■ Hong Kong
Arroyo appeals to maids
Courting migrant Filipino workers who can now vote from abroad, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo pressed the flesh and handed out raffle prizes yesterday while telling a crowd of mostly live-in maids she still has much to do for them. Arroyo's brief appearance -- in a hall decked with banners and packed with an estimated 5,000 people waving Philippine flags -- had the trappings of a national presidential campaign going global. "I've been working across continents to bring the message of Filipino pride and pride in the Filipinos' bright future," Arroyo said.
■ South Korea
Roh to send troops to Iraq
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, finalizing a decision to send forces to Iraq, will ask parliament to approve the deployment of 3,000 troops to help rebuild the war-torn country, his office said yesterday. Many in South Korea oppose sending more troops to Iraq, where two South Korean workers were killed last month. "The responsibility of the troops will be to help to rebuild peace in a certain area and the size of the troops will be 3,000," the presidential office said in statement after Roh met the leaders of the country's four main political parties.
■ Australia
Pilot stranded in Antarctica
An Australian pilot stranded in Antarctica after running out of fuel remained grounded on the icy continent yesterday because of bad weather. Jon Johanson refueled his plane on Saturday and had been expected to fly to New Zealand yesterday, but was unable to take off because of weather conditions, said his friend, Ed Herring. Herring said it was unclear when Johanson would finally depart. Johanson has been grounded at the US-New Zealand McMurdo-Scott base in Antarctica for almost a week since his homemade plane was forced to land there, without enough fuel to continue on to Argentina as planned.
■ Indonesia
Ghost train on 45km trip
An empty train travelled 45km with no driver at the engine and eight wagons in tow before coming to a halt in the center of the Indonesian capital, a report said yesterday. The electronic commuter train, parked in the town of Bogor, came to life at around 3:50am Friday and headed towards Jakarta at about 65km per hour, the state Antara news agency said, quoting station sources. A railway employee who saw the train begin to move climbed on board in an effort to stop the locomotive but could not enter the driving compartment. An Indonesian state railways spokesman, Patria Sutiyoso, said "technical problems" were behind the unscheduled journey, which caused no casualties or damage.
■ South Korea
Booze smugglers sentenced
A South Korean court gave three-year jail sentences to two South Koreans who smuggled duty-free beer and wine from a US military post exchange through an underground tunnel, a report said yesterday. The Seoul District Court also fined the two men a combined 1.9 billion won (US$1.6 million), the same amount they smuggled, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. South Korea imposes steep taxes on imported liquor ranging from 30 percent to 100 percent. Officials said the two men dug a 20m tunnel from the post exchange at the US military's Yongsan Garrison to a storage building just outside the base.
■ Spain
Basque plan under fire
Government ministers, opposition politicians and union leaders led thousands of marchers in Spain's Basque Country on Saturday to protest at a proposal to give the northern region greater autonomy from Madrid. Under the plan put forward by Basque premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe, the region would have the right to self-determination and a status of "free association" with the Spanish state. He says that would end decades of violence by separatist group ETA, but Spain's ruling Popular Party has said the plan "legitimized ETA terrorism" and violated the Constitution. The party has appealed to Spain's highest court to block it and threatened to jail Ibarretxe if he goes ahead with a referendum in the Basque Country on the proposal.
■ United Kingdom
Fans vote for Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy tale The Lord of the Rings was named Britain's favorite novel on Saturday in a BBC. poll. The book won 23 percent of around 750,000 votes cast to determine the winner from five finalists. The shortlist had been whittled down over several months from a BBC list of the country's 100 best-loved novels, which was based on votes from 140,000 people. The runner-up to Tolkien's novel was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which scooped 135,000 votes. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy came third, followed by Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
■ Canada
PM to focus on ethics
A day after being sworn in, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin met Saturday with his new Cabinet and said the first order of business would be creating an independent ethics commissioner to monitor his Liberal Party government's behavior. Martin, 65, who served nine years as finance minister for outgoing prime minister Jean Chretien, also rejected a call from the leftist New Democratic Party to cancel several billion dollars in planned tax cuts in order to bolster healthcare and other social programs.
■ United States
Thurmond subject of claim
After a lifetime of public silence, a 78-year-old Los Angeles woman is stepping forward to say she is the daughter of the late senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and a black woman who once worked as the Thurmond family maid. The woman, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired vocational school teacher, says she has incontrovertible evidence, including financial receipts and cashier's checks demonstrating his support for her and personal notes -- showing that Thurmond, once one of the nation's leading segregationists, was her father. Thurmond, a Republican who retired last year as the nation's longest-serving senator after 48 years in office, died in June at the age of 100.
■ Israel
Troops kill militant
Israeli troops shot dead an armed Palestinian militant while on patrol near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank yesterday, an army spokesman said. He said the militant had approached the dawn patrol in a threatening way outside Kfar Neama, north of Ramallah, and an M-16 assault rifle and ammunition were found next to his body after he was shot dead. He was identified as a wanted Islamic Jihad militant and two other members of the group were arrested nearby, the spokesman said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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