AUSTRALIA
Whistle-blower loses appeal
Army whistle-blower David McBride, who leaked allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan to the media, yesterday lost a court bid to have his prison sentence reduced. The three Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal judges unanimously rejected the 61-year-old former army lawyer’s appeal against the severity of a five-year and eight-month prison sentence imposed a year ago. His “oath obliged the appellant to discharge his duties ‘according to the law,’” the judges said.
Photo: AP
UNITED KINGDOM
Thames Water fined
Thames Water yesterday was fined a record ￡122.7 million (US$165 million) over pollution and improper dividend payments, a regulator said. Water watchdog Ofwat said that an investigation into “how the company was managing its treatment works and wider wastewater network uncovered failings that have amounted to a significant breach of the company’s legal obligations.”
Photo: AP
PANAMA
State of emergency imposed
The government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in one province after US banana giant Chiquita Brands laid off about 5,000 workers following a strike that had ground its production to a halt. The declaration allows the government to speed past bureaucratic hurdles to address economic or social crises quickly. Chiquita, which employed more than 7,000 workers, laid off about 5,000 of them last week for what it called unjustified abandonment of work.
Photo: EPA-EFE
MALAYSIA
Minister steps down
Minister of Economic Affairs Rafizi Ramli yesterday said that he was resigning from his Cabinet post after losing his position as deputy president of the People’s Justice Party (PKR) to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s daughter in a party poll. “My defeat in the recent PKR party election means I no longer have the mandate from my party to translate the people’s agenda — championed by PKR — into government policy,” Ramli said in a statement.
THAILAND
Armies clash on border
The army and Cambodian soldiers yesterday briefly fired at each other in their disputed border area, the two sides said. The Cambodian soldiers entered a disputed area and its soldiers approached the area to negotiate, but due to misunderstanding, the Cambodian side opened fire and the army retaliated, it said. Cambodian Army spokesman Mao Phalla said the Cambodian troops were conducting a routine patrol along the border when the other side opened fire. The clash lasted about 10 minutes until local commanders spoke to each other and ordered a ceasefire. Both sides said they had no casualties or no immediate information on its casualties.
IRAN
Man executed for spying
Tehran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, the judiciary said yesterday. “After identification, arrest and judicial proceedings against Pedram Madani, who was spying in favor of the Zionist regime, and following the complete process of criminal procedure and the final confirmation and upholding of the verdict by the Supreme Court, he was brought to justice and executed,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online reported. Madani was accused of transmitting classified information and holding meetings with Mossad officers abroad, including in Brussels, the report said.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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