■AUSTRALIA
Two jailed for bomb hoaxes
Two Australian men were jailed yesterday for making hoax bomb threats to a hospital and an airline and pretending to belong to a terrorist organization. Raymond Lawson, 35, and Joseph Bucek, 40 were given 12-month reduced prison sentences after pleading guilty to three counts of making fake bomb threats last year. The two had claimed to have planted a bomb at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital and on another occasion said there was a bomb on a Singapore Airlines flight, which was subsequently searched mid-flight. Bucek also claimed to be a commander of the fictitious Australian Liberation Army, the Victorian County Court was told.
■JAPAN
Workers vacation-deprived
A poll of 9,000 adults in 13 countries by Harris Interactive for online travel company Expedia found Japanese workers not only got the least vacation of about 16.5 days a year, but they tended to use only nine of them. The French, however, get the highest number of vacation days a year, an average of 37.5, and are happy to take almost full advantage of it. The US gave workers the second-least number of days off a year, averaging 17, of which most people would take 14, according to the so-called vacation deprivation survey conducted between April 13 and April 22.
■PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Earthquake strikes off coast
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea yesterday, US seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued. The quake struck 185km east-northeast of Kandrian on New Britain island at a depth of 67km at 05:32 GMT, the US Geological Survey said.
■LEBANON
Factory collapses near Beirut
Police officials say a five-story aluminum factory has collapsed north of Beirut leaving at least three people unaccounted for. The officials said that the building collapsed yesterday morning. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the missing were a Lebanese and two Asian workers. After the collapse in Zouk Mosbeh’s industrial neighborhood, a few kilometers from Beirut, scores of civil defense members were seen digging through the rubble.
■UNITED NATIONS
Homes plan illegal: Ban
The UN chief says a Jerusalem planning body’s approval of a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem to make room for an Israeli tourist center would be illegal. Ban Ki-moon’s office issued a statement on Wednesday saying the planned demolitions in the area of Silwan “are contrary to international law, and to the wishes of Palestinian residents.” Ban’s statement said “the current moves are unhelpful” because they do not help build trust to support political negotiations. It said Israel’s government has a “responsibility to ensure provocative steps are not taken” that would heighten tensions in the city.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police hunt phone rapper
Police are searching for a rapper who has been bombarding emergency service telephone lines with thousands of hoax calls. The man dials the UK 999 emergency number and then begins to rap, sing, chant, preach and blast loud music to operators. The calls have been going on for a year and a half. In the last three months alone, say police in the city of Manchester, he made around 700 calls to them. Audio clips of some of the calls were released by the force on Wednesday in the hope that somebody will recognize his Jamaican accent and tip them off.
■GERMANY
Disease may have killed Tut
Pharaoh Tutankhamun was probably killed by the genetic blood disorder sickle cell disease, German scientists said on Wednesday, rejecting earlier research that suggested he died of malaria. The team at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg questioned the conclusions of a major Egyptian study released in February on the boy-king’s death. That examination said he died of malaria after suffering a fall, putting to rest the theory that he was murdered. But the German researchers said in a letter published online on Wednesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association that closer scrutiny of his foot bones pointed to sickle cell disease. “We question the reliability of the genetic data presented in this [the Egyptian] study and therefore the validity of the authors’ conclusions,” the letter said. “[The] radiological signs are compatible with osteopathologic lesions seen in sickle cell disease [SCD], a hematological disorder that occurs at gene carrier rates of nine percent to 22 percent in inhabitants of Egyptian oases.”
■GERMANY
Top test driver killed
The chief test driver for Japanese auto giant Toyota was killed in a head-on road crash in Germany while driving a prototype supercar, the carmaker said yesterday. The man, identified as Hiromu Naruse, was testing the Lexus LFA sports car when it was involved in a deadly collision on a road in western Germany on Wednesday, Toyota said. German newspaper Die Welt reported that the test driver of the other car involved in the collision was injured, along with a passenger.
■UNITED STATES
UAVs get domestic role
The Homeland Security Department said on Wednesday it has obtained permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate unmanned planes (UAVs) along the Texas border and throughout the Gulf Coast region. Customs and Border Protection will base a surveillance drone at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas. Homeland Security also said it is working with the Office of National Drug Control Policy on “Project Roadrunner,” a license plate recognition system designed to seek out possible drug traffickers. The department is also collaborating with the Justice Department to improve information sharing between state, local and federal law enforcement agencies.
■UNITED STATES
Storm gains strength
Hurricane Celia, the first of the Pacific season, strengthened on Wednesday into a major Category Three storm south of Mexico, while another potential hurricane was churning in Celia’s wake, US officials said. Packing sustained winds near 185kph with higher gusts, Celia was about 1,180km south of Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula at 9pm on Wednesday, with no threat posed to coastlines, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm, a Category Three on the one-to-five Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, was moving westward, away from land, at about 20kph and was expected to track to the west-northwest in the coming days.
■CUBA
Rights activist released
The US is applauding the release of a human rights activist, but says he should not have been jailed for 11 months while he waited for his day in court. Darsy Ferrer was found guilty on Tuesday of purchasing black-market cement and released on time served. Supporters said Ferrer was targeted for his political views and punished for a crime that Cuban authorities often overlook. US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters on Wednesday in Washington that the US considers Ferrer’s release a positive development.
■CANADA
Rare quake causes stir
A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The epicenter of the quake was in Quebec, about 38km north of Cumberland, Ontario on the Ottawa River, the USGS said. The agency said the quake occurred at a depth of about 19km. Homes and businesses were shaken in Ottawa and the Parliament building was evacuated, with workers sent home while the building was inspected. The damage appeared to be concentrated in Gracefield, Quebec, a tiny municipality about 59km north of Ottawa.
■CANADA
Terror suspects charged
The last two members of the so-called “Toronto 18” group arrested in 2006 were found guilty on Wednesday on terrorism charges, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said. Asad Ansari, 25, and Steven Vikash Chand, 29, were the last two members of the group to face trial in the Ontario Superior Court. “Both men were found guilty of participation in a terrorist group,” a statement said. Chand was also found guilty of one count of “counselling to commit fraud for the benefit of a terrorist group.” Sentencing is scheduled for a later date. Ansari faces a maximum 10 years in prison, while Chand could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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