■ Thailand
First female VP elected
Thailand's 500-member parliament elected its first female vice president on yesterday, officials said. Lawmaker Lalita Rerksamran said her selection to one of the parliament's two vice presidencies, the legislature's second-highest post, was particularly special coming on the eve of International Women's Day today. "I am very proud to be the first woman to be appointed as vice president of parliament," she said. Lalita was among 53 women who have won parliamentary seats in Thailand's Feb. 6 general elections -- the biggest election triumph for females in the country's history, and an increase of seven seats from the last elections in 2001.
■ China
Floating bridge capsizes
A floating bridge capsized at a scenic tourist spot in Zhejiang Province, dumping 88 people into the water and killing five of them. The accident occurred Sunday morning in the West Zhejiang Canyon in Linan. All of the dead were from the nearby city of Jintan. "The overturning may have been caused by the tourists swinging" the bridge, Xinhua said.
■ China
Mine accident kills five
Toxic gas released by an explosion in an iron mine in northern China killed five miners. More than 20 miners were working in the Ekou Iron Mine in the city of Taiyuan when the explosion Sunday released the gas, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said 15 miners were rescued and were in stable condition. China's mines are the world's deadliest, with more than 6,000 miners killed last year by fires, explosions and underground floods.
■ Indonesia
Governor sentenced
Prosecutors urged a court yesterday to sentence the governor of tsunami-hit Aceh province to eight years in jail on corruption charges relating to the purchase of a Russian-made helicopter. Prosecutors had accused Abdullah Puteh of buying the civilian helicopter without authorization in a 2001 deal that caused financial losses to the state. His trial is the first by a new court set up to deal with high-profile graft cases in Indonesia, listed by global graft watchdog Transparency International as the fifth most corrupt country in the world. "The defendant has been proven guilty on corruption charges that cost the state 10.87 billion rupiah (US$1.16 million) in losses," said prosecutor Chaidir Ramli. Puteh, who is suspended from his post, has repeatedly denied the charges and said the purchase had been approved.
■ Australia
Murder confession found
An undertaker's letter confessing to a murder more than a century ago has been uncovered during renovations to a home near the South Australia state capital Adelaide, sparking a police hunt for human remains. In the letter, dated March 1932 and written on a page from a ledger book, Gustav Adolph Maerschel confessed to stabbing an unnamed Englishman in the 1800s and then burying the body under a pear tree in the backyard, Australian Associated Press reported. The letter from Maerschel, an undertaker, was found hidden behind a mantlepiece during renovations to the historic home in Birdwood, around 35km north of Adelaide. Police searched the backyard of the home in for human remains. They found a small piece of bone, which has been sent for analysis to see whether it belonged to a human.
■ Kuwait
Women demand suffrage
Hundreds of Kuwaiti women rallied outside parliament Monday to press for their political rights as MPs prepared to discuss setting a date for a debate on a government-sponsored bill that would give the Gulf state's women the vote. "Women's rights, now," "Sharia [Islamic law] does not contain anything against women's rights," read placards raised by the demonstrators, most of which were in the blue color symbolizing the struggle of women activists. More than 400 people, mostly women but also including a number of male liberal sympathizers, took part in the rally. Some of the women had their faces covered by a niqab, a veil that covers the face, in line with conservative Muslim tradition. Meanwhile, MPs prepared to discuss setting a date to debate the government bill which Islamists have vowed to oppose.
■ Norway
More Munch art stolen
Thieves stole three works by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch from a hotel in south Norway overnight, adding to a list of his missing art including The Scream. Thieves took a 1915 watercolor, Blue Dress, and two lithographs -- a self-portrait and a portrait of Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg. Police spokesman Paul Horne said they were seeking witnesses. "The biggest loss is Blue Dress," hotel owner Vidar Salbuvik said. He declined to estimate how much it was worth. The works were among 400 in a collection kept by the hotel.
■ Swaziland
King traded cattle for cars
Swaziland's monarch traded in livestock to pay for two luxury German cars which he bought recently, and did not dip into state coffers for the purchases. King Mswati raised more than four million emalangeni (US$680,000) through the sale of some 700 cattle. "The king never at any given time used money from taxpayers to finance the purchase of the cars as reported by the international media," a top civil servant in the king's office, Roy Fanourakis, said.
■ Canada
Support for PM reaffirmed
Canada's ruling Liberal Party reaffirmed its backing on Sunday for Prime Minister Paul Martin, who promised to regain the party's majority in Parliament with a "resounding victory" in the next election. Eighty-eight percent of participating Liberals voted to keep Martin on as party leader, two to three percentage points less than predecessor and rival Jean Chretien achieved but enough for Martin to take it as a mandate. Martin lost the party's decade-long majority in the House of Commons when he called an election for last June, one-and-a-half years before he was required to do so constitutionally.
■ United States
Milk not that good for you
Children who drink more milk do not necessarily develop healthier bones, researchers said yesterday in a report that stresses exercise and modest consumption of calcium-rich foods such as tofu. The US government has gradually increased recommendations for daily calcium intake, largely from dairy products, to between 800mg and 1,300mg to promote healthy bones and prevent osteoporosis. But the report, published in the journal Pediatrics, said said boosting consumption of milk or other dairy products was not necessarily the best way to provide the minimal calcium intake of at least 400mg per day.
■ Human rights
Reebok honors activists
Athletic shoe maker Reebok has announced its annual human rights awards will go to four activists from Myanmar, Chechnya, Mexico and Liberia. Award recipients, who must be under 30 to qualify, receive US$50,000 to further their work. The youngest recipient, Charm Tong, 23, is a Shan refugee from Myanmar who campaigns for the rights of refugees and helped found a group dedicated to stopping violence against women and children. Zarema Mukusheva, 29, another female recipient, is a human rights monitor in Chechnya who has documented abuses against civilians. Carlos Rojas, 28, an indigenous Mixe from Oaxaca, Mexico, who has recorded abuses against indigenous communities, said he also wanted indigenous people to empower themselves by using video.
■ Jerusalem
Massive scam uncovered
Israeli police on Sunday arrested 22 employees of Israel's largest commercial bank on suspicion they were implicated in one of the biggest money-laundering scams in the country's history, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, officials said. The yearlong undercover investigation involves about 80 bank accounts and 170 customers at Bank Hapoalim, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said. Many countries are involved in the affair, Kleiman said, but would mention only France as one of those that cooperated with the investigation. Investigators suspect that employees of the branch failed to report money transfers, as required by Israel's law against money laundering.
■ West bank
Two injured in attack
Palestinian gunmen wounded two Israelis in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, military sources said, in an attack that punctured a fragile ceasefire. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on a post manned by paramilitary border police near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the city. The incident appeared likely to trigger more Israeli calls for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who declared a ceasefire along with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Feb. 8, to crack down on militants refusing to abide by the truce.
■ IRAQ
Allawi turns down offer
Outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has refused an offer to join a coalition government led by the election-winning Shiite bloc, senior leaders in the alliance said yesterday. "He showed no interest in joining the government and turned down our offer," said Hussein Shahristani of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). Another figure in the UIA, which swept 140 of the 275 national assembly seats in January's election, said Allawi was offered a role in proportion to the 40 seats garnered by his list.
■ United States
Trustees kill program
Leaders of two community colleges in southern California have ended their schools' study-abroad program in Spain, citing the country's troop withdrawal from Iraq. The trustees of the South Orange County Community College District, comprising Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College, voted 5 to 2 last week to cancel the 14-year-old summer program. "Spain has abandoned our fighting men and women, withdrawing their support," trustee Tom Fuentes said. "I see no reason to send students of our colleges to Spain at this moment in history."
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