■ China
Bund to become traffic-free
City officials are studying plans to make Shanghai's famous waterfront Bund a traffic-free plaza by moving a riverside thoroughfare underground. Shanghai has begun drafting plans to route the heavy traffic on 10-lane Zhongshan Road, which runs alongside the Huangpu River. "The project aims to divert the huge volume of ground traffic and turn the Bund into a more friendly scenic attraction for visitors," a senior engineer said. However, none of the officials involved were willing to offer a time schedule or cost estimate for the plan.
■ Vietnam
Cops to bust `social evils'
The government has decided to stop granting licences for new bars, karaoke parlors and dancing halls in order to fight "social evils." "We have stopped allowing the establishment of new bars, karaoke and dancing halls as from Wednesday until discipline is restored in these places," an official said. Police will raid bars and businesses seen as promoting "social evils," a term used by the communist government to describe a range of activities, including gambling, drug use and prostitution. Recently, most of those arrested came from affluent families, many the children of high-ranking communist party officials.
■ Hong Kong
Tsang urged to forfeit title
The head of the main pro-China political party, Ma Lik (馬力), made an appeal yesterday for the territory's leader-in-waiting to give up his British knighthood. Doing so would, he said, dispel doubts among people with "strong nationalistic sentiments" towards China. Donald Tsang (曾蔭權), who is expected to be appointed the new Chief Executive in July, was knighted by the Queen in 1997. The knighthood is thought to be one reason that China, while endorsing him as leader, insisted he serve out the term of his predecessor Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) rather than start a new five-year term.
■ Malaysia
Runaway kidney patient dies
A kidney patient who allegedly slashed a fellow patient to death died after he missed his regular dialysis treatments while on the run from the police. Kim Tin Sun, 39, was found unconscious at a resort outside Kuala Lumpur and died shortly afterwards from organ failure. Police had been searching for Kim after he attacked Goh Kim Kee, 50, with a machete in a dispute over the temperature of the air-conditioning at a dialysis center. Kim fled the scene which took place in front of horrified dialysis patients, leaving Goh to bleed to death. The two men had in the past argued about the air-conditioning at the dialysis center, with Goh complaining that it was too cold.
■ United States
Court warns Wiccans
An activist for the Wiccan faith and his ex-wife are challenging a court order that they must protect their nine-year-old son from what it calls "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." The Indiana Civil Liberties Union has appealed the stipulation written into the couple's divorce order, saying it is unconstitutionally vague because it does not define mainstream religion. Thomas Jones, a Wiccan activist who has coordinated Pagan Pride Day in Indianapolis for six years, said he and his ex-wife, Tammy Bristol, were stunned by the order. Neither parent has taken their son to any Wiccan rituals since it was issued, he said.
■ United States
Bill pushes Mandarin
Two prominent US senators proposed legislation on Thursday that would encourage Chinese and US citizens to learn each others' languages in an effort to improve bilateral ties. "The rise of China comes with a whole set of challenges. But the ability to talk to and understand each other should not be among them," bill co-sponsor Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman said at a press event for the US-China Cultural Engagement Act. It would authorize US$1.3 billion in federal funds over five years to provide for Chinese-language instruction in US schools. The bill would also increase consular activity to support US businesses in China and Internet cultural exchanges.
■ United States
Jackson tape in, pics out
Michael Jackson's prosecutors will be allowed to play a tape of the accuser's first police interview, but the judge refused their bid on Thursday to show jurors in the child molestation case pictures of Jackson's genitalia. The defense said that if the 2003 interview were played, they would seek to put the boy back on the witness stand, setting the stage for a possible second face-off between accuser and defendant just before the case goes to the jury. Defense attorneys said they may also want to call the boy's mother and other witnesses. The case had been expected to go to the jury next week, but that became uncertain with the possibility of extensive new testimony.
■ Serbia-Montenegro
UN official charged
A UN refugee official working in Kosovo was charged on Thursday with alleged sexual abuse of minors in the UN-administered province, officials said. Rashidoon Khan, a Pakistani, was charged by an international prosecutor with two counts of sexual abuse of minors under the age of 16 and two counts of human trafficking, UN spokesman Neeraj Singh said. Khan, who worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Kosovo, was arrested earlier this year. His alleged crimes were committed between September and December last year, Singh said.
■ United Kingdom
Buyer grabs tiny apartment
London's smallest apartment, a converted storage closet measuring just 5m2, has found a tenant for US$1,065 per month. Gordon Blausten of the Bruten and Co real estate agency said the "tiny but trendy" apartment packs a kitchenette, shower and wardrobe under a loft bed. Located in a turn of the century Edwardian building in the heart of the fashionable Notting Hill area of west London, the apartment found a tenant after only three days on the market. "A young professional woman, with a very active social life, is now living there," Blausten said.
■ Canada
Barbie doll takes on BBQ
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear the case of Barbie the doll vs. Barbie the BBQ restaurant, the justices ruled Thursday. The high court said it would hear an appeal by US toymaker Mattel Inc against two federal court decisions that allowed a Montreal restaurant owner to register the name "Barbie's" for his two restaurants, which serve mainly barbecue dishes. Mattel contends this confuses people. But the restaurant owner says the Australian slang makes people think of barbecue -- as in, "throw some chicken on the barbie" -- not plastic dolls.
■ United Kingdom
Boy ordered to bare head
A British juvenile delinquent who terrorized his neighbors with a chain saw was banned Thursday from wearing a cap or hooded sweatshirt for five years. Authorities slapped the Anti Social Behavior Order on 16-year-old Dale Carroll of Cheetham, a suburb of Manchester, northwest England, after he was caught on a video surveillance camera taking a chain saw to a metal post. Carroll, known as "Elms" to his friends, then threatened a passing cyclist with the chain saw. It was the first time an Anti Social Behavior Order, an administrative measure introduced to reduce rising juvenile delinquincy, had been used in such a manner by British authorities.
■ United States
Bolton vote delayed
The US Senate on Thursday put off a vote to confirm John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN, yielding to Democrats' demands that the Bush administration be asked to hand over more information on Bolton's use of intelligence material. The Senate voted 56-42, giving Republicans less than the 60 votes needed to end debate and go to a final vote to confirm Bolton, a favorite of conservatives who currently is the top US diplomat for arms control. The vote is now delayed until after Congress's weeklong Memorial Day recess, marking another setback for the troubled nomination that has become a test of US President George W. Bush's political clout in his second term.
■ United States
Pope's car sale put on hold
The planned multimillion-dollar auction of the only car Pope John Paul II ever owned was put off on Thursday until a judge can resolve a father-and-son tiff over who owns it. The Illinois judge ordered the humble blue 1975 Ford Escort returned to Jerome Rich from Kruse International, the Indiana rare automobile museum and auction house where his son, Jim, originally bought it. Jim shipped the car to Kruse International and an auction was set for June 5 at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. Pope John Paul, who died last month, had driven the car himself and put 96,560km on it before giving it to Kruse in 1996 to sell, with the proceeds going to charity. Jim Rich paid US$102,000 and traveled to the Vatican to pick up the keys from the pontiff himself.
■ United Kingdom
Expensive cheese sold
A British cheese company said Thursday that a small piece of their special blend of extra-strong cheddar cheese, branded "TNT," had sold on Internet auction site eBay for £152 (US$278). "It works out at more than £500 (US$916) a kilogram, so that's an expensive piece of cheese," said Richard Clothier of the cheese company Wyke Farms of Somerset, England. Clothier said the successful bidder, known only by his eBay login name of "Huggysdad," plans to feed the pricey cheddar to his cat. "Huggy is apparently the name of his cat, who loves cheese," Clothier said.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
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