■ China
SARS patient released
Beijing's first confirmed SARS patient in its latest outbreak has been released from hospital after nearly a month, state media said yesterday. The woman, a 20-year-old nurse surnamed Li, was released on Tuesday, the Xinhua news agency said. Li fell ill on April 5 showing SARS symptoms such as fever and cough. She was confirmed as having the potentially deadly flu-like disease on April 22. The Health Ministry said on Tuesday it had confirmed three more suspected SARS cases in Beijing, taking the number of victims in the latest outbreak to nine. One of the nine has died.
■ Sri Lanka
Peace talks `difficult': envoy
Sri Lanka's new hardline government and Tamil Tiger rebels will likely run into many difficulties once they resume stalled peace talks to end the island's 20-year civil war, a top Norwegian peace broker said ahead of his departure yesterday. "There is likely to be hard bargaining and many difficulties ahead when peace talks start," peace envoy Erik Solheim said. Since arriving in Sri Lanka on Sunday, Solheim has met with President Chandrika Kumaratunga and the Tigers' political chief, S.P. Thamilselvan, for discussions aimed at reviving the peace talks, which stalled one year ago.
■ North Korea
Farming will cause floods
Short-sighted farming practices used by North Korea in a bid to feed its population risk triggering floods worse than those which devastated much of the country in 1995, a World Food Program (WFP) official said. The regional director of the UN program, Anthony Banbury, said Pyongyang's new policy of farming hillsides and mountains without first terracing the soil had already led to massive erosion and posed a major environmental hazard. "If there are huge floods as there were in the mid-90s the extent is probably going to be much worse because they are much more flood prone," Banbury told a media conference late Tuesday. "As the soil will come off the mountains it will fill up stream beds and river beds so when the rains come there will be floods," he said.
■ Japan
Troop dispatch considered
Japan, which has some 550 troops in Iraq to help rebuild the war-torn nation, is considering sending troops to Afghanistan to take part in a similar mission, a leading daily said yesterday. Japanese naval vessels have been providing logistic support for US-led operations in Afghanistan since November 2001, but the dispatch of ground troops could well meet resistance in a nation that was deeply divided over the Iraqi mission. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, a dispatch of around 100 ground troops to perform humanitarian services such as medical support and transport of daily necessities might take place as early as the summer.
■ South Korea
Seoul calls for talks
South Korea yesterday proposed high-level military talks with North Korea to prevent deadly naval clashes as tensions crept up along their disputed sea border. Seoul hopes to hold the dialogue this month to discuss ways of avoiding naval skirmishes that sometimes occur along the poorly marked western sea border as fishing boats jostle for position during crab-catching season in May and June. Such clashes could derail international efforts to find a peaceful resolution of the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons development.
■ United States
Music royalties to be paid
Major recording companies have agreed to return nearly US$50 million in unclaimed royalties to Sean Combs, Gloria Estefan, Dolly Parton and thousands of lesser known musicians under a settlement announced on Tuesday. A two-year investigation by the New York state attorney general found that artists were not being paid because record companies lost contact with the performers and stopped making required payments. Under the settlement, the music companies agreed to make good-faith efforts to track down artists to whom royalties were due.
■ United States
Porn actress HIV-positive
A fourth adult-film performer has tested positive for HIV though the case is unrelated to an outbreak that virtually shut down pornography production last month, an industry health-care official said on Tuesday. A transsexual actress who goes by the stage name Jennifer tested positive on Tuesday and had last performed a sex scene on Feb. 27 with two male actors who have since tested negative, said Sharon Mitchell of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation. The actors involved in the latest case will be tested again to rule out any possibility of further transmission of the virus, Mitchell said.
■ United Nations
Ethiopia, Eritrea criticized
The UN Security Council criticized Ethiopia and Eritrea on Tuesday for failing to implement a peace deal in which both countries agreed to accept the ruling of an international commission on their disputed boundary. The council expressed concern "at the deterioration in the cooperation of Eritrea" with UN peacekeepers monitoring implementation of the December 2000 peace agreement and Ethiopia's continued rejection of "significant parts" of the boundary commission's ruling. More than 4,000 UN peacekeepers are deployed in the two countries to monitor a 25km buffer zone along the border.
■ Mexico
Women's lot improves
Mexico has made exemplary progress in the last decade in family planning and educating women in poor communities about their rights to birth control, the UN said on Tuesday. Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund, said Mexico was one of the success stories in implementing programs agreed to at a 1994 UN conference on population and development in Cairo. Among the objectives were spreading education, especially for girls, gender equality and reduction in infant, child and maternal mortality rates. The average Mexican woman is now having two children instead of six in the 1970s.
■ Egypt
Journalists beaten over Iraq
Egyptian authorities beat and threatened journalists to prevent coverage of the US-led invasion of Iraq inflaming anti-government feeling, Reporters Sans Frontieres said in an annual report on Tuesday. It said Egypt was concerned that popular anger over the war would damage US relations. "As soon as the invasion began, the government ordered the media to avoid coverage that might inflame an already angry Egyptian public or harm relations with the United States," the report said. "Journalists were frequent targets when hundreds of anti-war protesters were arrested in the spring, and some of them, including foreigners, were threatened, beaten or arrested too," the report said.
■ United Kingdom
Asylum seekers win benefits
Asylum seekers from the new European Union countries in eastern Europe won permission Tuesday to appeal the UK government's decision barring them from receiving state benefits. Recently, the government announced that migrants from the 10 EU accession states will be allowed to work in Britain but will be barred from claiming state benefits for at least two years. Hundreds of asylum seekers now living in Britain face the loss of accommodation and subsistence benefits following their change of status to EU citizens on Saturday. Previously, they were barred from working and supporting themselves while their asylum claims and linked human rights appeals were under consideration. Now, as EU citizens, they must support themselves. Their lawyers said they have been given insufficient time to change from welfare to work.
■ United States
Bath used in murder attempt
A Texas man is suspected of using a bubble bath by candlelight and soothing music as bait to set a date with death for his wife. Police said on Monday that William Joseph Wolfe, an emergency room nurse, has been arrested for attempted murder after he tried to electrocute his wife in the bathtub by dropping a radio into her bathwater -- a method of execution he researched on the Internet. Wolfe is suspected of drawing the bath for his wife and bringing in a radio with an extension cord attached so his wife could listen to music during her soak. "He appeared to accidentally bump the radio," said Ronnie Walker, deputy chief of police in the east Texas city of Henderson. The wife was able to catch the radio before it hit the water, and thought that there might be something suspicious. What she found was that her husband had recently visited Web sites that detailed bathtub electrocutions.
■ United States
Popcorn challenge
To mark the premiere on Tuesday of a film about his life as a competitive eater, Crazy Legs Conti is trying to eat his way out of a telephone booth-size structure filled with popcorn. Conti, 33, donned a diving mask and snorkel on Tuesday inside the lobby of the Manhattan movie theater that will show the film and lowered himself into a "popcorn sarcophagus," a wooden, windowed structure, to begin munching. He vowed to eat his way through the 1.5m3 of salted, buttered popcorn in about eight hours, in time for the movie's premiere on Tuesday evening.
■ Canada
Toast for the PM
Canadians upset that genetically modified wheat might one day find itself on their shelves now have a new way to vent their anger -- mail a slice of bread to Prime Minister Paul Martin. Two groups of activists launched their innovative campaign in bakeries and grocery stores across the country Tuesday as a way to protest against what they say is Ottawa's plan to allow GMO products in Canada. "We're hoping that a huge pile of bread sitting in his office will finally force Martin to act in accordance with the will of the public on this issue," said Anne-Marie Turmel of Friends of the Earth of Quebec. Canadian regulators are examining the food, feed and environmental safety of a variety of GMO wheat from Monsanto Co designed to withstand a popular weed killer. The possibility of government approval alarms the Canadian Wheat Board,.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of