■ Thailand
Tsunami memorial plan
Thailand will pay for flights and hotel rooms for the immediate relatives of foreign tsunami victims who want to attend anniversary memorials of the disaster, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday. Giving more details of an offer first revealed two days earlier, Thaksin said the Tourism Authority of Thailand would send out invitation letters to the families of the nearly 2,500 foreign victims. "The 26th of December will be a day of mourning," Thaksin told his weekly news conference.
■ Thailand
Police hunt escapees
Four gunmen believed to be members of a drug gang held up a warden at a maximum security prison Thursday to free two drug trafficking suspects, police said. The four men, posing as relatives visiting two inmates at Klong Prem prison, pulled out guns and forced a warden to open a food delivery slot so the prisoners could escape, said police Colonel Phongsith Saengpetch. The gunmen and prisoners fled by car. Police set up roadblocks to search for the gunmen and suspects, but failed to find any leads after six hours, Phongsith said.
■ Japan
Many Japanese undecided
More than 30 percent of Japanese voters are undecided over which party to back in this weekend's parliamentary elections, a newspaper survey said Wednesday. The Asahi newspaper poll showed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party leading the top opposition party with support from 31 percent of the respondents in the 300 direct-vote districts, in which voters cast ballots for individual candidates.
■ China
Donkey passed off as tiger
A restaurant in northeastern China that advertised illegal tiger meat dishes was found instead to be selling donkey flesh -- marinated in tiger urine, a newspaper reported yesterday. The Hufulou restaurant, located beside the Heidaohezi tiger reserve near the city of Hailin, had advertised stir-fried tiger meat with chilies for 800 yuan (US$98), as well as liquor flavored with tiger bone for 600 yuan a bottle, the China Daily reported. Raw meat was priced at 7,000 yuan per kilogram. The sale of tiger parts is illegal in China and officers shut down the restaurant, only to be told by owner, Ma Shikun, that the meat was actually that of donkeys, flavored with tiger urine to give the dish a "special" tang, the newspaper said.
■ Australia
Randy teacher gets jail time
An Australian high school science teacher was jailed for two years yesterday after pleading guilty in a Hobart court to having sex with five pupils aged under 17. Sarah Vercoe, 25, had a two-month sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy she met at a school camp late last year. She also had group sex with four other boys, aged 14 to 16, in her Hobart home. Outside the court, the boys' families and sex abuse campaigners protested against the sentence, which they said was insufficient. Vercoe told the court that her marriage was not going well and she felt rejected by her fellow teachers.
■ Japan
Storm pummels Hokkaido
A powerful storm that killed 21 people across Japan lashed the northern island of Hokkaido yesterday with strong winds and heavy rains, prompting officials to close schools. Seven people were missing and more than 140 injured. Officials in Hokkaido closed about 700 public schools while Hokkaido Electric Power Co. said it had restored power to most of the 1,700 houses that suffered outages overnight. Typhoon Nabi began lashing southern Japan on Tuesday, but was downgraded to a tropical storm before making landfall on Hokkaido late Wednesday.
■ Australia
High school offers surfing
An Australian high school hopes to stop beach-loving students from bailing out of class by making surfing an approved subject. Byron Bay High School will offer surfing as part of a recreation course that from next year will count toward a high school certificate in New South Wales state. "You've got students who are at risk of dropping out of school and the school has developed this course as a way to provide a pathway for these students into future employment and keep them connected to education," state Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt told Ten Network television Wednesday.
■ Thailand
Muslim General appointed
Overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand, struggling to end an increasingly bloody insurgency in its largely Muslim south, appointed its first Muslim army chief on Thursday. Panitan Wattanayagorn, of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University said that Vietnam War veteran General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, whose appointment was announced by the royal palace, was probably promoted to the post because of his battlefield experience and expertise rather than his religion. But his religion should help the army in its campaign to win over civilians in the largely Muslim far south, where more than 800 people have been killed since the violence erupted last year, he added.
■ China
Hurricane response blasted
China's main Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, assailed the US response to Hurricane Katrina, saying Washington had been negligent and looters showed the dark side of US life. "In the face of the hurricane, Americans accepted the challenge but failed to beat it off," the newspaper said in an editorial on its English-language Web site this week. "This is really a shame on the United States," it said. "New Orleans has become Baghdad." Officially, the Chinese government has expressed its sympathy to Katrina's victims and sent a US$5 million donation plus tents, bedding and electricity generators.
■ Rescue effort
Canadians faster than US
A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the US military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday. The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 2.4m deep in places, Senator Walter Boasso said. "Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people ... We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."
■ Evacuation
Unruly passenger subdued
Passengers on a Frontier Airlines plane carrying Hurricane Katrina evacuees from Houston to Denver subdued a man and tied him up with duct tape after he assaulted a flight attendant, police said. The altercation began Tuesday when Jason Glen Tervort, 26, walked up to the flight attendant in the center aisle and said: "Ladies and gentleman, I have an announcement to make. My name is Jason," according to the federal arrest warrant. When the flight attendant tried to get Tervort back to his seat, he allegedly poked her while saying, "I'm a man," then began pushing and slapping her.
■ United States
900 foreigners missing
Nearly 900 foreign nationals, many of them French and British, are still missing in the areas devastated last week by Hurricane Katrina, the Washington Times said yesterday. While consular officials consulted by the daily reported some 160 French citizens and 96 Britons missing, Mexicans, especially illegal immigrants, were expected to outnumber all other nationalities, the daily said. The US State Department on Wednesday afternoon told the newspaper that, based on numbers provided by various embassies, 883 foreign nationals were still unaccounted for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
■ Society
Hurricane items on eBay
The chance to make a quick buck from Hurricane Katrina has not escaped some, with items on eBay including a "rain-soaked newspaper" delivered on the day the storm hit the American south, jars of rainwater and a message in a bottle that supposedly led to the rescue of several families. Among other items on sale on eBay Wednesday was a scribbling that a Texan "artist" claims he drew after waking from a dream 10 days before the storm, which uncannily resembles satellite pictures of Katrina.
■ Iraq
`No confession' by Saddam
Former president Saddam Hussein's chief attorney denied yesterday that the ousted leader had confessed to ordering executions and waging a campaign against Kurds in which thousands of people are said to have been killed. "There was no confession by the president and all the investigations in this case do not implicate him at all," Khalil Dulaimi said in a statement. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told state TV on Tuesday that an investigator who questioned Saddam told him that he had extracted key confessions from him and that Saddam had signed them.
■ Iraq
Long-lost hostage rescued
US troops freed American Roy Hallums, who had been held hostage for 10 months, in a raid on a farmhouse outside Baghdad on Wednesday, the military said in a statement. Hallums was kidnapped in Baghdad on Nov. 1 along with five colleagues from a Saudi-owned company. His four Iraqi co-workers were freed fairly rapidly and Filipino Robert Tarongoy was freed in June. The raid came less than three hours after soldiers received a tip from an Iraqi they had arrested. Hallums was said to be "in good condition." One Iraqi was arrested in the raid.
■ Germany
Anarchists' ad outrages
A fringe anarchist party has outraged television audiences with its campaign TV spot -- a video montage of booze-fuelled chaos, syringe needles and men cavorting with topless women. An estimated 1 million viewers watched the German Anarchist Pogo Party's already heavily censored political broadcast when it was shown for the first time on Monday. The ad spliced together scenes of revellers smashing furniture, pouring beer down each other's throats and groups of couples kissing and groping each other, all set to a frantic heavy metal soundtrack.
■ Brazil
Cayman cull called for
A project to save caymans from extinction has been too successul, leading to an explosion in their numbers and uproar among river-dwellers who say they are terrorized by the creatures, some of which can grow up to 6m long. Politicians in Amazonas State are demanding an end to a hunting ban imposed in 1970. Brazil is home to five species of alligator and cayman. Critics say several million cayman now share the state with 2.8 million people. Government officials in Brasilia defend the ban, saying that its opponents just want to profit from the overseas trade in alligator skin.
■ United Kingdom
Warning issued on liver
Regular eaters of liver, including pate, were advised on Wednesday to limit their consumption and not take any supplements containing vitamin A, including fish oils, in order to limit their risk of osteoporosis. The UK's Food Standards Agency tightened its guidance to warn women who had been through the menopause and men over 65 to eat liver products no more than once a week. Those who eat liver products more often were told not to increase the amount. It is thought that having more than 1.5mg of vitamin A a day over long periods can make bones more likely to fracture.
■ United States
Rap lyrics linked to kill plot
Federal investigators claim to have found evidence of an assassination plot against 50 Cent, hatched by a convicted drug trader in retaliation over some of the rapper's lyrics. They believe there was a possible conspiracy between New York drug lord Kevin "Supreme" McGriff and some employees of the music label Murder Inc to kill the rapper.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
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‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the