■ Australia
Alley honors AC/DC
Rock band AC/DC, well known for their hit Highway to Hell, are to have a humble alleyway named in their honor. The Australian hard rockers, one of music's top acts for more than 20 years, are to be memorialized by "AC/DC Lane" in the city of Melbourne, the home town
of drummer Phil Rudd and former bass player Mark Evans. "The lane suggested
is ... one of about 1,000 City
of Melbourne streets called Corporation Lane -- a default title for many unnamed lanes," said Catherine Ng, who heads the city's planning and development committee.
■ Australia
Roos go to town
Locals and tourists were warned yesterday to stay away from mobs of ravenous kangaroos brought into
towns and cities by the worst drought in living memory. Parched earth in the bush has sent mobs of the animals on the move, with some taking up positions in public parks where there is grass. "They are instinctively wary of people," ecologist Murray Evans told the Sydney Morning Herald. "If we are
all a little more careful and aware, it won't attack." Evans said two dogs had been killed by kangaroos in Canberra and a woman had been scratched when she got too close to one. Evans warned visitors not to walk up to a kangaroo that was standing upright and looking you in the eye.
■ Japan
Court backs slave laborers
A Japanese high court yesterday reversed a lower court ruling and ordered
a construction firm to pay compensation to a group of Chinese who were forced to labor in Japan during World War II. The rare ruling by
the Hiroshima High Court overturned a July 2002 lower court ruling and ordered Nishimatsu Construction Co to pay the five plaintiffs 27.5 million yen (US$252,600)
in compensation, a court spokesman said. "The forced labor was an abuse of human rights," the presiding judge said in passing judgment.
■ Sri Lanka
Attacks threaten peace bid
An elderly monk was badly wounded in a grenade attack on a Sri Lanka temple, and
the Tamil Tigers said they executed two rival rebels in new violence since a suicide bombing this week raised fears for the island's peace bid. Both attacks were thought to be linked to
the Tigers' anger both at a breakaway faction led by
an eastern rebel commander known as Karuna and at the military, which they say is trying to weaken them by helping the rival group.
The 91-year-old monk was wounded and in critical condition after the attack on the Bubulla temple near the Batticaloa district.
■ United Kingdom
Diana museum to fold
The museum set up on the Spencer family estate in central England to commemorate Diana, Princess of Wales, is to close because ticket sales have fallen sharply, the Times reported yesterday. Diana's brother, Earl Charles Spencer, has decided to close the exhibition of artefacts linked to Diana's life at the end of this summer, seven years after her death, the newspaper said. The memorial display chronicles Diana's childhood, her marriage to Prince Charles and her charity work. The exhibition drew 150,000 in the first two years after opening in 1998, but by last year numbers had fallen to 80,000.
■ United Kingdom
Love-letter earns huge sum
An erotic letter from James Joyce to his lifelong love Nora Barnacle fetched four times its expected price at an auction at Sotheby's in London yesterday evening. An anonymous bidder paid ?240,800 (US$443,000) for the letter. Joyce scholars had long known about the Dec. 1, 1909 letter, as Joyce referred to its graphically sexual content in subsequent letters to Barnacle, but it had been presumed destroyed. It was discovered by chance hidden in the pages of an old book in a collection held by Joyce's brother Stanislaus.
■ Italy
Nazi on trial for massacre
A former Nazi officer went on trial Thursday for the 1944 massacre of 60 people in an Italian monastery where German troops found Jews hiding. Hermann Langer, 85, was not present at the opening of the case in a military court in the northwestern town of Spezia and will be tried in his absence. The former SS lieutenant is accused of leading a group of soldiers who carried out the massacre on Sept. 2, 1944, after they found Jews hiding in Farneta Cistercian monastery near the town of Lucca. A Venezuelan bishop and several monks were among those killed, who included Swiss, German, French and Spanish nationals.
■ Gibraltar
UK sub visit angers Spain
The British nuclear submarine HMS Tireless arrived in Gibraltar on Friday on a controversial visit that has caused howls of discontent from the Spanish government. The submarine sailed into Gibraltar Bay at 9:20am yesterday, surrounded by a number of navy patrol boats and maritime police launches and accompanied by a tug boat. Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has warned London that the visit to the British colony was an unfriendly move that could have repercussions on relations between the two countries.
■ Australia
Smoke may help plant life
Scientists have identified the chemical in smoke that makes plant seeds germinate after bushfires, a discovery that could reap huge benefits for the agricultural sector. A team of Australian scientists has become the world's first research team to pinpoint the previously unknown chemical, called a butenolide, which induces germination in a range of plant species including celery, parsley and echinacea. "This discovery represents one of the most significant advances in seed science with benefits in the natural, agricultural, conservation and restoration sciences," said Geoff Gallup, science minister in Western Australia state, on Friday.
■ United States
Bush records destroyed
The Pentagon says military records related to President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard more than 30 years ago were inadvertently destroyed, The New York Times reported yesterday. Payroll records of "numerous service mem-bers," including Bush, were ruined in 1996 and 1997 during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the newspaper said, citing the Pentagon. Bush's where-abouts during his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking his duty. The destroyed files cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question.
■ Brazil
Crackdown on child sex
Brazil's Congress on Thurs-day accused 250 people, including leading politicians, judges and priests, of involvement in widespread child and teenage prostitu-tion. In a scathing report after a year-long investiga-tion, a multi-party commis-sion called for a crackdown on numerous child prostitu-tion rings and an overhaul
of laws that let people who rape girls and boys go free. Politicians and others listed in the report, including a deputy state governor, are pushing to get their names removed. A final version of the report will be voted on next week by the 22-member commis-sion before it goes to state and federal prosecutors who will then open criminal investigations. The investi-gation collected testimony
on child sex abuse from
22 of Brazil's 27 states.
The UN found young girls selling themselves for sex
for as little as 20 cents in Salvador, in Brazil's poor northeast -- a destination
for foreign and Brazilian
sex tourists.
■ United States
Whoopi upsets Edwards
The Democratic presidential ticket netted a cool 7.5 million dollars at a star-studded concert here but
had to squirm through a wickedly irreverent monologue from comic Whoopi Goldberg to do it. While the party was raising cash, Goldberg was clearly raising some hackles by repeatedly referring to Kerry's vice-presidential running-mate John Edwards as "kid." "He is really youthful. He looks like he
is about 18," said the comedian, one of a dozen headliners who turned out
to boost the Democrats'
drive to unseat Republican President George W. Bush
in November. Such words were undoubtedly music
to the ears of the Republi-cans who have wasted no time in attacking the
51-year-old Edwards, picked by Kerry for the ticket on Tuesday, as unready for
the White House.
■ United Kingdom
Bowie has heart surgery
Musician David Bowie underwent emergency heart surgery after a concert in Germany and is recovering in New York. His spokesman said yesterday that he hoped to be back at work next month. Doctors examining Bowie because he had suffered a pinched nerve in his shoulder discovered "an acutely blocked artery" in his heart and performed an emergency angioplasty to clear it. The blockage was discovered after Bowie, 57, played in Scheessel on June 25, and he canceled the next day's concert -- and subsequently, the rest of his European tour -- citing the shoulder problem. The spokesman did not specify the date of the surgery but said the rock legend was able to leave the clinic in Hamburg early this week.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was