AUSTRALIA
Backpacker killer dies
Ivan Milat, whose grisly serial killings of seven German, British and Australian backpackers horrified Australia in the early 1990s, died in a Sydney prison yesterday, ending hopes of a deathbed confession to more unsolved slayings. He was 74. The road worker had been in custody since 1994 and was diagnosed in May with terminal esophageal and stomach cancer. Milat died in the medical wing of Long Bay Prison, New South Wales state Corrective Services said. He was convicted of murder in the deaths of three German, two British, and two Australian backpackers after giving them rides while they were hitchhiking. The serial killings came to light when the mutilated corpses were found in a forest near Sydney in 1992 and 1993.
INDONESIA
Three killed in Papua
Three people have been killed in Papua region, with police saying that they were civilians, while a rebel group that took responsibility said they were undercover intelligence officers. The clash came as President Joko Widodo was to visit the region — wracked by a decades-old independence insurgency — after months of mass demonstrations and deadly unrest. Police said that on Friday rebels killed three motorbike taxi drivers in Intan Jaya, a central region in the nation’s easternmost territory. “Two of them were shot, while the other one was stabbed to death,” Papua police spokesman Ahmad Mustofa Kamal told reporters.
RUSSIA
US’ Syria action criticized
Moscow on Saturday criticized the US’ decision to send armored vehicles and combat troops into eastern Syria to protect oil fields. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that “what Washington is doing now, the seizure and control of oil fields in eastern Syria under its armed control, is, quite simply, international state banditry.” He added: “All hydrocarbon deposits and other minerals located on the territory of Syria do not belong to the IS [Islamic State] terrorists, and even less to the ‘American defenders from IS terrorists,’ but exclusively to the Syrian Arab Republic. The real cause of this illegal action by the United States in Syria lies far from the ideals that Washington has proclaimed and from the slogans of fighting terrorism.”
INDIA
Ayodhya sets lamp record
The city of Ayodhya has set a Guinness world record by illuminating hundreds of thousands of earthen lamps as part of an annual Hindu festival. Representatives from Guinness World Records on Saturday handed the certificate to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath after witnessing the lighting of 409,000 oil lamps on the banks of the Sarayu.
UNITED STATES
Cobain cardigan sold
A quarter-century after grunge’s enigmatic rhapsodist took his own life, Kurt Cobain’s iconic cigarette-singed cardigan worn during Nirvana’s 1993 “Unplugged” performance has sold for US$334,000. The tattered, olive-green, Manhattan-brand, button-up sweater, which has never been washed since Cobain wore it, came with dark stains and a burn hole. The seller, Garrett Kletjian, owner of Forty7 Motorsports, bought it four years ago for US$137,500. “This cardigan, it’s the holy grail of any article of clothing that he ever wore,” said Darren Julien, chief executive officer and president of Julien’s Auctions. “Kurt created the grunge look; he didn’t wear show clothes,” Julien told reporters in New York.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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