■AUSTRALIA
Mayor woos ‘ugly’ women
Life can get a little lonely for bachelors in the mining town of Mount Isa. So the mayor has offered up a solution: recruit ugly women. Mayor John Molony found himself under attack yesterday over comments he made to a local newspaper that read: “May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.” The mayor added that many women who already live in the remote Queensland state town seem quite happy. The quotes, published on Saturday in the Townsville Bulletin, sparked outrage among the town’s female population, led to furious online debates and drew criticism from the local chamber of commerce.
■AUSTRALIA
Hungarian fights extradition
An 86-year-old alleged war criminal accused of torturing and murdering a young Jewish man in World War II faced a last-ditch fight against extradition to Hungary yesterday. Charles Zentai is accused of beating to death teenager Peter Balazs in 1944 in Budapest while serving as a soldier in the army of his native Hungary, then allied with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The allegations against Zentai, which he denies, have been brought by the Jewish human rights organization known for tracking down alleged Nazi war criminals, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Zentai, having migrated to Australia after the war ended, was living quietly in the western Australian city of Perth before the Hungarian government began extradition proceedings in March 2005.
■NEPAL
Prachanda sworn in as PM
Maoist leader Prachanda was sworn in as prime minister of the new republic yesterday, finalizing his transformation from warlord to the country’s most powerful politician. The former rebel chief was overwhelmingly voted in as new prime minister on Friday by lawmakers in the constitutional assembly, which in May abolished the unpopular 240-year-old Hindu monarchy. “I will remain faithful to the nation and my countrymen and promise in the name of the people that I will remain faithful to the sovereign nation of Nepal,” he said in his oath of office.
■MALAYSIA
DNA law proposed
The government yesterday proposed a law that would make it mandatory for criminal suspects to provide DNA samples — a move that critics claim is meant to bolster a sodomy charge against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar introduced the DNA Identification Bill in parliament, but denied the government was targeting Anwar, who has refused to give police a DNA swab in an investigation into an accusation that he sodomized a male aide. “There is no political motive,” Syed Hamid told reporters. “I think it is ridiculous that [the opposition] looks at everything as having a political motive.”
■INDIA
Law creates militants: HRW
Rights campaigners urged the government yesterday to revoke a half-century-old law that gives the army sweeping powers to deal with militants. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, enacted exactly 50 years ago, had become “a tool of state abuse, oppression and discrimination.” Meenakshi Ganguly, senior HRW researcher, said the act was “a recruiting agent for militant groups” as it fed public anger by encouraging extrajudicial killings, torture and rape.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police attacked with rocket
Three Northern Ireland police officers were attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade over the weekend in an incident that authorities blamed on dissident republican groups opposed to the UK province’s peace process. The rocket grenade was fired at the officers while they were on foot patrol in Lisnaskea, close to the border with the Irish Republic, at around 11pm on Saturday, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said in a statement late on Sunday. The rocket failed to detonate and two police were treated for shock and one for minor injuries.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Planes collide in midair
Two small planes collided in midair and crashed in central England on Sunday, killing five people, emergency workers said. The planes slammed into each other near Coventry, about 140km northwest of London. The crash involved a Cessna carrying four people, and a light aircraft, which only had the pilot onboard, police said. The debris from the collision stretched across several kilometers. No one on the ground was reported injured. The light aircraft, described as a microlight, crashed into a field after the collision, while the Cessna came down in a nearby wooded area, authorities said.
■HONG KONG
‘Michelin’ reviewers in town
Hong Kong looks set to become the second Asian city to have its restaurants put on the international culinary map by France’s prestigious Michelin guide, hotels and a media report said yesterday. Reviewers for the famed red book that can make or break chefs have been spotted making discreet visits to some of the city’ finer eateries in the months since Michelin launched its first Tokyo guide in November. Recently a European man dined at the Italian restaurant of the five-star hotel, InterContinental Grand Stanford, and showed his Michelin identity card when paying for his meal.
■FIJI
Coup leader snubs meeting
The island nation’s military coup chief pulled out of the Pacific Islands Forum summit yesterday, snubbing regional leaders and avoiding tough questions over postponing democratic elections he had pledged to hold by March next year. The self-appointed prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, announced in the capital Suva that he would not attend the forum’s annual summit on the island of Niue, held today through Thursday. Bainimarama criticized the forum for putting pressure on his country. Bainimarama pledged at the Pacific Forum last year that he would hold elections by next year, but he said earlier this month that elections would be delayed.
■SERBIA
Officials refuse extradition
Laws forbidding extraditions are protecting Miladin Kovacevic, a student wanted by the US after he brutally beat a fellow student, the government in Belgrade said yesterday in a case that has tested Serbian-US relations. It was up to Kovacevic whether he would turn himself in for a trial, a newspaper quoted Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic as saying. Kovacevic, 21, along with two friends, was charged after nearly killing a fellow student from Binghamton, a university town in New York State, in May. He fled to Serbia a month later, after a US$100,000 bail was posted, reportedly by the Serbian consulate, which also issued Kovacevic an “emergency passport,” replacing the one confiscated by US authorities. The run outraged US leaders.
■MEXICO
Drug violence escalates
Drug-related violence killed 2,682 people since the start of the year, more than all of last year (2,673), with nearly half occurring in northern Chihuahua state, the El Universal daily reported on Saturday. Bordering the US, Chihuahua saw 1,026 drug-related murders this year, or 38.2 percent of the country’s total. In one 20-day period alone, July 15 to Aug. 5, there were 326 slayings in the state. Within Chihuahua, Ciudad Juarez — across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas — had the highest murder toll, with nearly 800 so far this year. Overnight on Friday, seven people were killed in the city.
■BRAZIL
Diplomat escapes captors
A Vietnamese diplomat managed to escape his captors on Sunday through the roof of the shantytown shack where he was being held, a day after he was abducted from a Rio de Janeiro taxi, police said. Vu Thanh Nam, identified by the Vietnamese Embassy as a high-ranking consular official, was in a cab en route to Rio’s famed Christ the Redeemer statue on Saturday when the car was stopped by eight gunmen. The assailants robbed three family members riding with Vu and let them go. But after he identified himself as a diplomat, they pushed him into one of three getaway vehicles and took off, said a Rio police spokeswoman.Vu later told Globo TV’s G1 Web site that the kidnappers fed him peanuts and water and held him in a small shack along with three Chinese tourists. He said that all four captives managed to escape through the structure’s poorly built roof.
■HAITI
Truck accident kills dozens
Dozens died when a truck carrying 60 people plunged into a river in southwestern Haiti on Sunday, a civil protection official said. “The truck was carrying around 60 people. It overturned as it was crossing a bridge on the river Glace in southwestern Haiti,” said local civil protection coordinator Silvera Guillaume. He said about 30 people may have drowned in the river. About 15 people, including women and children, have been rescued, he said.
■UNITED STATES
Video games not all bad
Playing video games improves manual dexterity among surgeons, making them faster and less likely to make mistakes, US researchers said on Sunday. The findings were contained in a raft of research about how video games affect the people who play them, discussed on Sunday at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston. Psychologist Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University presented several studies on video games including one involving 33 surgeons specializing in laparoscopy, the use of a thin, lighted tube to inspect and treat various conditions in the pelvic and abdominal cavities. Laparoscopic surgeons who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37 percent fewer errors, compared to their non-gaming colleagues, the study found.
■CANADA
Harper calls special election
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is calling a special election to fill a vacant parliamentary seat this fall. The special election is set for Sept. 22. Three other special elections to fill parliamentary seats are scheduled for Sept. 8. The special elections have raised questions about whether Harper is testing the waters for a general election later in the fall. The Conservatives have held power since 2006 — the longest a minority government has ever been in office.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
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