■AUSTRALIA
Warrior laid to rest
The remains of 19th-century Aboriginal warrior Yagan have been laid to rest in the west of the country, nearly 180 years after he was killed and his severed head was displayed in a British museum. The private ceremony held on Saturday by the Noongar tribe coincided with the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park in Swan Valley, just outside of Perth. Yagan was shot by a European settler in 1833. His body was believed to be buried in Swan Valley, but his head was taken to England, where it sat in a museum for a century before being buried in an English cemetery.
■CHINA
Floods wreak havoc
Torrential rains have triggered flooding and landslides in the center and south of the country that have caused more than 50 deaths this month. Fifteen other people were missing. More than 17 million people over nine provinces have been affected by the rains since the start of this month, with 600,000 people relocated, the Ministry for Civil Affairs said on its Web site. More rain was forecast for yesterday. More than 42,000 houses have collapsed and another 121,000 were damaged, the ministry said.
■CHINA
Usher sings in Chinese
Usher was to sing in Chinese, briefly, during his debut concert in the nation yesterday in Beijing. Usher was scheduled to sing one of Asian pop sensation Wang Leehom’s (王力宏) songs in Chinese, Wang told a joint press conference on Saturday night, and the two will also sing Usher’s No. 1 OMG. “I wanted to make a great impression, so I wanted to do something very special,” Usher said. “After hearing [Wang’s] music, I wanted to collaborate with him.”
■IRAQ
Campaign targets dogs
Teams of veterinarians and police shooters have killed some 58,000 stray dogs in and around Baghdad over the past three months as part of a campaign to curb an increasing number of strays blamed for attacks on residents. The Baghdad provincial government said in a statement released yesterday that 20 teams have been moving around the city and the outer-lying districts daily looking for and putting down the dogs. The operation, which was first announced in late 2008, only truly took off in April after funds were allocated for the project. The surge in strays — estimated by provincial officials to number around 1.25 million — is ironically linked to what officials say is an improvement in some elements of daily life in Baghdad, a city that for seven years has been struggling to return to normalcy after the 2003 US-led invasion to topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Officials with the provincial veterinary directorate said that with open-air markets and bustling city life returning, the dogs are able to find more food and are having bigger litters.
■GERMANY
Croc cornered in Frankfurt
A crocodile’s break for freedom from a reptile show proved shortlived on Saturday when it was cornered at a building site in Frankfurt’s financial district, police said. Acting on a tip from a sharp-eyed motorist, police discovered the crocodile — about 3m-long, 170kg and 65 years old — and returned it to its rightful owners. In any event, it did not get far: the reptile show has been underway just next door to where it was found. Only 10 days ago another runaway crocodile — this time from a small travelling circus — was captured in the small town of Gross-Rohrheim, about 50km south of Frankfurt.
■MACEDONIA
Pletnev again says innocent
Acclaimed Russian conductor Mikhail Pletnev on Saturday again protested his innocence after being charged with raping a teenage boy in Thailand, saying the affair was a “set up.” “A big company wants to present me as a criminal, which I am not,” Pletnev told a press conference at the lake resort of Ohrid, without elaborating. “Nowhere in the world I did anything wrong. On the contrary, I have done a lot of good things in Thailand, which inhabitants there could tell about ... I hope all this will be solved soon or later and justice will prevail.” Pletnev and his Russian National Orchestra (RNO) are to perform today at the opening ceremony of the summer music festival in Ohrid, where he had come along with members of the RNO aboard a charter flight from Moscow. He has been allowed by a Thai court to travel overseas after posting extra bail, but is required to report back to the court every 12 days, starting from July 18.
■TUNISIA
Terror convictions for eight
A defense lawyer says a court has convicted eight people of terrorism-related charges and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from two to 12 years. Samir Ben Amor says the eight were accused of “belonging to a terror group” and “inciting terrorist acts.” Some alleged they had been tortured to extract confessions. The lawyer learned of the verdict on Saturday. Human Rights Watch says nearly all those convicted were accused of planning to join jihadist groups abroad or encouraging others to do so, not having planned or committed attacks.
■BRAZIL
Bomb threat lands plane
A security alert over a possible bomb on board forced an Air France flight flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris to make an unscheduled landing in the northeast city of Recife, the airline said yesterday. Air France said the 405 passengers and 18 crew on flight AF443 had been evacuated while security checks were carried out on the Boeing 747-400. The airplane landed late on Saturday and was positioned in a remote area of the airport and all the passengers evacuated, airport authority Infraero said in a statement. Police finished their inspection of the plane without finding a bomb with a luggage search ongoing.
■UNITED STATES
Activists save 174 horses
With the financial backing of a California winery owner, activists on Saturday purchased almost all 174 horses up for sale at a state-sanctioned auction in Nevada to keep the horses from going to the slaughterhouse. Stephanie Hoefener of the Lancaster, California-based Livesavers Wild Horse Rescue group said activists purchased 172 horses for US$31,415. The other two horses were acquired by private individuals for their personal use, she said. Starr said the purchase of the horses at the Fallon auction was made possible by the financial backing of Ellie Phipps Price, owner of Sand Hill Durell Vineyards in Sonoma, California.
■CUBA
Group of dissidents freed
The government on Saturday began releasing a small group of ailing political prisoners as part of a wider agreement to free 52 dissidents, relatives of three released prisoners told reporters. The three were released to undisclosed locations and were reportedly among a group of 17 of the dissidents who plan to go to Spain. The unusual prisoner release, set to be the biggest this decade on the island, was announced earlier this week after unprecedented talks between President Raul Castro and Cardinal Jaime Ortega. A church official said earlier that 10 dissidents would be freed and would travel to Spain “soon,” as part of the deal negotiated by the Cuban Roman Catholic church.
■UNITED STATES
Accused had not been jailed
Probation and jail records show that the 57-year-old man charged with 10 murders in the Grim Sleeper case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades and was in police custody many times after the killings began. A report in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times says the arrests of Lonnie David Franklin for crimes including burglary, car theft and assault were never considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state’s DNA database. One of the murder victims was killed in July 2003, when records show Franklin should have been in county jail for receiving stolen property but he was released early because of overcrowding. Franklin was arrested on Wednesday.
■UNITED STATES
Boy shoots younger brother
Los Angeles police say a nine-year-old boy playing with a loaded gun accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old brother. Police said in a statement on Saturday that officers and paramedics found the toddler with a bullet wound to the torso after they were called to the boys’ home in the San Fernando Valley. Police say the two-year-old died at a hospital on Friday night. The statement says homicide detectives interviewed family members and determined that the gun had gone off while the nine-year-old was playing with it. Police say no criminal charges are pending.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
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