, local media reported yesterday. The song was a worldwide hit when it was first released in the early 1980s, becoming the unofficial anthem of the Australian team that won the Americas Cup in 1983. It also featured in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Larrikin claims Men at Work directly lifted part of its distinctive flute section from Kookaburra’s score, the rights to which Larrikin allegedly acquired in 1990. The children’s ditty was penned by teacher Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides Jamboree in 1934. Defense lawyers argue that the copyright was never properly signed over by Sinclair and still belongs to the Girl Guides movement.
■FRANCE
Two ETA suspects held
Police yesterday detained two suspected key members of the political structure of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, Spanish police sources said. Javier Arruabarrena Carlos, 37, and Ohiana Garmendia Marin, 32, were believed to head a Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) branch which gathered information on possible targets for attacks.
Some media reports said the two were held in Paris. Police were doing house searches for documents. The operation was carried out jointly by French and Spanish police. The arrests followed those of three ETA suspects in the Basque region on Tuesday. The government said they were ready to carry out attacks.
■FRANCE
Body of pilot identified
The body of the pilot of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic on June 1 has been identified among dozens that have been recovered from the ocean, the airline said yesterday. All 228 people on board the Airbus 330 died when it crashed for unknown reasons during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. “Among the victims who have been recovered from the ocean, two members of the crew of flight AF 447 have been identified to date: the captain and a steward,” Air France said in a statement posted on its Web site.
■OCEANS
Sharks face extinction
A third of all sharks on the high seas are threatened with extinction because they are overfished or killed incidentally in swordfish and tuna catches, a nature group said yesterday. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the producer of the world’s Red List of endangered species, released its shark study ahead of a meeting in Spain of tuna fishery managers. The gathering includes those responsible for fisheries “in which sharks are taken without limit,” IUCN said. “Despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas,” said Sonja Fordham, a shark specialist for the group.
■GREECE
Air traffic controllers strike
Flights to and from the country were grounded for several hours yesterday as air traffic controllers called a four-hour work stoppage to protest against pension reforms and low salaries. Air traffic at airports across the country were suspended from 8am to 12pm and air traffic controllers walked off the job, with only emergency flights landing and taking off. Dozens of airlines were forced to cancel and reschedule flights. Private airline Aegean said it cancelled 11 flights and rescheduled 46 others while national carrier Olympic said it canceled 32 flights, including international flights to Istanbul, Frankfurt, Milan, Brussels, Budapest and Sofia.
■SOMALIA
Sentence: amputation
Hooded Shebab militiamen yesterday chopped off the right hand and left foot of four thieves in front of a crowd of 200 people in northern Mogadishu. An ad-hoc court set up by the hardline Islamist group Shebab had earlier this week found the four young men guilty of stealing mobile phones and guns from residents in several of the capital’s neighborhoods. “The amputations have been carried out as scheduled,” a Shebab official said on condition of anonymity. Residents in the Sukahola neighborhood gathered to watch the amputations, which took place shortly after 9am, but no cameras nor mobile phones were allowed.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
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