NEPAL
Yadav to be treated in Japan
President Ram Baran Yadav was to fly to Japan yesterday for medical treatment after he was diagnosed with intestinal problems, a spokesman said. The 70-year-old fell ill two days earlier and was admitted to a hospital in the capital late on Saturday, his press adviser, Rajendra Dahal, told reporters. X-rays showed a dark “stain in his large intestine,” Dahal said. “The doctors suggested to us to seek treatment abroad. So he is leaving for Japan this afternoon for further treatment.” Yadav was elected president by parliament in July 2008 after the 240-year-old monarchy was abolished.
NEW ZEALAND
Briton survives 15-story drop
A British man who survived a fall from a 15th-story apartment balcony was “extraordinarily” lucky to be alive, officials said yesterday. The 20-year-old, identified by local media as Tom Stilwell from Brighton, was in a stable condition after his plunge on Sunday morning, Auckland Central Hospital said. Police said he found he was locked out of his 14th-floor apartment when he returned home from going out with friends. He woke a neighbor on the 15th floor, telling her he wanted to clamber down from her balcony onto his own. The neighbor, Geraldine Bautista, said the man appeared “tipsy” and she allowed him into her apartment, intending to point out to him how foolhardy his plan was. Instead, she said he immediately tried to lower himself from her balcony and slipped as she tried to grab him. “I thought I was dreaming. It happened so fast. It happened within seconds,” she told the New Zealand Herald. St John Ambulance medical director Tony Smith said the man’s fall was broken by an adjacent roof, although he still dropped 13 stories. “Survival from falls of that height are extraordinarily unusual,” he said. Stilwell suffered back and neck fractures as well as internal injuries, a broken wrist and grazes, but was awake and able to laugh about his ordeal, his roommate, Beth Goodwin, told Fairfax Media.
AUSTRALIA
Scammers rake in millions
Australians were fleeced out of more than A$93 million (US$90 million) last year by scammers, and officials yesterday said they believe it was just the tip of the iceberg. The money lost on scams was up 9 percent from the previous year with a big jump in online shopping scams, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a new report. The biggest fraud was people being asked to pay to access a share in a sum of money they are told they are owed, with gullible Australians handing over more than A$30 million. This was followed by A$23.3 million being sent to someone they think they are in an online relationship with, but is in fact a con. Online shopping fraud, using increasingly sophisticated fake logos, e-mails or Web sites, raked in more than A$4 million.
EGYPT
Morsi makes allies governors
President Mohamed Morsi put Islamist allies in key positions across the country as he braces for protests on the first anniversary of his inauguration at the end of the month. Seven of the new governors listed by the state news agency are members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The newly appointed Luxor Governor Adel Mohamed al-Khayat is a member of the Building and Development Party, established by Al Gamaa al-Islamiya, an Islamist group that was involved in attacks in Luxor that killed about 60 tourists in the late 1990s, but later renounced violence.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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