GERMANY
Police find dangerous snakes
Police on Sunday said they discovered more than 110 dangerous snakes on a farm, after a woman who lived there sought medical treatment for a poisonous bite. The 35-year-old woman drove to a hospital in Salzgitter early on Sunday, and told doctors that one of her rattlesnakes bit her finger. While the woman’s condition deteriorated and authorities hastily ordered an antidote from a specialist institute in Hamburg, police found dozens of snakes on the farm. Police said that specialists determined the snake collection included constrictors and poisonous varieties, which were not housed in appropriate terrariums.
POLAND
Leader slams LGBTQ values
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice party, on Sunday pushed back against what he described as Western views on LGBTQ rights. He described a theoretical situation in which a person named Wladyslaw, which is traditionally a male name, asks to be called Zosia, a traditionally female name, at work. “And according to what we are recommended from the West that everyone should obey it,” Kaczynski told a rally in Grudziadz. “We do not intend to look into anyone’s bedroom, but at the same time we want to maintain normality.” A day earlier, he told a group that it was time to return to “some rules of decency” and “normal language.”
GERMANY
G7 leaders mock Putin
G7 leaders on Sunday mocked the macho image of their absent adversary Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting in Germany dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the leaders sat down for their first meeting of the three-day summit in the sweltering Bavarian Alps, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked if they should remove their jackets — or if they should even disrobe further. “We all have to show that we’re tougher than Putin,” Johnson said, to laughter from some of his colleagues. “Bare-chested horseback riding,” shot back Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Oh yes,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Horseback riding is the best.”
UNITED STATES
Child’s body found in freezer
A Detroit woman has been charged in the death of her three-year-old son after police found the boy’s decomposing body in a basement freezer. The 31-year-old woman is charged with first-degree murder, child abuse and torture, and concealing the death of an individual, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said on Sunday. “The alleged facts in this case have astounded even the seriously jaded,” Worthy said. Detroit police and Child Protective Services on Friday discovered the body during a welfare check at the home, Detroit Police Chief James White said. It was not immediately clear how or when the boy died, or how long his body had been in the freezer. Five other children living at the home were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services, White said.
MEXICO
Six killed in shoot-out
Six police officers were on Sunday killed and four others wounded in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon after they were ambushed by a presumed drug gang equipped with 10 homemade armored vehicles and heavy weaponry. State police said the patrol was outnumbered in the predawn attack on a highway leading to the Colombia border crossing. There was no immediate information on the identity of the attackers.
AUSTRALIA
Bees placed on lockdown
The Varroa destructor was detected at the Port of Newcastle, prompting New South Wales authorities to throw up a biosecurity zone. Beekeepers inside the 50km biosecurity zone cannot move hives, bees, honey or honeycomb until further notice. Varroa destructors, tiny red-brown mites, attack and feed on honey bees — killing entire colonies, although not those of the country’s native bees. However, the country’s honey industry relies primarily on non-native species.
NORTH KOREA
US’ ‘Asian NATO’ decried
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused the US of setting up a military alliance like NATO in Asia. “While blatantly holding joint military exercises with Japan and South Korea, the United States is making a full-fledged move to establish an Asia-style NATO,” the ministry said in a statement on its Web site on Sunday. “This proves the hypocrisy of the US rhetoric of ‘diplomatic engagement’ and ‘dialogue without preconditions,’” it said. “The reality ... makes us feel the need to make all-out efforts to develop even stronger power to be able to subdue all kinds of hostile acts by the United States,” it added. The criticism came a day before South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol left to attend a NATO summit in Spain, the first South Korean leader to do so.
HONG KONG
Police adopt ‘goose step’
Police on Friday are to officially swap British-style marching for the “goose step” used in China. “To promote patriotism and enhance the awareness of national identity, the Hong Kong Police Force will fully adopt Chinese foot drills from July 1,” the territory’s Police Force said in a statement. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army last year trained the territory’s police cadets on the goose-step style, where soldiers conduct foot drills without bending their knees. Since then, the style has been used at events to promote national security and adopted by the Customs Department. The switch is to take place on the 25th anniversary of the territory’s return to China.
CHINA
Shanghai lockdown ‘correct’
Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Shanghai Li Qiang (李強) declared victory in defending the city against COVID-19, describing a two-month lockdown that confined millions of people to their homes and spurred sporadic unrest as “completely correct.” Shanghai “broke the repeated stalemate of the epidemic, realized and consolidated the fruits of dynamic clearance in society, and won the battle to defend Shanghai,” Li told the city’s party congress on Saturday.
NORTH MACEDONIA
Police hold two traffickers
Police said they discovered 24 migrants hiding in a van on a major highway in the country’s south on Sunday and arrested two men as suspected people smugglers. Police identified the two male suspects, aged 50 and 47, only by their initials, B.A. and A.D., adding that they were local residents. Police think the people inside the van entered the country illegally from Greece, with plans to continue on to Serbia and then to wealthier European countries. They were transferred to a migrant reception center in the border town of Gevgelija, pending deportation to Greece. Police said they have intercepted a number of people in the past few weeks as the so-called “Balkan route,” which runs through the country, has become more active following the lifting of COVID-19 travel restrictions.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the