■ Hong Kong
Sick children monitored
Ten preschoolers have shown symptoms of hand-foot-and-mouth disease and the government is monitoring the situation to prevent its spread, officials said yesterday. Authorities were checking whether the children are infected with the virus which killed 30 children in Malaysia in 1997 and more than 50 in Taiwan the following year. The children at a Hong Kong preschool developed symptoms of the disease between May 11-18, including fever, mouth ulcers and rashes on their hands and feet. The infectious disease is not usually life-threatening but can cause potentially fatal inflammation of the heart muscles, spinal cord or brain.
■ New Zealand
Scientists find pink dinosaur
Scientists using a camera to monitor a remote New Zealand volcano over the Internet have struck an odd problem -- a pink dinosaur. New Zealand's Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) have installed a digital camera in the crater of the often active volcano which makes up most of White Island in the Bay of Plenty, east of Auckland. The camera posts a shot every hour on their site www.geonet.org.nz. But suddenly a pink dinosaur has appeared in the shot. "Some wag has glued a pink dinosaur in front of our digital camera," GNS' John Callan said. They are not planning on removing it, counting on the sulphur and high acid environment to deal with the creature.
■ South Korea
No charges against Roh
Prosecutors said yesterday that they will not seek criminal charges against President Roh Moo-hyun and his 2002 presidential rival, Lee Hoi-chang, over illegal campaign funds. During the presidential polls, former aides of Roh and Lee, former chief of the main opposition Grand National Party, had allegedly collected millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds from the nation's major businesses. But Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office spokesman Kook Min-soo said investigators found no evidence that Roh or Lee had been directly involved in the scandals.
■ Bangladesh
Storms leave 8,000 homeless
Raging tropical storms sweeping Bangladesh have left nine people dead and more than 120 injured, local police and rescue workers said yesterday. The overnight storms uprooted trees, cut off roads and pummelled the landscape leaving more than 8,000 people homeless in five districts. At least five people, including two children, were killed in the worst affected Jessore district, 290km west of Dhaka. The other fatalities and injuries were reported in northern Nilphamari district, southern Khulna district and the eastern district of Sherpur.
■ France
Police find weapons cache
An Iranian national was arrested after police discovered explosives and handguns in his apartment in France's southern port city of Marseille, judicial officials said yesterday. Police could not immediately say whether the arms cache was part of a suspected criminal plot or terrorist activity, judicial and police officials said. The man, who was not identified, was arrested in an overnight raid of his apartment in the center of Marseille. Police found about 5kg of weapons that also included detonators, grenades and documents in Spanish and Arabic that were in the process of being translated, the officials said.
■ Germany
Nazi links blasted
Germany's ruling party joined Jewish leaders yesterday to protest the selection of a veteran conservative with Nazi links for an assembly that will elect the country's next president. Hans Filbinger, a former state premier, was a navy judge accused of having condemned deserters to death in the dying months of World War II. He insists he never himself actively sentenced anyone to death and that in fact he saved lives with mild verdicts. He also denies justifying Nazi law. However, he was forced to resign as the premier of Baden-Wuerttemberg state in 1978 after seeming to justify death sentences imposed by Nazi-era military courts.
■ United Kingdom
Fears for mad-cow carriers
Thousands of people may be unwittingly carrying the agent responsible for the human form of mad cow disease, according to research by British scientists. The scientists calculate that around 4,000 people in Britain could be carrying the prion protein responsible for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), reports said, citing a UK government-funded study in the Journal of Pathology. Scientists examined more than 12,500 appendices and tonsils removed in the late 1990s from people in the highest risk group, mainly aged in their 20s. Three of the samples tested positive for vCJD. David Hilton, one of the authors of the study, said this meant 3,800 people in Britain could be carrying the infective agent.
■ United Kingdom
Raphael sketch found
A sketch by the Renaissance artist Raphael has been discovered in a London home and will be sold at a Sotheby's auction this summer, officials said on Thursday. The unsigned drawing, titled Head of a Child, was discovered tucked in a folder of Italian sketches by Cristiana Romalli, a Sotheby's Old Masters expert. She found it in a folder of minor drawings that had been kept in the back of a drawer at the home. "The moment I came to the child's head, I knew it was by Raphael," Romalli said.
■ Sweden
Drugs and violence linked
People with serious drug and alcohol abuse problems are linked to about one-quarter of all violent crimes but many could be avoided with better treatment, scientists said yesterday. They found that 16 percent of crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and rape in Sweden between 1988-2000 were committed by people who had been discharged from hospital for alcohol misuse and 10 percent were associated with drug abusers. "It is likely you will find the same sort of figures in Western Europe and North America," Seena Fazel, of the University of Oxford, said in an interview.
■ Iraq
Prisoners released
Six buses filled with Iraqis drove away from the gates of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison early yesterday as part of a scheduled release of 472 prisoners. The buses left the jail, west of Baghdad, at 9:30am, to the cries of female relatives of prisoners, among hundreds of people who flock to the prison every day for news of their loved ones. "I've been waiting here for eight hours. I hope 16 of my relatives will be released today," said Hamed Idham Jassem, 24, who added his brothers and cousins -- arrested last September -- are jailed at Abu Ghraib. A group of around 20 men also chanted slogans denouncing Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, whose home was raided by Iraqi police on Thursday.
■ United Nations
US re-applies for exemption
The US has asked the UN Security Council to renew a controversial resolution which last year exempted Americans serving in UN peace missions from prosecution for crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), diplomats said on Thursday. The request was circulated to the 15-nation council in the form of a draft resolution, calling for renewal of the one-year authorization. The diplomats said the council would consider the request yesterday. The ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but the US is not a signatory of the Rome treaty that set up the court, which is based at The Hague.
■ Kenya
Somali warlord jailed
A Kenyan judge has jailed one of Somalia's most powerful warlords over an unpaid debt, throwing a new spanner into drawn-out peace talks for the shattered African country. Hussein Aideed -- whose father Mohamed Farah Aideed humiliated the US military in a 1993 Mogadishu battle recalled in the film Black Hawk Down -- was arrested at a Nairobi hotel on Thursday, court officials said yesterday. Magistrate Christine Meoli ordered Aideed held for one month after hearing charges he reneged on a development deal with a Kenyan businessman dating back to 1997 and still owed him 15 million shillings (US$180,000).
■ Zimbabwe
Militia attacks opposition
The youth militia of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party went on the rampage in Harare on Thursday, smashing windows and destroying property at the offices of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The youths also blockaded an entrance to parliament and threatened to kill a white member of parliament who, in a fit of anger, had thrown Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to the ground earlier in the week. Riot police took no action against the Zanu-PF youths, but instead arrested four MDC members.
■ Brazil
Peacekeepers set for Haiti
Brazil will send 1,200 army and marine troops to Haiti for UN peacekeeping duties in an operation set to begin on Monday, according to a statement from the Defense Ministry. The Brazilian Senate gave its approval for the move following a spirited debate on Wednesday night, with 38 of the body's 81 members voting in favor and 10 against. "This is a mission to help Haiti so that it can be rebuilt into a fully functioning democratic state," said Senator Eduardo Suplicy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who sponsored the motion. Brazil will send 970 army soldiers and 230 marines, the ministry said.
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