■INDONESIA
Free Aceh leader dies
The founder of Aceh’s separatist movement, Teungku Hasan Muhammad di Tiro, died yesterday at a hospital where he was being treated for a failing heart and a lung infection. He was 84. Di Tiro passed away at the Zaenal Abidin public hospital in Aceh’s provincial capital, said Farid Husein, the Health Ministry’s director general of medical services. The former leader of the now-dissolved Free Aceh Movement had been in hospital for 11 days. He died just one day after the government restored his citizenship, which had been revoked due to his independence struggle in exile. Di Tiro left Aceh soon after civil war began in 1976. He returned in 2008, after leading the rebel movement from Sweden for three decades and becoming a Swedish national.
■CHINA
Air rage strikes on ground
Passengers furious about delays last month at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport vented their frustration by attacking about two dozen employees, the Guangzhou Daily said yesterday. Torrential rain in Guangzhou last month wreaked havoc on flight schedules, triggering 35 incidents at the airport, which left 23 employees with minor injuries, the paper said. “June and July are also prime months for rainstorms in Guangzhou, and Baiyun airport hopes that passengers who encounter flight delays will be calm and reasonably cooperate with the airport’s work,” the paper said.
■INDIA
Cyclone threatens coast
The weather office has warned residents along parts of the western coast that Tropical Cyclone Phet is likely to cause heavy rains and winds of speeds reaching 85kph starting today. Fishermen have been warned not to venture out.
■CHINA
Guanxi death toll rises
The death toll from flooding and landslides in southern China climbed to 38 yesterday, state media reported. Rain-triggered landslides struck five counties in Guangxi region on Wednesday, leaving 38 people dead and another 14 missing, Xinhua news agency reported. Heavy rainstorms started pounding the region on Monday, triggering the landslides and forcing the evacuation of nearly 80,000 people, it quoted the local government as saying. A previous notice on the Ministry of Civil Affairs Web site said more than 2.1 million people in Guangxi were affected by the disaster.
■AUSTRALIA
Angels must explain lifestyle
Hells Angels bikers will be forced to explain how they pay for their extravagant lifestyles after losing a court case brought by the Australian Crime Commission. Twelve of the Hells Angels bosses will be quizzed about their activities with the gang, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported yesterday. The bikers lost a Federal Court case on Wednesday aimed at preventing the commission examination. Sports cars, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, drugs, firearms, computers and financial documents were seized in recent police raids, the newspaper said. As a result, the 12 Hells Angels bosses were served with summons to appear before the commission to answer questions on tax fraud and their finances. The commission has sweeping powers to force the bosses to give evidence against fellow bikers.
■AUSTRALIA
Comments upset residents
An official’s wife sparked an online controversy after using Facebook to complain about the “ugly ... freaks” at a local horse-racing day. Tegan Crisafulli — who said she is no “oil painting” herself — upset residents of the town of Mackay with her assessment of their looks. “I still can’t believe how many freaks were there,” wrote Crisafulli, who is married to David Crisafulli, deputy mayor of Townsville, also in the state of Queensland. “I’ve never seen so many ugly people in the same place at the same time ... I wonder if I’d get into trouble if I posted to FB [Facebook] my ‘I’m the ugliest person to photograph’ pics from the day.” Crisafulli’s husband said his wife was entitled to the “light-hearted” comments but questioned their accuracy. “She wakes up beside me every morning and my head is rougher than anything I saw on that day,” he joked.
■PHILIPPINES
Troops kill three rebels
Military officials say troops have clashed with about 20 communist rebels in the north, killing three and capturing three others. Army spokesman Major Ronald Jess Alcudia says a soldier was wounded in the fighting yesterday in Taysan township, 90km south of Manila.
■AUSTRALIA
Soldier may have overdosed
An Australian commando was airlifted to Germany after being found unconscious at his base in Afghanistan because of a suspected drug overdose, the country’s top military commander said yesterday. The soldier is in a coma in a German military hospital after he was found on Friday at the Tarin Kowt barracks in Uruzgan Province, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said. “It would appear at this early stage that the use of illicit drugs may be involved in this incident,” Houston said. “A bottle of pills and, separately, white powder thought to be an opiate were found in the soldier’s room,” he said. The substance has not been analyzed and Houston said no findings had been made about whether it “caused or contributed to his condition.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Prostitute’s remains found
Police investigating the deaths of three British prostitutes confirmed on Wednesday that human remains found in a river belong to one of the missing women. “Further exhaustive forensic tests carried out on a small piece of human tissue recovered from the River Aire over the weekend have confirmed that it is that of Shelley Armitage,” West Yorkshire police said in a statement. Armitage, 31, was last seen on April 26, and was one of three women who have gone missing in Bradford in Yorkshire, England. Criminology student Stephen Griffiths, 40, has been charged with their murders and appeared in court on Friday, where he dubbed himself the “crossbow cannibal.”
■GUINEA
US names drug kingpin
The US has named a son of late dictator Lansana Conte as a drug kingpin. A statement released on Tuesday by the US Treasury Department designated Ousmane Conte under a law meant to freeze the US assets of drug traffickers and prohibit Americans from doing business with them. He was arrested in February last year by the military junta that seized power following the death of his father, Lansana Conte. He was charged with drug trafficking. The younger Conte later confessed on state TV to involvement in the cocaine trade. It was unclear if he was pressured into confessing. He is now being held in a Conakry prison and standing trial.
■RUSSIA
Rebels ‘targeting Games’
Moscow believes rebel groups are planning attacks on the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014, the chief of the state security service said yesterday, according to Russian news agencies. The Black Sea resort city of Sochi is close to the North Caucasus region, scene of a long-running Islamist insurgency. Alexander Bortnikov, the chief of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said he believed that Islamist groups would try to force the cancellation of the Games, but did not mention any specific plots.
■AUSTRIA
Row erupts over manuscript
A row has erupted between the descendants of the father of genetics Gregor Mendel and a local monastery over one of Mendel’s manuscripts, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. The family has accused the Augustinian Order in Vienna of pressuring a great-great-grand nephew of Mendel, Father Clemens, who is himself an Augustinian monk, to hand them the manuscript, the daily Die Presse reported in its online edition. The Vienna monastery has denied the accusations. “There was no pressure,” its prior, Father Dominic, told the newspaper. He said, however, that the manuscript rightfully belonged to the Augustinians, adding that “Mendel was an Augustinian monk and he did his research as an Augustinian monk.”
■FRANCE
Mayotte to ban Shariah
New polygamous marriages and Shariah courts will be banned on the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte when it becomes a department of the state next year, according to a draft ordinance presented on Wednesday. Mayotte, an island territory between Mozambique and Madagascar, will also end repudiation, the traditional Muslim divorce, and raise the minimum marriage age for females from 16 to 18, a statement by the Cabinet said. Existing polygamous marriages can continue, Overseas Territories Minister Marie-Luce Penchard said added.
■UNITED STATES
Teenager pleads guilty
The last of seven New York teenagers implicated in the hate crime killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant pleaded guilty on Wednesday. Anthony Hartford’s plea to gang assault and other charges closes the prosecution phase of a case that attracted international headlines and prompted an ongoing Justice Department probe of police responses to bias crimes. The judge indicated Hartford would likely face 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 20.
■UNITED STATES
Trade representative injured
Trade Representative Ron Kirk has canceled plans to go to Japan after suffering minor injuries in a traffic accident in Grand Prairie, Texas. Grand Prairie police say Kirk was injured on Wednesday when a metal ladder that had fallen onto an expressway was struck by a tractor-trailer and crashed through his windshield. Grand Prairie is just west of Dallas. Kirk’s office said he was treated at a hospital and released. He canceled his immediate schedule of meetings and public events, including a trip this week to Japan for the APEC meeting of Ministers Related to Trade.
■UNITED STATES
No search for Daisy parents
Authorities said on Wednesday there was no active investigation in the case of a seven-year-old Peruvian girl who told First Lady Michelle Obama her parents were in the US illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Matt Chandler said the office “is a federal law enforcement agency that focuses on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes criminal aliens who pose a threat to our communities.” The spokesman was asked about Daisy, a seven-year-old girl who became a star in her parents’ home country when she spoke to the first lady at a school in Silver Spring, Maryland, last month.
■ARGENTINA
Ex-officials to go on trial
Six ex-military officials were to go on trial yesterday charged with human rights abuses and the deaths of 65 people under a secret plan by several South American dictatorships in the 1970s. Observers hope the trial will finally shed light on the shadowy “Operation Condor” to repress dissidents across the region, and they are hoping to unlock the secrets of the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center in Buenos Aires, one of several clandestine prisons used by the military dictatorship. The Automotores Orletti was nicknamed “the garden” by the military. It was a former car repair workshop in a working class section of the capital that was used to interrogate prisoners between June and November 1976.
■CANADA
Allies made anthrax bombs
A top secret military lab set up developed biological weapons for the Allies during World War II, according to a new documentary film aired late on Tuesday by Radio-Canada. In 1943 on Grosse-Ile, a small island in the Saint Lawrence seaway, scientists produced vast quantities of anthrax to be used in the fabrication of biological bombs. The so-called Project N was one of three great secrets of the war, equal in scope to the Allies’ cracking of German signal codes and the development of an atomic bomb, filmmakers Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard opined. During this period, the Allies were preparing to wage a biological war against Germany and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sought to obtain 500,000 anthrax bombs.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
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