IN BRIEF (Page 11)

The Netherlands

Dutch to put four on trial over MH17 crash

Dutch prosecutors will put four people on trial for murder next year over the shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine, in which 298 people were killed, relatives said on Wednesday. The court case over the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane will start in the Netherlands on March 9 next year, according to family members who were briefed ahead of an announcement by international investigators. The identities of the four people to be charged were not immediately available. The airliner traveling between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was torn apart in midair after being hit by a missile over territory in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, investigators said.

Australia

Voluntary euthanasia becomes legal

Voluntary euthanasia has become legal in an Australian state more than 20 years after the country repealed the world's first mercy-killing law for the terminally ill. The process of dying in an assisted suicide after an initial approach to a doctor in Victoria state takes at least 10 days from Wednesday. So the first patient could die from swallowing a lethal cocktail of chemicals on June 29. Strict rules are designed to prevent terminally ill patients from traveling from overseas or interstate to access the laws. "We anticipate that once the scheme has been in place for some time, we'll see between 100 and 150 patients access this scheme every year," said Jenny Mikakos, the state's health minister.

Russia

Polar bear spotted far from normal habitat

An emaciated polar bear has been sighted in an industrial city in Siberia, far south of its normal hunting grounds. Emergency officials in the city of Norilsk in a statement on Tuesday, warned local residents about a bear that has been spotted in one city district. Anatoly Nikolaichuk, chief of the local hunting department, told Tass news agency that the last time a polar bear was seen in the area around Norilsk was more than 40 years ago. He said local officials will now decide whether they can catch the animal and airlift it back to the north.

Afp - Ap

(China Daily 06/20/2019 page11)