■ China
Police seek deadly container
Hundreds of police were searching yesterday for a football-sized container of a potentially deadly radioactive substance which explodes if mixed with water after it was stolen from a construction site. The material, cesium-137, has been missing for five days in Pucheng County, Shaanxi Province, the China Daily reported. The substance can cause birth defects, sterility and blood diseases to those who come into contact with it. It is mainly used in photoelectronic batteries, vacuum valves and as a test tool in metal surveys, the paper said. Police believe it was taken by someone unaware of what was inside.
■ Japan
Beijing upset with Koizumi
China is unhappy about Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's justification of his visits to a shrine for Japan's war dead, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said yesterday. Asked in parliament on Tuesday if he felt reluctant to visit Yasukuni shrine because it enshrines war criminals along with other military dead, Koizumi said: "I have no such feeling." He has visited the shrine each year since taking office in 2001, visits condemned by South Korea and China. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) said Beijing thinks the comments were "extremely regrettable" and it wanted to express its displeasure, the Japanese official said, citing Wang's comments to Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi.
■ South Korea
Ex-dictator faces questions
Prosecutors planned to summon former military dictator Chun Doo-hwan next week, news reports said yesterday, a day after his son was arrested on tax evasion charges. Chun, an ex-army general, took power in a coup in 1979 and ruled for more than 10 years. He was convicted in 1997 of collecting hundreds of billions of won in bribes from businessmen during his presidency. The court ordered him to repay 220 billion won (US$188 million) he is believed to have stashed away. But he has only repaid 33.3 billion won and claims he has only 290,000 won in savings.
■ Singapore
Man fined for lid littering
This tidy city-state's highest court has ruled a local man must pay a 6,000 Singapore dollar (US$3,550) fine for leaving a water-filled plastic pail lid outside, local media reported yesterday. Watering cans, buckets and other receptacles containing stagnant water are not supposed to be left standing in tropical Singapore to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever. The Aedes mosquito, which carries the illness, breeds in still water.
■ Australia
Shark wouldn't give up
A swimmer attacked by a small shark was forced to drive for help with it still gnawing his leg, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported reported yesterday. Luke Tresoglavic was swimming at Caves Beach, about 110km north of Sydney, when a 60cm-long wobbegong shark bit his leg and refused to let go, the report said. "I just instantly grabbed hold of it with both hands as hard as I could to stop it shaking," Tresoglavic said. "I just realized I had to swim in like that, hanging on to it. Once I got on to shore, a couple of people tried to help me but I could not remove it, it was stuck there. So I got up into my car and then drove to the clubhouse." Lifesavers removed the shark by hosing it with fresh water and Tresoglavic had only a small cut and a dose of antibiotics to show for his encounter.
■ Canada
Quebec politician dies
Claude Ryan, a former leader of the Quebec Liberal Party who led the successful opposition in a 1980 referendum on the French-speaking province's secession from Canada, died Monday in Montreal. He was 79. The party, which announced Ryan's death on its Web site, said the cause was stomach cancer. Ryan was at the center of Quebec politics when a new generation of assertive French-speaking politicians and entrepreneurs had grown in prominence, campaigning for a greater measure of autonomy for the province to preserve its cultural and linguistic heritage.
■ Cyprus
Greece, Cyprus to talk again
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed to continue crucial talks on a UN peace plan with Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday in a last-ditch effort to have a united Cyprus join the EU by a May 1 deadline. Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash adjourned discussions on Tuesday evening without agreement, after meeting for the first time since the last talks collapsed nine months ago. Annan, who is pressing the two leaders to quickly end the Mediterranean island's 30-year division, met separately with Denktash and Papadopoulos before holding a three-way meeting.
■ France
Dead man becomes groom
Dressed in a demure black suit, a 35-year-old Frenchwoman married her dead boyfriend on Tuesday -- a macabre exchange of vows that required authorization from the French president. Under French law, Christelle Demichel became both bride and widow as a result of the ceremony, which was performed at Nice City Hall on the French Riviera. The deceased groom, a former policeman identified as Eric, was not present at the ceremony. He was killed by a drunk driver in September, 2002. Demichel told LCI television that her fiance's absence from her life had not dimmed her feelings for him.
■ United States
Spirit rover drives far
The Spirit rover shattered a one-day distance record on Mars, rolling nearly 21m across the planet's rocky surface, NASA said on Tuesday. The drive covered more than three times the greatest distance that NASA's tiny Sojourner rover ever traveled in a day on its own 1997 mission to Mars, mission manager Jim Erickson said. Spirit drove "blind" about half the distance, following a planned route to a stopping point. For the second half of the short trip, the rover drove to a second stopping point, autonomously executed a turn, and then rolled onward before stopping, Erickson said.
■ Portugal
Dead man walking
More than two weeks after Spanish authorities informed a Portuguese worker's family that he had died near Zaragoza, the allegedly deceased turned up at his house. Fernando Chaquico reportedly had spent several months working as a casual laborer in northeastern Spain. Spanish authorities had discovered his personal identity documents on the body of a man and sent word to his family in northern Portugal, Lusa reported Tuesday. But Chaquico arrived at his village in Braganca, about 400km northeast of Lisbon, on Monday, according to Lusa.
■ United Kingdom
Three Mediocre Women?
The Three Wise Men
who followed the star to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the baby Jesus may not have been all that wise -- or even men. The traditional Nativity play could be in for a drastic rewrite after the Church of England indulged in some academic gender-swapping over the three Magi at its General Synod in London this week. A committee revising the latest prayer book said the term "Magi" was a transliteration of the name used by officials at the Persian court, and that they could have been women. "Magi is a word which discloses nothing about numbers, wisdom or gender embodied in the term," a Synod spokesman said.
■ United Kingdom
Brits find love at work
Whether it's a frisson by the filing cabinet, a gaze over bar graphs or hot flushes at
the water-cooler, romance blossoms in the workplace for nearly two-thirds of British employees, a survey said. Yet office love reduces productivity, with half
of coupled-up colleagues admitting their work suffers as a result, the survey said. Rather than focusing on the photocopying, three in
10 people said they had "enjoyed physical intimacy" in their workplace, citing the elevator and stairwell as the most expedient locations. Despite the naughty nurse stereotype, health care and medical workers are the least likely to indulge in work romances, while the leisure and tourism industry is a libidinous hotbed, ensnaring eight out of 10 employees, the survey found.
■ Finland
Speedster cops record fine
One of Finland's richest
men has been fined a record 170,000 euros (US$217,000) for speeding through the center of the capital, police said on Tuesday. Jussi Salonoja, 27, heir to his family's sausage business, was caught driving 80kph in a 40kph zone on Thursday last week, the police said. Finnish traffic fines vary according to the offender's income and, according to tax office data, Salonoja's 2002 earnings were close to
7 million euros. The final penalty could still change, depending on Salonoja's income, when the case is eventually heard.
■ Nigeria
Men mutilate boy
Four Nigerian men were charged with plucking out the eyes of a 13-year-old schoolboy for use in witchcraft, the state news agency reported on Tuesday. They face charges ranging from criminal conspiracy to grievous bodily harm and permanent disfigurement for the attack on the boy, who was taken to hospital in the northeastern state of Bauchi. Police suspect the attack was commissioned by one
of the defendants to make
a charm believed to make people invisible. If found guilty, the defendants could have their own eyes removed under the Islamic sharia code, the agency added.
■ United Nations
Human rights boss named
Former UN chief war crimes prosecutor Louise Arbour is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's top choice to be the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, diplomats said late on Tuesday. Arbour, currently a Supreme Court justice in her native Canada, would replace Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was one of 22 people killed in the Aug. 19 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad. She gained prominence as the second chief prosecutor of the tribunals trying the main perpetrators of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and human rights crimes in
the former Yugoslavia
during the 1990s.
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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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