■ Australia
Counter-terror drill held
A spate of simulated car bombings and the mock takeover by armed militants of an oil rig far off northern Australia marked the start of its biggest counter-terrorism exercise yesterday. The five-day maneuvers, code-named Mercury 04, involve hun-dreds of police, soldiers and officials in four states. The maneuvers began with emergency services being rushed to the port of Mel-bourne where the mangled wrecks of a blown-up bus and van and scattered mannequin parts were all that was left of a simulated hijack attempt and bombing of a visiting foreign prime minister and his entourage.
■ Thailand
Three killed in south
Two police officers and a village leader were killed yesterday and a school was set on fire in Muslim-dominated southern Thai-land, where a wave of vio-lence has left more than 50 people dead this year, police said. On Sunday, another village leader who is in police custody, accused two ruling-party lawmakers and a senator of plotting a Jan. 4 raid on an army arsenal that set off the recent upsurge in violence, which Prime Mini-ster Thaksin Shinawatra's government has blamed on Islamic separa-tists. One of the lawmakers yesterday denied any involvement in the attack, in which four soldiers were killed and hundreds of weapons stolen.
■ Thailand
`Snake man' fatally bit
A man who was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for spending the longest time with snakes has died after being bitten by one of his 30 pet snakes, doctors said yesterday. Boonreung Bauchan, known as the "Snake Man," died on Friday, a day after suffering a venomous bite by a mamba, said Dr. Wipha Praituen of Praibung hospital in Si Sa Ket province. She said Boonreung was bitten on the right elbow, and "the poison had spread through-out his body when he arrived at the hospital." Boonreung, 34, won a mention in the Guinness book after spending seven days in an enclosure with snakes in 1998 to set a new world record.
■ Australia
PETA to boycott Tasmania
Animal-rights campaigners are to announce a boycott of the Tasmania, threatening the island's A$1 billion tourism industry. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) boycott is to protest at the felling of native forests, which has been described as an ecolo-gical disaster. PETA will call on its 800,000 members to boycott Tasmanian products and refuse to travel to the state, nearly a quarter of the economy of which is dependent on tourism and food exports. Tasmania's forests contain some of the largest trees in the world. More than 160km2 of native forest was logged in the state last year, with the majority turned into woodchips which are exported to Japan to be turned into paper and tissue.
■ China
Herbalist seeks record
A Chinese herbalist has begun a 49-day fast in a glass box halfway up a mountain in a bid to beat the 44-day record set last year by US magician David Blaine, state media reported. Chen Jianmin, 50, began his fast on Saturday in a box on stilts in a mountain resort in Yaan, Sichuan Province. He will live in the 15m2 cell for 15 days consuming only water and no food, supervised by seven notaries, the China Daily said. Chen said his fast would "attest to the regimen of traditional Chinese medical science."
■ Saudi Arabia
Minister promises elections
Saudi Arabia's powerful defense minister on Sunday did not rule out elections to the appointed Shura (Consultative) Council, saying they would eventually be held if the Saudi people so wished. "Where elections [to the Shura Council] are concerned, if their time comes and the Saudi people deem they are warranted, we will not fail" to hold a vote, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz said. Saudi leaders promised in October last year to organize the first ever polls in the conservative kingdom within a year to elect half the members of new municipal councils. The municipal elections would be held "in the coming months," Prince Sultan told reporters.
■ Canada
Pharmacies to sell pot
Canada plans to make government-certified marijuana available in local pharmacies, a move that would make Canada the second country in the world after the Netherlands to allow the direct sale of medical marijuana. Officials are organizing a pilot project in British Columbia, modeled on a year-old program in the Netherlands. Currently, there are 78 medical users in Canada permitted to buy government marijuana, which is grown in Flin Flon, Manitoba. A 30g bag of dried buds sells for US$113 (C$150), and is sent by courier directly to patients or their doctors. A notice of the change is expected to be made public this spring.
■ Mexico
Mexicans celebrate equinox
Decked out in eagle feathers, amulets and lucky charms, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans converged on the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, on Sunday to tap into what they believe is the site's energy on the spring equinox. Arriving before dawn, visitors queued in snaking lines to climb the steeply raked steps of the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, in an annual rite marking the first day of spring. Teotihuacan, which lies in a highland valley 50km northeast of the capital, was built some 2,000 years ago by a nameless civilization. The site has become one of Mexico's top tourist attractions and a magnet for indigenous priests and new-age enthusiasts alike.
■ United Kingdom
Antarctic sea ice melting
Sea ice around Antarctica may have decreased by as much as 20 per cent since 1950, new findings suggest. This is the first clear evidence of Antarctic sea ice melting due to global warming. The findings showed that sea ice in the coastal Law Dome region of Antarctica was stable from 1840 to 1950, but had declined sharply since then. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said there had been a 20 percent reduction in sea ice since 1950.
■ United Kingdom
Iraqi-born architect honored
The Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid has been selected to receive this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2004, considered the profession's highest honor. She is the first woman to receive it. The prize, which carries a grant of US$100,000, is to be awarded at a ceremony on May 31 at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Movement, curvature, porosity, extreme horizontal elongation: These are some of the aesthetic properties that helped to establish Hadid, 53, as a major influence in her field well before she began to build. Hadid was born in Baghdad in 1950. She is now based in London and is a British citizen.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion