JAPAN
Melons sell for US$12,500
Two cantaloupe melons have been sold at auction in Japan for ￥1 million (US$12,500). The unknown buyer snapped up the Yubari melons on the first day of the buying season, splashing out the equivalent of a small car. The eye-watering figure reflects the buyer’s desire for prestige as well as a degree of sympathy for the town that produces them, which went bust in 2007. Yubari melons are perfect spheres with a smooth, evenly patterned rind and a T-shaped stalk. In 2008 a pair of Yubari melons sold for ￥2.5 million at auction.
PAKISTAN
Air collision kills four pilots
Two air force light aircraft collided in mid-air yesterday, killing four pilots on a routine training mission northwest of Islamabad, police said. It was the sixth Pakistan Air Force crash in seven months and the second in a week, raising concerns over the safety of its largely Chinese and locally made fleet. “Four pilots were killed, two were trainee pilots and two were instructors,” district police officer Mohammad Hussain said. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. One of the two-seater propeller planes crashed on a house, injuring a girl and an elderly man, and the second fell in nearby fields.
FIJI
Gay pride march canceled
Gay rights activists accused police of homophobia yesterday after the first ever planned pride march through the Pacific nation’s capital was canceled at the last minute. Roshika Deo, of rights group Oceania Pride, said they received a permit last month to hold the march but police told them on the morning of the event that it had been canceled. “They said we cannot march today because they did not realize they had given a permit for gays to march,” Deo said. The event was to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and the decriminalization of homosexuality in Fiji in 2010. Deo alleged that police told her the official who had vetted the permit did not what the word “homophobia” was. Fiji police said the march was stopped because of concerns about the safety of participants. “At the end of the day, the safety of all Fijians is the main priority for the police force,” commissioner Ioane Naivalurua said in a statement.
BANGLADESH
Bombs go off at Dhaka strike
Bomb blasts and arrests have been reported in Dhaka as an opposition alliance enforces a general strike protesting a court order sending 33 of its leaders to jail. No injuries were reported. A court on Wednesday had denied bail to 33 leaders in the 18-party opposition alliance who were charged with involvement in an arson attack during an anti-government strike last month. The United News of Bangladesh agency says police arrested at least 17 activists who have been protesting the disappearance of an opposition leader last month and allege government forces were involved.
CAMBODIA
Soldiers seal off village
Security forces have sealed off an eastern village and denied entry to human rights workers a day after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the latest violent eviction aimed at clearing land for development. On Wednesday, about 400 police and soldiers raided the settlement after community leaders rejected demands to vacate their farmland. The incident is the latest in widespread evictions and land grabs that have sparked unrest nationwide.
NETHERLANDS
Mladic trial postponed
The presiding judge in the UN trial of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic has delayed indefinitely the presentation of evidence that had been scheduled to start later this month due to “errors” by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to defense lawyers. Alphons Orie yesterday said he was delaying the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal case because of “significant disclosure errors” by prosecutors who are obliged to share all their evidence with Mladic’s defense team. He said judges were still analyzing the “scope and full impact” of the error, adding that he aimed to establish a new starting date “as soon as possible.”
KAZAKHSTAN
Soyuz docks with ISS
A Russian-made Soyuz craft carrying three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station (ISS), putting the crew in place for the arrival of the first ever privately owned cargo ship to the station. The Soyuz eased into position yesterday morning over the Mongolian--Kazakh border, after a two-day trip that began with its launch from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in the south of the nation. NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin are set for a four-and-a-half-month stay in space. Their arrival comes just two days ahead of the planned launch of the privately owned SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule from Cape Canaveral.
AUSTRALIA
Killer to be deported
A man who shot dead one of the nation’s top heart surgeons is set to be released on parole and immediately deported to Malaysia, authorities said yesterday. Chiew Seng Liew, 68, was one of two men jailed over the fatal shooting in 1991 of renowned doctor Victor Chang during a failed extortion attempt. His co-offender Phillip Lim Choon Tee, who provided the gun, was released in 2010. The New South Wales State Parole Authority met in private yesterday and said in a statement that it intended to grant parole. Liew, who has advanced Parkinson’s disease, will most likely be freed when the authority meets again in July.
AUSTRALIA
Police warn of online abuse
Police warned yesterday that pedophiles are using Internet live-streaming sites to order “bespoke” child sex crimes for real-time viewing, from countries including the Philippines. Federal Police high-tech crime squad head Neil Gaughan said sites like Skype were being used to arrange “made-to-order” child abuse, where sex offenders tailor sex crimes to their own viewing preferences. “They make contact through online forums and the like, and they basically order a type of child abuse to take place in another country,” Gaughan told the Australian newspaper. A man has already been convicted over one such arrangement.
MEXICO
Eight charged in cult killings
Prosecutors have formally charged eight people in the grisly cult slayings of two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman. The suspects are mainly members of an extended family whose purported leader has said they killed the victims as an offering to Santa Muerte, between 2009 and this year. The religious figure is usually depicted as a robed skeleton. Sonora State prosecutors’ spokesman Jose Larrinaga said the eight would face charges of first-degree homicide, robbery, conspiracy, corrupting minors and illegal burial. The charges carry sentences ranging up to 50 years, and will be served concurrently.
UNITED STATES
Lead threshold lowered
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut its threshold level for defining lead poisoning in children to 5 micrograms per deciliter on Wednesday from 10 micrograms, the first such reduction in 20 years. “The recommendation was based on a growing number of scientific studies showing that even low blood lead levels can cause lifelong health effects,” it said in adopting the recommendation of an advisory committee.
UNITED STATES
Republicans block gay judge
Democrats in Virginia are weighing up their options in the wake of a vote to block the appointment of the state’s first openly gay judge. Senior Democrats expressed their dismay and outrage at the vote in the Virginia House of Delegates to reject a prominent local prosecutor, Tracy Thorne-Begland, for a vacancy on the Richmond circuit court. The decision instantly engulfed Virginia in the toxic fumes of the gay marriage debate sweeping the US, following public pronouncement of support for it last week. The vote followed a heated debate in which Republican delegates accused Thorne-Begland of having violated military rules by coming out as gay while serving in the navy 20 years ago.
CANADA
US windmills cause furore
Some residents of the Quebec town of Stanstead are upset about plans in Vermont to erect two industrial-size wind turbines just south of the border. One would be about 300m from some Quebec and Vermont homes. Quebec requires wind turbines to be a certain distance from homes, and the Quebec homeowners are demanding those rules be followed, but in Vermont, the allowable distance is determined by the sound of the spinning blades, and the project’s developer says the turbines would meet those requirements. The plan has yet to win approval from Vermont regulators, but the dispute has become so rancorous that the mayor of Stanstead threatened to cut off water to some homes on the US side.
UNITED STATES
SAT scores invalidated
Nearly 200 students who took the SAT college admissions test at a Brooklyn private school this month had their scores invalidated by the company that administers the test, apparently because some students were seated too closely together, school officials said on Wednesday. The decision enraged administrators, students and parents at the school, Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, who said they were being punished for a technicality. Students who needed the results for their college applications will have to take a new test, at no cost.
UNITED STATES
New MIT president named
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Wednesday named Rafael Reif, an electrical engineer born in Venezuela who has been the university’s provost since 2005, as its 17th president. Reif, 61, replaces Susan Hockfield, the first female president of MIT, who announced in mid-February that she was stepping down after almost eight years leading one of the most prestigious universities in the US. Reif will take up his post at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university on July 2, the first MIT president not to be a native English speaker. In his role as provost, the senior academic official at the university, Reif helped create and implement a strategy that allowed MIT to weather the global financial crisis, despite a large decline in its endowment, and drove the growth of the university overseas.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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