■INDONESIA
Bengal cub tiger mauls girl
A young Bengal tiger mauled a three-year-old girl after breaking free from its handlers at a zoo, a spokeswoman said yesterday, leaving the toddler with head injuries that required surgery. The 10-month-old male tiger, Ony, attacked Angelica Rosa while it was being transferred between enclosures at Taman Safari Prigen zoo in East Java on Monday morning, park spokeswoman Tisa Ananda said. “It seems that the tiger, who’s only 10 months old, was excited to see the girl and wanted to play with her,” Ananda told reporters.
■MALAYSIA
Military student hazed, dies
A student died at the top military college, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, after he was allegedly hazed and authorities were investigating five schoolmates, one of whom had been expelled, officials said yesterday. The 17-year-old boys are being investigated for suspected murder in connection with the death of Mohammed Naim Mustaqim Mohamad Sobri, 16, district police chief Abdul Rahim Hamzah Othman said. Media have reported Mohammed Naim apparently collapsed after being kicked in the abdomen while doing push-ups, but police and school officials declined to confirm the details.
■MYANMAR
Rare white elephant seen
A rare white elephant, historically considered an omen of political change, has been captured, state media reported yesterday. The female pachyderm was captured by officials on Saturday in the coastal town of Maungtaw in Rakhine State, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. She is aged about 38 and more than 2m tall, the English-language paper said, although it did not mention where she would be kept.
■ICELAND
PM takes same-sex spouse
Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, has married her long-term partner, her office said on Monday, making her the world’s first national leader with a same-sex spouse. Sigurdardottir, 67, married writer Jonina Leosdottir on Sunday, the day a new law took effect defining marriage as a union between two consenting adults regardless of sex. The two had had a civil union for years and changed this into a marriage under the new law, which was approved by parliament earlier this month.
■RWANDA
Two arrested over murder
Rwanda arrested two men on Sunday in connection with the murder of a journalist who had linked the government to the shooting of an exiled general in South Africa last week, police said. Jean Leonard Rugambage, acting editor of the vernacular Umuvugizi newspaper, was shot twice outside his home in Kigali on June 24 and died on the spot. A national police statement dismissed accusations that Rugambage’s death was related to his work as a journalist and suggested that it was probably revenge for alleged crimes committed during the 1994 genocide. President Paul Kagame said Rugambage’s death was unacceptable.
■RUSSIA
Official flings out millions
A fisheries official suspected of accepting bribes tossed 10 million rubles (US$322,000) from his car after a police chase and a crash on a busy Moscow highway, investigators said on Monday. Pursued by police, Federal Fisheries Agency official Boris Simonov crashed his Cadillac on Friday and frantically flung 10 million rubles into the wind, local media reported. State-run First Channel television showed scores of large-denomination ruble notes being collected by police and cast into a torn, grimy cardboard box beside a thoroughfare in south-central Moscow. A spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee said Simonov’s boss, Roman Postnikov, who oversaw two Moscow rivers, was arrested on suspicion of forging a contract that allowed a fishing firm to operate without the proper documents. Both fishery officials will be jailed for two months pending further investigation, the committee said.
■SWITZERLAND
Mr Swatch dies at 82
Nicolas Hayek, chairman and former chief executive of the giant Swiss watch-manufacturing firm Swatch, has died. He was 82. Swatch Group said Hayek died unexpectedly of heart failure on Monday at his office in Biel, Switzerland. “Nicolas G Hayek’s greatest merit was his enormous contribution to the saving of the Swiss watch industry and the foundation and the commercial development of the Swatch Group,” the company said in a statement. The self-styled Mr Swatch is credited with reinventing Swiss watch-making in the 1980s by introducing radical cost-saving moves after he was asked to help close it down. SMH started to produce a plastic wristwatch — the Swatch — which revolutionized the industry.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Flight attendant charged
A South African Airways flight attendant has been charged with trying to smuggle 3kg of cocaine into Britain through London’s Heathrow airport, the UK Border Agency said on Monday. Elphia Dlamini, 42, was arrested after arriving on a flight from Johannesburg on Saturday. The UK Border Agency said officers found the cocaine, worth an estimated £120,000 (US$181,000), on Dlamini during crew clearance checks.
■MEXICO
Famous singer shot dead
A singer famous for ballads lauding drug traffickers has been shot dead on the way to a concert in the northwest of the country, officials said on Monday. Unidentified attackers fired several times on Sergio Vega, or “El Shaka,” in his car late on Saturday as he was traveling to a concert in Sinaloa State, deputy local prosecutor Ramon Ignacio Rodrigo told journalists. Moments earlier, the 40-year-old singer had asked a friend to call the police because his car was being followed, according to the national Reforma daily. “When help arrived, it was already too late,” Ana Luisa Gomez told Reforma. The singer died at the scene after being hit by five bullets, Rodrigo said. Although the motive for the attack was unclear, El Shaka had the risky profession of singing narcocorridos — ballads lauding the exploits of drug traffickers — in Sinaloa, the state at the heart of Mexico’s illegal drugs industry.
■UNITED STATES
Fan beats toddler to death
A Texas man accused of fatally beating his two-year-old stepdaughter when she wouldn’t stop crying as he watched a World Cup game has been charged with capital murder. McAllen Police Sergeant Joel Morales said 27-year-old Hector Castro was charged on Monday after his arrest on Saturday. Castro is being held on US$1 million bond at the Hidalgo County jail, where a booking clerk said he does not yet have an attorney. Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said Castro told investigators the toddler wouldn’t stop crying while he was trying to watch the US-Ghana match on Saturday. Rodriguez said the child was severely beaten and suffered several broken ribs. Police said a screw or bolt was forced down her throat in an apparent attempt to make it look like she choked to death.
■UNITED STATES
Man convicted of hate crime
A New York City jury has convicted a man of murder as a hate crime in the beating death of an Ecuadorean immigrant. Jurors deliberated for about seven hours on Monday before convicting Keith Phoenix in the December 2008 death of Jose Sucuzhanay. Phoenix was also convicted of attempted assault as a hate crime in the attack on Sucuzhanay’s brother. He was retried on the charges after the first jury ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors said Phoenix and Hakim Scott mistook the brothers for gay men and yelled slurs. Scott was convicted in May of manslaughter, but was acquitted of a more serious murder charge.
■UNITED STATES
Actor Klein facing jail term
Los Angeles prosecutors said they have charged American Pie actor Chris Klein with drunken driving. City Attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said Klein faces two misdemeanor driving under the influence charges and will be arraigned on July 9. Mateljan said Klein faces a minimum of three days in jail and up to a year sentence if convicted because of a prior drunken driving case. Klein played Chris “Oz” Ostreicher in 1999’s American Pie and in the 2001 sequel.
■UNITED STATES
Former champ misses out
Serious eaters are getting ready to scoff their way to glory in New York’s 95th annual hot dog eating contest on Sunday, but a famous contestant will be missing. Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi has won the contest six times. Major League Eating president Richard Shea said contract negotiations broke down this year. Kobayashi was champion from 2001 to 2006. He lost the last three years to Joey Chestnut of San Jose, California.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home