■ Notth Korea
N Korea to keep `deterrent'
North Korea recently told the US it intends to maintain a "minimum nuclear deterrent" until diplomatic ties with Washington are normalized, a leading Japanese daily said on Sunday. Another newspaper reported the North's highest-ranking defector as having told it Pyongyang began a uranium-based nuclear program in 1996 under a deal with Pakistan. The reports came just days after North Korea agreed to hold a second round of multiparty talks on its nuclear program from Feb. 25 in Beijing, with both Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia taking part. The Mainichi Shimbun quoted US government sources in Washington as saying Pyongyang made the statement to explain its December proposal to freeze nuclear activities.
■ Australia
Far-right party quashed
Firebrand Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation Party was licking its wounds yesterday after a second consecutive electoral setback in the Australian state of Queensland. Anti-immigration One Nation, which won a quarter of the vote and 11 seats in the 1998 Queensland state election, managed to retain only one of its two seats at the weekend poll won by Premier Peter Beattie's Labor Party. Hanson, who served 11 weeks of a three-year sentence for electoral fraud last year, has split from the party. Her conviction was quashed on appeal and she has turned her back on politics. The only successful One Nation candidate, Rosa Lee Long, blamed voters for the poor result. "Why people are still going back to the major parties really beats me," she said.
■ Malaysia
Police probe nuclear sale
Malaysian police investigating the sale of nuclear parts to Libya have found nothing to implicate a firm partly-owned by the prime minister's son, newspapers reported on yesterday. "We are still at the early stage of investigation and we have not found anything to show that the company had done anything wrong," the New Sunday Times quoted Inspector-General of Police Mohd Bakri Omar as saying. He said police hoped to wrap up investigations soon. Malaysian police said this week they were investigating a Sri Lankan businessman who is allegedly a middleman in the supply of centrifuge parts for uranium enrichment.
■ Thailand
Schools resurrect ghosts
Schools in northern Thailand are promoting belief in "ancestor ghosts" in order to discourage children from taking drugs and engaging in premarital sex, a news report said yesterday. Under a pilot scheme introduced 18 months ago in Lampang province, 560km north of Bangkok, educators hope to revive an ancient system of ghost worship that has faded over the past 50 years. "Before we introduced the ghost system, the generation gap can talk more easily about each other's problems and help each other solve them." By instilling a fear of retribution by the ghosts of dead ancestors, he said, children tend to follow rules such as "no drugs" and "no sex before marriage."
■ Singapore
Young girls at risk
Teenage girls using Internet chatrooms are often asked for their phone numbers by strangers who also seek to meet them, a Singapore survey said on yesterday. Particularly vulnerable are 14-year-old girls, the results said. About 30 percent of them were asked for their numbers and to meet. The results published in The Sunday Times found the figures ranged between 10 and 20 percent for other age groups.
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