■AUSTRALIA
Elephant calf blessed
Mali the baby elephant played with a red rubber ball as three Thai Buddhist monks splashed her face with water in a blessing ceremony yesterday for the Melbourne Zoo’s newest star. The calf, just under six weeks old, is the second elephant born in the country and has become the main attraction at the zoo since her Feb. 10 debut. The monks hummed and chanted as Mali played with the ball and ran circles around her mother, Dokkoon, who was brought over from Thailand in November 2006 as part of a program facilitated by the Thai government. Mali’s name was chosen last week by 23,000 Victoria state voters from a list of several suggested by the Thai consulate. Mali is Thai for jasmine. Elephants are a hallowed national symbol in Thailand, having been long linked with good luck. “It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful calf,” zoo keeper Dan Maloney said. “She’s growing very quickly, getting more coordinated every day and certainly exploring her world and getting to know her surroundings.”
■CAMBODIA
French man jailed over sex
A municipal court yesterday ordered a 63-year-old Frenchman to serve seven months in prison for soliciting sex with a child prostitute. Michel Jean Raymond Charlot was arrested last August after police raided his guesthouse room and found him having sex with the 16-year-old girl in Phnom Penh. The court convicted Charlot and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment, but ordered him to spend only seven months in prison from the date of his arrest with the rest of the sentence suspended. The sentence was shortened owing to his age and because he had admitted to having sex with the girl, whom he said he thought was aged 18 at the time, the court said. The court also ordered Charlot to pay US$250 to the girl and to be deported after he completes his prison term next month.
■SOUTH KOREA
Court upholds death penalty
The death penalty does not violate the nation’s Constitution, the nine-member Constitutional Court said in a 5-4 ruling yesterday in response to a 2008 petition by a fisherman who was sentenced to death for killing four tourists. The decision is final and cannot be appealed. The court also upheld the death penalty in 1996. Court spokesman Noh Hee-bum said there are 59 death row inmates in the country, though the country has had a de facto moratorium on capital punishment and has not executed anyone since 1997, when 23 inmates were executed. The court said 92 countries have abolished capital punishment for all crimes as of 2008.
■NETHERLANDS
Van Gogh work authenticated
A newly authenticated Van Gogh has gone on display 35 years after a discredited art collector bought it in Paris, convinced it was painted by the famed Dutch master, but never able to prove it. Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said Le Blute-Fin Mill was painted in 1886. He said its large human figures are unusual for a Van Gogh landscape, but it has his typically bright colors. It was bought in 1974 by Dirk Hannema, who was known as a brilliant museum curator but a fool when buying for his own collection. When he died in 1984 he claimed to have seven Vermeers, several Van Goghs and a few Rembrandts. He was right only about this one.
■ISRAEL
No human shields: military
The military said it has closed two cases in which soldiers were suspected of using Palestinians as human shields during the Gaza War a year ago. In a statement, the military said on Wednesday that its investigation found “no basis for the charges” that soldiers looted or used civilians as shields against Hamas gunfire. It said the civilians were removed from the battle zone. Charges of soldiers’ Israeli use of human shields were a key part of a UN inquiry alleging war crimes by both Tel Aviv and Hamas. The military had no immediate response about whether other human shield cases were still open.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Mercy killings not allowed
Mercy killers in England will face the full force of the law under new guidelines on assisted suicide, the head of the country’s prosecution service said in comments published yesterday. Those who respond to a request from a loved one to help in their suicide, however, are unlikely to face prosecution, Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales Keir Starmer wrote in the Times newspaper, trailing new guidance he was to unveil later in the day. “Assisted suicide involves assisting the victim to take his or her own life,” Starmer wrote. A decision on prosecution would also depend on the motivation of the person who helped someone to die, he wrote. “Whether the suspect was wholly motivated by compassion was seen by many as a key factor when considering prosecution,” he said. Assisted suicide has been at the center of fierce debate after a string of recent high-profile cases. Last week, a veteran BBC broadcaster was arrested on suspicion of murder after admitting in a TV program about assisted suicide that he had smothered an ex-lover who had AIDS. There were also two recent cases of mothers who killed their seriously ill children, one of whom was jailed.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Miliband pans Afghan polls
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Wednesday he doubted there would be “free and fair” polls in Afghanistan this year after Afghan President Hamid Karzai took control of a key election watchdog. Miliband was speaking after Karzai changed a law to give himself control of appointments to the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which threw out more than 500,000 votes cast for him in last year’s tainted presidential poll. Afghanistan is due to hold parliamentary elections in September, postponed for four months from May. He said Britain would be “extremely concerned” to see who Karzai nominated to the ECC, indicating there would be “consequences” if he failed to meet promises made at a London conference last month on tackling corruption.
■UNITED STATES
Officer pleas in Katrina case
In Hurricane Katrina’s chaotic aftermath, police shot six people — killing two — as they crossed a bridge in search of food. For years the case was a shocking symbol of the confusion and violence that swept through the flooded city. On Wednesday it became a mark of shame for the police department. As victims’ relatives watched from the courtroom gallery, a retired lieutenant who supervised the department’s probe of the shootings pleaded guilty to orchestrating a cover-up to conceal that police gunned down unarmed civilians. Michael Lohman, a 21-year veteran of the force, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Prosecutors said Lohman and other unidentified officers conspired to fabricate witness statements, falsify reports of the incident and plant a gun in an attempt to make it appear the killings were justified.
■MEXICO
Sinaloa not spared: Calderon
President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday defended his military crackdown on the country’s powerful drug gangs and denied accusations that some criminals were being spared. Critics have accused Calderon, who deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to take on drug gangs after he took office in late 2006, of protecting the Sinaloa gang, based on the Pacific coast, run by the country’s most notorious fugitive Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman. “That false, bad faith accusation, which is made to do I don’t know what to the government, doesn’t stand up,” Calderon told a news conference. “We have equally hit cartels linked to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mexican Pacific,” the Mexican leader said, referring to umbrella groups of drug gangs on both coasts. Analysts, opposition politicians and other drug gangs have accused Calderon of arresting fewer leaders of the Sinaloa gang than their rivals.
■UNITED STATES
Killing suspect ‘competent’
A man charged with killing the operator of a speed-camera van along a freeway has been found competent to stand trial and will not face the death penalty, a judge said on Wednesday. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp said in court that Thomas Patrick Destories, 69, was found competent to stand trial by two psychologists and set his trial for July 12. Destories’ attorney, Vanessa Smith, had written in court documents that her client has a history of mental illness dating back to 1970, that their conversations have been disjointed and that he has showed paranoia. Destories, a Jeep tour operator, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, drive-by shooting and firing a gun at a structure in the death of Doug Georgianni, 51.
■UNITED STATES
Madoff kin to change name
One of Bernard Madoff’s daughters-in-law says she and her children shouldn’t have to bear the burden of his name. Stephanie Madoff filed court papers in Manhattan on Wednesday asking to change her last name to Morgan. She made the same request for her two children. She is married to the jailed financier’s son, Mark. She says her family has gotten threats, and she wants to drop the Madoff name to avoid “additional humiliation” and harassment. Her lawyer declined to comment. Mark Madoff says in court papers he doesn’t object. Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after admitting he cheated investors out of billions of dollars through an investment Ponzi scheme.
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
PINEAPPLE DEBATE: While the owners of the pizzeria dislike pineapple on pizza, a survey last year showed that over 50% of Britons either love or like the topping A trendy pizzeria in the English city of Norwich has declared war on pineapples, charging an eye-watering ￡100 (US$124) for a Hawaiian in a bid to put customers off the disputed topping. Lupa Pizza recently added pizza topped with ham and pineapple to its account on a food delivery app, writing in the description: “Yeah, for ￡100 you can have it. Order the champagne too! Go on, you monster!” “[We] vehemently dislike pineapple on pizza,” Lupa co-owner Francis Wolf said. “We feel like it doesn’t suit pizza at all,” he said. The other co-owner, head chef Quin Jianoran, said they kept tinned pineapple
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