■ China
China wants EU ban lifted
China urged the European Union yesterday to lift a ban on arms sales, saying that maintaining the embargo would affect relations and be tantamount to discrimination. The ban, imposed after Beijing's 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, is likely to take center stage next week when German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visits China and Premier Wen Jiabao heads to the Netherlands for a China-EU summit. "If the EU side continues to maintain the ban, we think this is a kind of political discrimination," Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui told reporters. The issue would be on the agenda when Schroeder visits Beijing from Monday and when Wen visits the Netherlands on Dec. 7-9.
■ Australia
PC Christmas in Sydney
Sydney Mayor Clover Moore has been cast as the Grinch who stole Christmas after decorating her city's town hall with just one meager Christmas tree out of fear of offending non-Christians. Moore has been accused of political correctness gone mad after residents woke to newspaper headlines demanding "Where's Our Christmas?" and complaints the city had not done enough to celebrate the festive season. Talkback radio programs were flooded with calls and even conservative Prime Minister John Howard joined in. "This is political correctness from central casting. It is unbelievable," Howard told Sydney radio 2UE.
■ Australia
Charity bike tour finished
Lloyd Scott, a 43-year-old Briton, has just completed a 2,642-mile charity bike ride across Australia -- dressed as Sherlock Holmes and riding a penny farthing bicycle -- has tales to tell of snakes, locusts, and extreme temperatures. The former leukemia sufferer also has, as he put it, a bruised "undercarriage" to back up those stories. Scott, from Rainham, Essex, east of London, England, traveled from Perth to Sydney in 50 days to raise money for Save the Children. The former firefighter is hoping to raise a million pounds Sterling. Scott started his challenge on October 13, following a route to Sydney.
■ China
65 missing in landslide
A landslide destroyed 25 village houses in the Guizhou Province yesterday and 65 villagers, asleep at the time, were missing, Xinhua news agency said. The accident occurred in the early hours of the morning in Nayong county and police and soldiers had now joined the search for survivors. "The landslide destroyed 25 houses in which an estimated 108 people were sleeping," Xinhua said, adding that 31 people had managed to escape and 12 had been rescued.
■ Afghanistan
US jails could foster abuse
A recent classified report has found military prisons in Afghanistan have the "opportunity" for prisoner abuse like that which took place in US jails in Iraq, The Washington Post reported yesterday. The army general who inspected facilities in Afghanistan found a wide range of shortcomings, including an unwarranted use of rectal exams instead of metal wands to search for contraband, the Post said.
■ Bosnia
Robbers pose as soldiers
Thieves masquerading as NATO soldiers stole 1 million euros (US$1.3 million) from a Bosnian security van on the last day of the alliance's peace mission in the country on Wednesday. The robbers, wearing the insignia of NATO's outgoing Stabilisation Force (SFOR), set up a check point on a highway in northwestern Bosnia and stopped an armored van hauling cash for the Raiffeisen Bank, the daily Nezavisne Novine reported. The gang of five handcuffed security guards escorting the cash and left them in the back of the van, the newspaper added. The robbery was staged on the eve of NATO's handover of the 9-year-old peacekeeping mission to a new EU force, called EUFOR. Police declined to comment.
■ United Kingdom
Popular ballerina dies
Dame Alicia Markova, one of the 20th century's greatest ballerinas and a co-founder of the English National Ballet, died Thursday. She was 94. The ballet company said Markova, who continued to work until her health worsened a few months ago, died a day after her 94th birthday. Born Lilian Alicia Marks in London in 1910, she made her stage debut aged 10, billed as "Little Alicia, the child Pavlova." After training with Serafima Astavieva in London, she joined Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1925, aged just 14, and adopted the more exotic name of Markova.
■ Canada
Noted journalist dies
Pierre Berton, a sometimes provocative journalist who became the most popular historian in Canada and a well-known television personality, died on Tuesday in Toronto. He was 84. The cause was heart failure, Berton's agent and television producer, Elsa Franklin, said. For many years, a new book by Berton was as inevitable in autumn as falling leaves. Unusually prolific, Berton wrote more than 50 books, was host of radio and television shows, contributed newspaper and magazine columns, was a magazine editor, and appeared as a quiz-show panelist for 37 years. Berton's history books covered a wide range of topics, from Canadian troops who fought in World War I to the Klondike gold rush and the building of the first transcontinental railroad in Canada.
■ United States
Danforth quits as UN envoy
The US ambassador to the UN, John Danforth, has resigned less than six months after becoming the diplomatic voice of Washington at the world body. In a letter to US President George W. Bush last month released on Thursday, the 68-year-old Danforth said he was stepping down to spend more time with his ailing wife Sally. The letter was dated Nov. 22, several days after Bush named Condoleezza Rice to succeed Colin Powell as US secretary of state -- a post for which Danforth had been rumored to be on the short list.
■ United States
England statement tossed
A military judge on Thursday threw out a potentially damaging statement made by Private First Class Lynndie England, who is facing court martial over an Iraqi prison abuse scandal who was photographed holding a detainee on a leash. In a pretrial hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Colonel Stephen Henley ruled England's statement inadmissible because inves-tigators continued to press her during an interrogation about abuse at Abu Ghraib prison after she made it clear she wanted legal counsel. Henley, however, allowed prosecutors to use two other statements made by England that the defense had sought to suppress as prejudicial. Meanwhile, at Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army closed a hearing on whether three soldiers will be court-martialed for allegedly suffocating Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush during an interrogation in Iraq last year. Allowing the public and the media to observe the hearing in Fort Carson, Colorado on Thursday "would cause serious damage to national security" and could jeopardize the defendants' safety, investigating officer Captain Robert Ayers said.
■ United States
Prescription drug use high
Americans are swallowing more pills than ever, accor-ding to a report released on Thursday by the US govern-ment. A total of 44 percent of Americans had taken at least one prescription drug in the prior month when surveyed in 1999 and 2000, compared to 39 percent during the 1988 to 1994 period, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). One in six adults was taking three or more of these drugs at the end of the decade, compared to about one in 10 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The popularity of antidepressants, anti-inflammatories and drugs designed to control choles-terol and blood sugar levels helped fuel increased pre-scription use among all adult age groups, the HHS said. Ten percent of adult women and 4 percent of men now take antidepressants.
■ Brazil
Peacekeepers defy pressure
UN peacekeepers in Haiti will not respond to inter-national pressure to "use violence" against armed gangs and will rebuild the country as a "peacekeeping force, not an occupying force," the mission's Brazi-lian commander said on Thursday. His comments and those of Brazil's foreign minister came a day after US Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded UN troops crack down on street gangs after gunfights broke out near him when he visited Haiti's interim leader at the presidential palace. "We are under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence," General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro told a congressional commission in Brazil. "I command a peacekeeping force, not an occupation force ... we are not there to carry out violence, this will not happen for as long as I'm in charge of the force."
■ Chile
Pinochet loses immunity
An appeals court ruled on Thursday to strip former dictator General Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution for a 1974 car bombing that killed an exiled Chilean general. It was the third attempt to try Pinochet in Chile for abuses from his 17-year dictatorship. San-tiago's Court of Appeals decided 14-9 to lift the im-munity Pinochet enjoys as a former president in connec-tion with the bombing in Argentina that killed former army chief General Carlos Prats, and his wife, Sofia Cuthbert.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not