Fri, Nov 25, 2005 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ New Zealand
  Former minister charged

  Former New Zealand immigration minister Tuaraki John Delamere was committed yesterday for trial on 10 charges of fraud and forgery brought by the Serious Fraud Office in Wellington. Delamere, who set himself up as an immigration consultant after losing his seat in parliament in 1999, is alleged to have organized a fraudulent system involving Chinese business people wanting to settle in New Zealand using holes in policy he had introduced as minister.

  ■ China

  Divination 4,500 years old

  New evidence suggests fortune telling has a history of at least 4,500 years in China, state media reported on Wednesday. Archeologists arrived at this conclusion after they unearthed a jade tortoise and an oblong jade article in an ancient tomb in Lingjiatan village, east China's Anhui Province, Xinhua news agency reported. "They were obviously not objects used in daily life, nor adornment, but instruments used in religious activities," said Gu Fang, an expert with the jadeware research committee under the China Society of Cultural Relics.

  ■ Japan

  Empresses recommended

  A panel on imperial succession in Tokyo was set yesterday to formally recommend that women and their children be allowed to ascend the ancient Chrysanthemum Throne -- saving Japan's male heir-deprived royal family from a succession crisis. The recommendation that Japanese law be revised to give the first-born child of either sex the right to head the world's oldest hereditary monarchy goes to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has said he plans to submit a bill based on the report to Parliament next year. Japan's imperial family hasn't produced a male heir for 40 years, and Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako's only child, three-year-old Aiko, is a girl.

  ■ Malaysia

  MPs `behaving like monkeys'

  European lawmakers who visited parliament in Kuala Lumpur were treated to heated exchanges on Wednesday when a government legislator accused his opposition rivals of behaving "like monkeys" and embarrassing the nation in front of foreigners. The uproar began while a delegation from the European Parliament was observing a debate in Malaysia's lower house of parliament about the country's growing backlog of court cases, said Lim Kit Siang, the top opposition leader in parliament. Government legislator M. Kayveas became irritated when Lim and other opposition members interrupted his explanation of the issue, prompting him to accuse them of "acting like monkeys in a circus."

  ■ Singapore

  Housewife jailed for abuse

  A Singaporean housewife was jailed for 10 months for abusing her Indonesian maid on a record 79 occasions, media reports said yesterday. Sazarina Madzin, 29, had admitted hitting her maid, Wiwik Setyowati, 22, all those times in less than a year and threatening to kill her once. The irony was not lost on Nor Azlan Sulaiman, Sazarina's husband and an active volunteer with the Red Cross. "I have played a part in helping thousands of Indonesians, but here, because of what my wife did, there will be one Indonesian who will never be able to forgive me," The Straits Times quoted Azlan as saying in reference to the maid.

  ■ Franch
  Rapper may face jail

  A French court agreed on Wednesday to consider a complaint brought by a conservative member of parliament against the rapper Monsieur R for referring to France as a slut in a song. The court in Melun, south of Paris, said it would rule early next year on the complaint filed by Daniel Mach of Pyrenees Orientales, who said he had the backing of 150 other parliament members but was bringing the action "on my own personal account, because I feel assaulted by these insults. They are a real attack on the dignity of France and of the state." Mach was the latest in a long line of people to object to French rap lyrics since the early 1990s.

  ■ United Kingdom

  Diamond show closes early

  A diamond exhibition at London's Natural History Museum has shut down three months early because of police fears that the valuable jewels could be stolen. The display, which has attracted more than 70,000 visitors since it opened in July, includes the De Beers Millennium Star, a 203-carat pear-shaped diamond targeted by thieves when it was displayed at London's Millennium Dome in 2000. "Since we began planning this exhibition, we have followed police advice to the letter in terms of ensuring the security of our staff, our visitors, and the exhibition specimens," said museum director Michael Dixon.

  ■ United Kingdom

  Eruption expanding island

  A rare volcanic eruption is expanding the size of Montagu Island in the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands chain, a remote British territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean, scientists said on Wednesday. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics said new satellite images show that Montagu Island has grown by 50 acres in the last month alone. A large and fast flow of lava is pouring into the sea like a large waterfall, the scientists said. "Red hot lava has formed a molten river 90m wide that is moving fast, possibly several meters per second and extending the shoreline on the north side of the island," said John Smellie of the British Antarctic Survey.

  ■ United Kingdom

  Chipmunks cause concern

  Four resplendent Siberian chipmunks with their pouched cheeks and striped fur are wanted dead or alive after fleeing from an enclosure in southern England, a newspaper reported yesterday. Around 30 escaped from Wellington Country Park and four are thought still to be on the run, the Daily Mail said. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs said the chipmunks are quite harmless to humans, but could muscle out wood mice and bank voles in the fight for seeds, nuts and berries. They are also known to scoff chicks and birds' eggs. It is feared they could multiply and begin to dominate.

  ■ United Kingdom

  Detainee fights for passport

  David Hicks, the Australian terror suspect held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, won permission on Wednesday to challenge a decision not to grant him a British passport. A judge at England's High Court granted the 30-year-old permission to seek a judicial review of the refusal by British Home Secretary Charles Clarke earlier this year. Hicks, a Muslim convert from the southern Australian city of Adelaide, applied for a British passport earlier this year on the grounds that his mother was born and lived in England as a child.

  ■ United States
  Dance-off leads to murder

  The mother of a boy who was struck during a neighborhood street dancing contest has been charged with killing the stepfather of another youth. Police said they charged Patricia Hayward, 39, on Tuesday with murder and related counts after she surrendered to authorities. Donald Clyburn, 41, was shot in the head near his home in Philadelphia on Nov. 15. The dispute started when Alex Ledino, Clyburn's stepson, struck the other boy with his elbow during the impromptu dance contest, reports said. Alex said it was an accident and that he apologized. However, witnesses said Hayward later went to the boy's home, got into an argument and shot Clyburn.

  ■ United Nations

  Sonar hurting cetaceans

  Increased naval military maneuvers and submarine sonars in the world's oceans are threatening dolphins, whales and porpoises that depend on sound to survive, a UN report said on Wednesday. The report said that the use of powerful military sonar is harming the ability of some 71 types of cetaceans to communicate, navigate and hunt. "While we know about other threats such as over-fishing, hunting and pollution, a new and emerging threat to cetaceans is that of increased underwater sonars," Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Society said. "These low-frequency sounds travel vast distances, hundreds if not thousands of kilometers from the source."

  ■ United States

  Bush protesters arrested

  Police arrested about a dozen protesters near US President George W. Bush's Texas ranch on Wednesday, including the sister of a noted opponent of the war in Iraq, witnesses said. Among those detained near Bush's estate, where he was spending Thanksgiving, was Dede Miller, sister of Cindy Sheehan, who staged a month-long vigil outside the ranch in August, they said. Sheehan, who met with Bush not long after her son Casey was killed in Iraq, was expected to return to the town of Crawford later this week to resume her appeals for a meeting to discuss her opposition to the war.

  ■ United States

  Bush targets Zimbabwe

  US President George W. Bush has frozen the assets of 128 people and 33 entities deemed to be "hindering democratic reform in Zimbabwe," the White House said on Wednesday. By executive order, Bush widened an original list of 77 people, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose assets he froze in March 2003. "There is still time for the Government of Zimbabwe to avoid a further expansion of the sanctions list should it begin serious efforts to restore democratic norms and the rule of law," Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

  ■ Malta

  Queen gets warm welcome

  Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was given a warm welcome on Wednesday as she arrived in Malta for a three-day official visit, her fourth to the Mediterranean island. Thousands of Maltese and British tourists lined the main street of Malta's capital Valletta to greet the queen and her husband Prince Philip. Heavy security was in place on the island, with army helicopters flying overhead to support security forces. The queen was received at the Presidential Palace by Maltese President Fenech Adami. She then went on a 10-minute "walkabout" down the main street, formerly known as Kingsway and now Republic Street, where she received bouquets of flowers and spoke briefly to well-wishers.
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