■ 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.
■ United Kingdom
`Work-gang masters' sought
The British police said on Saturday that an investigation into the deaths of 19 Chinese immigrants who drowned in tidal surges while digging for shellfish in northwestern England was leading them to the shadowy world of "rogue" work-gang masters in the Liverpool area. Mick Gradwell, deputy superinten-dent of detectives in Lanca-shire, said a number of leads suggested that crew chiefs in that region had been trans-porting Chinese immigrants to the tidal flats of Morecambe Bay to cash in on soaring prices for cockles, mollusks that bring high prices in European restaurants.
■ United States
Spirit drills hole in rock
The Mars rover Spirit drilled a hole in a rock on the Red Planet, marking the robot's return to full health and the first time a rover has deliberately carved martian rock, NASA scientists said. The rover's drill made a circular, 2.65mm-deep hole in a rock nicknamed Adirondack by scientists, according to information on the mission's Web site posted late on Friday. "When we saw virtually a complete circle, I was thrilled beyond anything I could have ever dreamed," said Steve Gorevan, who led the team at New York-based Honeybee Robotics, which designed the drill. "With the ... cutting parameters we set, I didn't think it would cut this deep."
■ Venezuela
Chavez accused of bullying
Venezuela's government is trying to intimidate officials who are deciding whether President Hugo Chavez should face a recall, an election official charged on Saturday. Ezequiel Zamora, vice president of the National Elections Council, condemned government plans to hold a vigil of pro-Chavez activists next week at a plaza next to elections headquarters in Caracas. Zamora also claimed he was being followed by military police and that his office telephones and faxes had been tampered with. Some elections staff have received death threats, he said. "We won't tolerate this lack of respect," Zamora told reporters. "The executive branch is interfering in the affairs of the election authorities."
■ Iran
Khatami backs down on vote
President Mohammad Khatami gave in to the supreme leader's order to hold legislative elections on Feb. 20 but said the polls would not be fair because thousands of prominent reformist candidates have been disqualified. Khatami's reluctant announcement and the boycott of the election by many reformists is likely to further erode its legitimacy, already in doubt after hard-liners repeatedly sabotaged attempts to reach a compromise over the disqualified candidates. In a joint letter sent to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday, Khatami and Parliament Speaker Mahdi Karroubi warned there will be little motivation for people to vote.
■ Ivory Coast
Gbagbo's rebel visit in doubt
Ivory Coast's rebels cast doubt Saturday on President Laurent Gbagbo's planned visit to their stronghold, saying it would be a "miracle" if it took place because they had not been consulted. Ivory Coast's government announced on Thursday that Gbagbo would visit rebel headquarters in Bouake on Feb. 16, in what would be his first venture into rebel territory since a civil war followed a failed coup in September 2002. "We don't have a problem with the fact he will come to Bouake one day, but we do have a problem with the fact he decided on his own," rebel spokesman Konate Sidiki said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not