■ China
Zhao memorial to be held
China will hold a memorial for ousted Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) at its main cemetery for revolutionary heroes but it hasn't been decided whether he will be buried there, a relative said yesterday. The issue of official mourning for Zhao -- ousted in 1989 after sympathizing with pro-democracy protesters -- is sensitive for the government, which does not want to incite sympathy for a figure accused of endangering communist rule. Zhao, 85, died Monday after spending his last 15 years under house arrest. The government issued only a brief death notice and there has been no official announcement of funeral plans. Zhao's family has accepted a government offer to hold a ceremony at Beijing's Babaoshan cemetery but no date has been set.
■ Nepal
Atrocities reported
Nepalese security forces battling Maoist insurgents are killing, abducting and torturing civilians, a human rights group said yesterday. More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Maoist insurgency began in 1996 and at least 1,000 have disappeared, but these were only reported cases and the tip of the iceberg, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said. It urged the international community to stop what it called a the reign of terror. "What happens to those people who disappear?" Ali Salem, project coordinator at the commission, said at a news conference in Hong Kong. "When people are arrested, they are so badly tortured, they either die in custody or get killed during the encounters. Maoists do the same thing," he said.
■ Afghanistan
Separate attacks occur
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in northern Afghanistan yesterday wounding two people. "This is the work of terrorists," said Faizullah Zaki. He said the suicide bomber approached worshippers as they left the mosque in Shibergan. Also in Afghanistan, suspected Taliban rebels opened fire on a fuel truck heading to the main US base in the south late Wednesday, killing the Pakistani driver and wounding his two assistants, an official said. All of the attackers fled.
■ China
School attacker executed
A 21-year-old man who broke into a high school dormitory and stabbed nine Chinese boys to death has been executed, the government announced yesterday. Yan Yanming was put to death on Tuesday in Henan Province, where he was convicted of attacking the boys on Nov. 25 in the city of Ruzhou. Yan's mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide on the day following the attack. Xinhua said Yan confessed, saying he acted out of hatred. The trial and execution were unusually swift for Chinese courts, and might have been expedited in an effort to reassure the public amid a series of such knife attacks at schools, which have left one child dead and 42 people injured.
■ Hong Kong
High heels deforming feet
High-heeled shoes are to blame for 75,000 cases of deformed feet among women in fashion-conscious Hong Kong, a news report said. Orthopaedic surgeon Daniel Wu said half of the existing 150,000 cases of foot deformities in the territory were due to ill-fitting women's shoes. Putting fashion ahead of comfort puts added pressure on feet and leads to bunions, a condition women are 10 times more likely than men to develop, Wu said.
■ Sweden
Millionaire kidnapped
A Swedish millionaire and heir to one of the Scandinavian country's leading home electronics companies, Siba, appears to have been kidnapped, police said. Siba general director Fabian Bengtsson, 32, was "probably" kidnapped on his way to work in the southern Swedish city of Gothenburg. "A nationwide alert has gone out," police said, adding that Interpol had also been contacted. After Bengtsson, who left home at 7:45am, failed to turn up at work, his father Bengt Bengtsson, who is chief executive of family-owned Siba, received a text message at 10:37am on his mobile phone from him indicating that "he was not staying away of his own free will," police said. Since then Bengtsson's phone has been switched off.
■ Italy
Police seek sex-shop thief
He shouldn't be hard to spot. Police are searching for a pistol-wielding robber who stole female leather bondage gear and an inflatable sex doll from an erotica store in Milan on Wednesday. The clerk at the "Night Shop" speculated that the kinky crook might have been unsatisfied with the payout of his hold-up, which only yielded him about 60 euros (US$78). "There was just a little cash," the clerk, who declined to be named, said by telephone. "Then he took some stuff ... an inflatable doll and a leather outfit for a woman," he said.
■ Cuba
Cuba goes non-smoking
Cuba -- a country where tobacco is the most famous export -- will ban smoking inside all public buildings including restaurants and cinemas beginning Feb. 6. "Smoking is prohibited in all enclosed or air-conditioned locales open to the public, meeting places, theaters, cinemas and video halls, drivers and passengers on taxis, trains and buses and in all sporting facilities for athletes and workers," the new regulation said. The measure "seeks to protect the health of the population and achieve a movement of respect for non-smokers." The government also called for "the creation of conditions to set apart areas and tables for smokers, and service personnel must tell users so that they can choose where to sit."
■ United Kingdom
WD-40 fends off druggies
The makers of the handy spray lubricant WD-40 proudly list 2,000 uses for their product, from unsticking rusty screws or squeaky bicycle chains to polishing frying pans. But British police have found another -- keeping the public from snorting cocaine off toilet lids in bars. Police in Bristol said on Tuesday they have been advising pub and nightclub owners to spray the colorless lubricant on toilet seats and other flat surfaces in the lavatory that customers often use to snort drugs. Apparently, cocaine and spray lube don't mix. "A chemical reaction takes place with the cocaine that causes it to congeal and become a mess so it's unusable," a police spokesman said.
■ United States
Darth Tater introduced
To coincide with the launch of the next "Star Wars" movie, Revenge of the Sith, Toymaker Hasbro is introducing Darth Tater, a new model of its popular Mr. Potato Head toy, which is based on the image of Darth Vader, the ultimate Star Wars villain. The US$8 toy will go on sale next month. It will come with a light saber, black cape and helmet and the regular Mr. Potato Head accessories such as eyes, mouth and nose, which can be removed and rearranged.
■ United Kingdom
Shipman's serial tally grows
Harold Shipman, the family doctor who became Britain's worst-ever serial killer, may have killed 137 patients as a trainee on top of the 215 killings already attributed to him, an enquiry revealed on Wednesday. Shipman, who hanged himself aged 57 in his prison cell in January last year, is believed to have carried out some murders while a trainee doctor in Yorkshire between 1970 and 1974. A new report by an inquiry set up to investigate Shipman's decades of mur-der will publish a report later this month "into 137 deaths that occurred between 1970 and 1974," a preliminary statement by the inquiry team said.
■ Germany
`Einstein Year' begins
Germany kicked off cele-brations on Wednesday of the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of his death, honoring the legendary native son whose books were once burned by the Nazis. The "Einstein Year" is being marked with tours, a scientific conference and a major exhibition about Einstein, whose theories about space, time and relativity revolutionized science. Einstein, who was Jewish, was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He left Germany one month before Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, never to return.
■ United States
Parents clueless on teen sex
Young US teenagers are becoming intimate and having sex at an earlier age than their parents suspect, according to a new survey. The survey of 1,000 teens aged 13 to 16 showed 27 percent said they had "been with somebody in an inti-mate or sexual way," while 83 percent of 1,000 parents surveyed said they did not think their teenager had gone beyond kissing. Sexual intercourse was as common as oral sex among the teens in the survey released on Wednesday by NBC News and People magazine. Twelve percent said they had engaged in oral sex and 13 percent said they had sexual intercourse. Of those who said they had engaged in either sexual intercourse or oral sex, about half had first done so by the age of 14.
■ United Kingdom
Odor may deter mosquitoes
Scientists hope to remedy one of life's great injustices: that some people are far more likely than others to be bitten by mosquitoes. Human volunteer trials have begun in the mosquito-infested west of Scotland as scien-tists build on the long-held theory that both deadly and simply painful insects are fatally attracted by body odors. They think they can use other body chemicals to hide the smells. Some researchers have suggested that individuals who escape mosquitoes lack the attrac-tive chemicals. But those involved in the study funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council think all of us have these chemicals but some have others which "switch off" or disguise them.
■ United States
Four Chinese sought
Federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday they were searching for four Chinese citizens who may have been involved in plot-ting a possible terrorist action in Boston. The names and photographs of two men and two women whom officials were looking for were released to the media. The statement said none of the four were on "any pre-viously existing watch list." The authorities were informed about the four in a tip from a single anonymous source, said Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
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CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion