■ China
Dolphins to move to reserve
China is to relocate the last white-flag dolphins, which are on the verge of extinc-tion, to a protected nature reserve to stop them dying out. The world's rarest dolphins, which number less than 100, are only found in China and cannot be reared artificially, the Xinhua news agency quoted scientists as saying. The dolphins live in the Yangtze river, but overfishing, dam-building and environmental degrad-ation have caused their population to fall from about 400 in the 1980s to less than 100. Zoologists this year gained preliminary approval from Beijng to move the dolphins to a wetland nature reserve called Tian'ezhou islet in Shishou, Hubei Province, Xinhua said.
■ Malaysia
No sanctuary against rape
An elephant sanctuary in Malaysia is under inves-tigation following allegations that foreign women were raped and sexually assaulted by park workers. An unspecified number of alleged victims filed complaints with their governments after returning from volunteer work at the sanctuary, the New Sunday Times newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. The newspaper specifically mentioned Canadian women as being among those allegedly assaulted and a travel advisory on the Web site of Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade noted that several Canadians have reported "serious problems" at the Kuala Gandah sanc-tuary in Malaysia's central Pahang State.
■ China
Uighur charges reviewed
Germany is to send federal police to China to review terrorism allegations against two anti-Beijing groups with their headquarters on German soil, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Saturday. The Uighur groups have spoken out against Chinese rule in the Turkic-speaking, mainly Islamic Central Asian region of Xinjiang. China objected strongly to them holding a convention in Munich in May. Spiegel said two experts on terrorism would leave within days for the Uighur Autonomous Region to meet with Chinese officials. China has declared four Uighur separatist groups to be terrorist.
■ Philippines
Water supply tunnel clogged
Mud and logs washed down by recent storms which lashed the northern Philip-pines and left some 1,800 people dead or missing, have blocked the main water supply tunnel to the capital Manila, the government said yesterday. The 13km tunnel bringing water to the Angat Dam, which supplies 90 percent of Manila's 12 million residents, could take four months to clear, the government said in a statement. Authorities have warned that unless the damage can be repaired within that time frame, Manila runs the risk of water shortages in the summer.
■ Thailand
Anti-noise campaign in clubs
Harking to the advice of Thailand's king, authorities have launched an anti-noise campaign in the capital's bars, pubs and discotheques to protect the eardrums of the nation's youth. Deputy Prime Minister Purachai Piumsombun and Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayod-hin have given nightspots until Saturday to lower their noise output to at least 90 decibels, considerably below the 190 norm at present, The Nation newspaper said. The campaign comes on the heels of a speech delivered by Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Dec. 4, when he said hearing problems would affect Thai teenagers' ability to learn.
■ United States
US teens having less sex
Young Americans are less sexually active now than their counterparts of the mid-1990s and are using contraceptives more regularly, a study out this week found. The Department of Health and Human Services found the proportion of never-married females aged 15-17 who had ever had sexual intercourse dropped from 38 percent in 1995 to 30 percent in 2002. In 1995 at age 18-19, 68 percent had had intercourse, compared with 69 percent in 2002. "For male teens, the percent of those who were sexually experienced dropped significantly in both age groups: from 43 percent to 31 percent at age 15-17, and from 75 percent to 64 percent at age 18-19," the study said.
■ United States
Bush puts on some weight
US President George W. Bush was found in good health and pronounced "fit for duty" after an annual physical that also showed that the 58-year-old chief executive is now, as he rather sheepishly conceded, "a little overweight." "I obviously have gone through a campaign where I probably ate too many doughnuts, if you get my drift," said the usually trim Bush, who pledged to drop some weight in the new year. "But other than that, I feel great," he said upon leaving the National Naval Medical Center outside Washington.
■ United Kingdom
Diary of real Bridget found
The 80-year-old private scribblings of a British teenager dubbed the "real-life Bridget Jones" will go on sale across the country next week. The diary of 17-year-old Ilene Powell chronicles three months of her life in 1925, and reveals a twin obsession with dieting and men, much like the fictional heroine of the hit book and film series Bridget Jones' Diary, The leather-bound pocket book was found inside a bag of books donated last month to the Oxfam charity's bookshop in Bristol, Powell's hometown in southwest England. The diary offers a glimpse of life in Britain during the giddy "Roaring Twenties" decade and has generated media interest around the world as well as calls from filmmakers and publishers, suggesting to Oxfam its huge fundraising potential and prompting the charity to publish the book.
■ Romania
Polls open for run-off
Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase and popular Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu faced off in a presidential election runoff yesterday seen as key for the Balkan country's EU accession path. After inconclusive Nov. 28 elections for a new president and parliament, Romania needs a strong government to lead it through a mountain of reforms necessary for its planned 2007 EU entry.
■ Spain
`Toilet paper note' honored
A Bolivian lawyer has won a human rights award for a 32-year-old scrap of toilet tissue -- the paper on which he penned a writ seeking examination of his case while jailed under a right-wing dictatorship. The Spanish Bar Association honored Reynaldo Peters on Friday for his ingenuity in using a candle to heat up a dried ball point pen cartridge, composing a writ of habeas corpus destined for a Bolivian judge, and sneaking it out of prison with dirty laundry his wife took home to wash. Peters had been jailed in 1972 by the regime of Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer over his membership in an opposition party.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the