INDONESIA
‘Hijacking’ a potty run?
An Australian passenger who sparked a hijack alert on a flight to Bali has denied being drunk and claimed he banged on the door of the cockpit after mistaking it for the toilet, Indonesian police said yesterday. Matt Christopher Lockley also said he was in a state of depression during the Virgin Australia flight on Friday to the resort island, as he was searching for his Indonesian wife with whom he had lost contact, they said. Lockley, wearing flip-flops, white shorts and a T-shirt, was dragged off the plane by heavily armed air force personnel and arrested by police. Indonesian officials initially said he had been drunk, but police said yesterday that the 28-year-old, who is in custody and hospitalized for fatigue, has denied being under the influence of alcohol. He told police that before flying, he had taken two pills of Voltaren, four pills of Panadol — both painkillers — and drank two bottles of Coca-Cola, Bali police spokesman Hery Wiyanto told reporters. “According to him, he was not drunk, but suffering from depression due to a family problem,” the spokesman said, adding that while police were waiting for alcohol test results, there was no smell of alcohol on his breath when he was detained.
TONGA
Offshore temblor hits
A strong magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck off the Pacific nation yesterday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, but there was no immediate tsunami warning or reports of significant damage. The undersea quake hit 71km northeast of the capital, Nuku’alofa, at a shallow depth of 10km, the USGS said. Residents reported a “short, very violent” jolt at around 6am GMT that knocked items off shelves and sent people fleeing for higher ground.
MYANMAR
Imams sentenced after fire
Two imams have been sentenced to eight years in prison for negligence over a fire at a religious school that killed 13 boys, state media said yesterday. About 70 children, some orphans, were sleeping in dormitories at the school inside a mosque complex in Yangon when the blaze broke out in April last year. A court in Yangon said in its ruling on Friday that the fire was caused by the overheating of an electrical regulator and that the door of the school was locked, according to the New Light of Myanmar newspaper. The victims died of suffocation when they were unable to escape.
SOUTH KOREA
Obama would save Putin
It’s official: even though they are involved in the worst East-West clash since the Cold War, US President Barack Obama would save Russian President Vladimir Putin from drowning. Obama on Friday delivered his answer to a question posed to Putin during a live television appearance earlier this month — would his US rival come to his rescue? Putin answered by saying that though he did not have a special personal relationship with Obama he thought the US leader was “a decent and brave person … and of course, he would.” In a rare moment of humor at an alarming moment of the Ukraine crisis, Obama confirmed he would indeed throw the Russian leader a lifeline, when questioned by a US journalist. “I absolutely would save Mr Putin if he were drowning,” Obama said. “If anybody is out there drowning, I would save them… I used to be a pretty good swimmer; I grew up in Hawaii,” Obama said, before adding “I am a little bit out of practice.”
CANADA
Military to probe sex abuse
The military was ordered on Friday to investigate and take action after shocking allegations of widespread sexual assaults within its ranks. One in 10 female soldiers reported being sexually assaulted, according to cover stories by MacLean’s magazine and its French-language sister publication L’Actualite, which cited military records obtained during an eight-month investigation. The two magazines, whose stories prompted the internal review, estimated the figure is actually far higher by as much as 10-fold when adding in unreported cases. In total, the military received an average of one sexual assault complaint every other day or 178 annually from 2002 to 2012, the publications reported. Chief of the Defense Staff General Tom Lawson called the revelations “disturbing” and said sexual assault is an “abhorrent and corrosive act that goes against the entirety of our military ethos.”
AUSTRIA
Conwoman jailed
A court jailed for two years on Friday a Romanian call girl with a doctorate in nuclear physics who conned a smitten Canadian businessman out of 230,000 euros (US$318,000). The 37-year-old woman, who has not been named, also worked as a presenter on breakfast television in her home country, is a keen rally driver and was once engaged to a Jordanian prince, according to the Austria Press Agency. The 57-year-old Canadian businessman told the court in Salzburg, western Austria, where the woman lives, that he first “booked” her for a week-long holiday in the Caribbean in 2011. Telling him that she had breast cancer and was in debt from the funeral of her disabled daughter, the man gave her ever larger sums of money, which she spent on a beauty salon that went bankrupt and an Audi TT sports car.
SOUTH AFRICA
Escaped cannibal recaptured
Police have captured a 27-year-old prison escapee from Lesotho who has confessed to multiple murders and cannibalism, after a two year cross-border manhunt involving Interpol. Makhele Scott admitted to killing and eating two people in Lesotho in 2012, but escaped from Maseru Central Prison while awaiting trial. Earlier this month, agents from Lesotho, South Africa and Interpol tracked Scott to a church outside Durban, where he was living and playing in the church band. Scott earlier admitted to killing and eating a 13-year-old student who went missing in January 2012 and villagers later found his limbs, a torso and head. In July 2012, a 22-year-old man went missing from the same village. “Police responded to a tip-off and at the house discovered a Corsa bakkie [pickup truck] in which two human arms, a leg, penis and testicles were found,” the statement said. When confronted Scott confessed to the murders, and to cooking and eating some of the body parts. He led police to a shallow grave where a torso and thigh were found and to a primary school pit toilet containing a human head, two feet, lungs, heart and intestines.
SAUDI ARABIA
Five more die of virus
The Ministry of Health says five more patients who contracted a potentially fatal Middle East virus related to SARS have died in the kingdom as the number of reported infections from the disease there rises past 300. The ministry on Friday said the deaths were among 14 new cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome detected in the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca. Two other deaths were recorded a day earlier.
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
HAZARDOUS CONDITION: The typhoon’s sheer size, with winds extending 443km from its center, slowed down the ability of responders to help communities, an official said The US Coast Guard was searching for six people after losing contact with their disabled boat off the coast of Guam following Typhoon Sinlaku. The crew of the 44m dry cargo vessel, the US-registered Mariana, on Wednesday notified the coast guard that the boat had lost its starboard engine and needed assistance, Petty Officer 3rd Class Avery Tibbets said yesterday. The coast guard set up a one-hour communication schedule with the vessel, but lost contact on Thursday. A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft was launched to search for the six people on board, but it had to return to Guam because of
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