■ China
Boy takes mother to court
An 11-year-old boy in central China took his mother to court for breaking a promise to buy him a computer if he did well at school, a news report said yesterday. The woman told her son she would buy him a computer if he scored average marks of more than 94 percent for his school work, the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily reported. However, she reneged on the deal when he achieved an average of 97 percent, telling him she could not afford to buy the computer, the newspaper said. The schoolboy from Xingzheng, Henan Province, then went to court asking a judge to make his mother honour the verbal agreement. At the hearing, the judge reconciled the mother and son.
■ Japan
People want troops home
More than half the respondents to a poll said Japan's government should withdraw its troops from Iraq next month when the mandate for their reconstruction and humanitarian mission expires, the daily Mainichi Shimbun said yesterday. Asked if the deployment should be extended beyond the Dec. 14 deadline, 51 percent said it should not while 27 percent said it should, the paper said. Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a close ally of US President George W. Bush, has emphasized his determination to keep the 550 troops in southern Iraq, despite the worsening security situation. The main opposition Democratic Party has called for the troops to come home next month and Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is sharply divided on the issue.
■ Vietnam
Huge bomb safely defused
Bomb disposal experts managed to defuse a 5.5 tonne bomb found by locals in central Vietnam, a military official said yesterday. The 2m-long, 1m wide device was discovered by scrap scavengers near Meo village in Gia Lai province, said Truong Van Hai, head of the provincial sapper unit. "People normally take this war stuff home for making money from recycling. But this time, they felt scared as it is so big so they informed the local military," Hai said.
■ Indonesia
Christian shot
Gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead a Christian bus driver yesterday on Indonesia's Sulawesi island, heightening tensions in the region that saw a bloody outbreak of religious fighting three years ago. Tomi Sanjaya, 42, was killed as drove a minibus on the outskirts of Poso in Central Sulawesi province, police Lieutenant Colonel Abdi Dharma said. Dharma declined to speculate on the identities of the gunmen.
■ Hong Kong
British `spies' sentenced
Two former Chinese officials who worked in Hong Kong have received jail terms of at least 15 years for spying for Britain, a newspaper reported yesterday. Cai Xiaohong (蔡小洪) was given a 15-year term last week after a secret trial in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, while Wei Pingyuan received an unspecified heavier sentence, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified sources. Cai served as secretary-general of Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and Wei was a senior official in a similar office during Hong Kong's colonial days, the report said. Cai processed confidential communications between the office and the central Chinese government, the Post said.
■ United Kingdom
Geldof OKs Live Aid DVD
After almost two decades of refusing to rebroadcast the Live Aid famine-relief con-cert, organizer Bob Geldof said Sunday he had changed his mind. Rocker-turned-activist Geldof said he had consented to a DVD release of the 1985 concert because of the large number of bootleg recordings avail-able. "I'm very excited that this has come out, but I couldn't believe the number of bootleg copies being sold -- they are quite literally taking food from the hungry. This has to be stopped," said Geldof, who attended a launch party for the 10-hour, four-disc set.
■ United States
Tired doctors error-prone
Doctors who sleep more make fewer medical mis-takes, a study has found, the first to directly link the relationship between sleep and performance of doctors. Student doctors who worked a shift of 16 hours or shorter -- considered to be a short shift -- made one-third fewer serious errors that could harm patients than their counter-parts, who worked longer shifts -- 24 hours or more, the study found. Results were published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. During a total of 2,203 patient-days involving 634 admissions, student doctors made 35.9 percent more serious medical errors during the long schedule than they did during the shorter shifts.
■ Italy
Buttiglione starts campaign
Rocco Buttiglione, whose nomination as the EU's justice commissioner was forced to be withdrawn last month, began a public campaign on the weekend to form a European "theo-con" movement for those who believe traditional Christian values should be part of public life. Buttig-lione, a fervent Catholic and friend of Pope John Paul, was forced to stand down after the European parlia-ment balked at his conser-vative views on homo-sexuality and marriage. He now intends to lead a "battle for the freedom of Chris-tians" against what he calls the "creeping totalitarian-ism" in Europe that stifles anyone who does not share the beliefs of the majority.
■ Belgium
Flemish Bloc to reformat
The Flemish Bloc political party plans to disband and reform under a new name with a manifesto that abandons the fascist tenor that got the party into legal trouble. The new party "will clearly express itself as the successor to the Vlaams Blok," the party's Web site declared on Sunday. An appeals court is to rule today on a lower court ver-dict in a suit brought in 2000 by two rights groups which condemned the Flemish Bloc for using racist tactics to target immigrants and ordered three associations that raised money for the party to pay a US$57,975 fine. If the ruling is upheld, the party will lose all gover-nment subsidies it would normally be entitled to.
■ United States
Evolution warning defended
School officials in Cobb County, Georgia, were due in court yesterday to defend themselves against a lawsuit accusing the district of pro-moting religion by requiring that science textbooks warn students evolution is "a theory, not a fact." The law-suit argues that the dis-claimer restricts the teach-ing of evolution, promotes the teaching of creationism and discriminates against particular religions. County school officials, however, said their warning, in the form of stickers, simply encourages students to keep an open mind.
■ United Nations
France seeks arms embargo
France circulated Sunday a UN draft resolution calling for an arms embargo against Ivory Coast, as well as financial sanctions and a travel ban against individuals accused of threatening the peace process in the conflict-wracked west African nation. France introduced the measure after nine French soldiers were killed when two Ivorian warplanes raided a French encampment in the rebel-held town of Bouake, prompting Paris to order the destruction of the warplanes and three attack helicopters, effectively destroying Ivory Coast's small air force. France's retaliation led to anti-French violence in the main city Abidjan.
■ Brazil
Athlete's mother kidnapped
The mother of Santos forward Robinho, one of Brazil's most exciting football players, has been kidnapped, police said on Sunday. Marina de Souza, 43, was abducted by two armed men who invaded a barbecue in Praia Grande, near Santos, on Saturday night, detective Alberto Torrassa told reporters. The pair locked the other guests in the bathroom before driving off. Torrassa said that so far the kidnappers had not been in contact with the family. "Our target at the moment is to bring back the victim in safety, that's our only worry," said Torrassa. Santos were away to Criciuma in a Brazilian championship match on Sunday afternoon but club president Marcelo Teixeira told reporters the player would return home and would not play.
■ Macedonia
Boycott kills referendum
A referendum to end the autonomy granted to Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority appeared to be defeated on Sunday because of insufficient voter turnout. The apparent defeat of the referendum was a victory for Macedonia's multiethnic coalition government, which had urged voters to boycott it. Not showing up to vote was in effect the same as a no vote for the measure, which had been supported by Macedonian nationalists. The US and European nations had also urged defeat of the referendum, contending it would have weakened Macedonia's political stability and diminished the prospects for the country's entry to NATO and the EU.
■ United States
Women prisoners increasing
The number of women in US state and federal prisons is at an all-time high and growing fast, with the incarceration rate for females increasing at nearly twice that of men, the government reported Sunday. There were 101,179 women in prisons last year, 3.6 percent more than in 2002, the Justice Department said. That marks the first time the women's prison population has topped 100,000, and continues a trend of rapid growth. Overall, men are still far more likely than women to be in jail or prison, and black men are more likely than any other group to be locked up.
■ France
Legal action rejected
The government on Sunday rejected a US-based Jewish group's call for legal action against one of the country's largest Muslim organizations that it said was anti-Semitic and linked to the militant Islamist group Hamas. Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said Paris had proved it was tough on Islamic radicals by questioning about 100 so far this year and expelling 17 of them. But he declined to follow up a call by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to probe links between the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF) and pro-Palestinian groups it says collect money for Hamas. The UOIF denied it was anti-Jewish.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing