■ JAPAN
Probe to make new attempt
A Japanese spacecraft will make another attempt to touch down on an asteroid to collect the first samples from such a celestial body, a task one expert said was like landing a jumbo jet in the Grand Canyon. The Hayabusa probe, which successfully touched down on the rotating Itokawa asteroid last Sunday but failed to collect material, is set to try again shortly past 7am today, Japan's space agency said. If the mission succeeds it would be the first time that material from an asteroid is brought to Earth and could help scientists learn more about how the solar system was created. The spacecraft is also meant to leave an aluminum plate bearing the names of 880,000 people from 149 countries, among them US filmmaker Steven Spielberg and British science fiction author Arthur Clarke, on the asteroid.
■ THAILAND
HIV carrier sneaks in again
A German national at the center of an HIV scare involving hundreds of Thai women was arrested for trying to enter the country for the third time and will be expelled, police said yesterday. Hans-Otto Schiemann, 54, was detained on Thursday night in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum and will be handed over to immigration police. Immigration police in Bangkok confirmed that they will expel Schiemann as soon as possible but declined to say how and when he re-entered Thailand. Schiemann, 54, who claims to be infected with HIV and had unprotected sex with hundreds of Thais, was arrested for a second time in March after re-entering the country despite being blacklisted. Schiemann, a one-legged army veteran, had been deported earlier in the month for overstaying.
■ INDIA
Alcoholic stitches wife's lips
Fed up with his wife's demands that he give up drinking, an alcoholic in India's eastern Jharkhand state sewed her lips together, it was reported on Thursday. According to the IANS news agency, Savitri Devi had asked her husband repeatedly to quit drinking because it left them very little to feed their four children at their home in West Singbhum district. "Whenever I requested him not to drink, he threatened to sew my mouth," she was quoted by the news agency as saying. Some 10 days ago, the couple got into a spat again after the man returned home drunk. The inebriated man attacked his wife and sewed her lips together with a needle and thread. He then escaped to a nearby village.
■ INDIA
Spy drones crashing
India has expressed concern over the high crash rate of its Israeli-made spy drones, taking up the issue with Israeli officials, media reports said on Thursday. Four of the 50 Searcher and Heron unmanned aerial vehicles India purchased from Israel have crashed over the last two years, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee as telling parliament in a written response. According to PTI, Mukherjee said investigations attributed the crashes to systems failure. Indian defense officials have raised the issue with their Israeli counterparts and the manufacturer, Israel Aircraft Industries, has agreed to repair the drones for free, he said.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Farce follows Cleese
In a scene that could have come from a Monty Python sketch, a star of the television series, John Cleese, was shown around the New Zealand parliament on Thursday by a Cabinet minister skulking to avoid tennis balls being tossed around the debating chamber. The British comic -- who is using New Zealand audiences as guinea pigs for a comeback stage show called John Cleese, His Life, Times and Current Medical Problems, which he is contemplating taking onto other international stages -- was unaware of the political drama around him.
■ HONG KONG
Ho promotes proposals
Macau casino tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun (何鴻燊) yesterday appealed for public support of the Hong Kong government's Constitutional reform proposals, criticizing calls by democrats for a protest against the plan. In a half-page ad published in several Chinese-language broadsheets yesterday -- his 84th birthday -- Ho said the government recognized popular demand for full democracy in the territory but needed time to work out a timetable.
■ NORWAY
Santa Claus causes delays
Aviation authorities on Thursday warned that Santa Claus flights could cause delays for Norwegian airline passengers during the Christmas month of December. It's not St. Nick or his flying reindeer sleigh that cause the problem each year, but thousands of tourists flying through Norwegian airspace each year to reach Santa's village on the Arctic Circle in Finland. "It's like a long line of airplanes. It's a pretty strange phenomenon," said Odd Narvesen, of the government aviation agency Avinor. "It's something that gets brought up at international conferences."
■ RUSSIA
Hospital fire kills four
A fire broke out at a hospital in southern Moscow early yesterday, killing at least four patients and forcing the evacuation of dozens of other patients, an emergency official said. The blaze broke out around 5am in the multistory, main campus of the Seventh Clinical Hospital, said Veronika Smolskaya, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. She said four patients were killed in the blaze, and 97 patients had to be evacuated in the cold, early morning hours to other buildings in the complex. It wasn't immediately clear if the deaths were caused by fire or smoke inhalation, Smolskaya said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Algerian found guilty
An Algerian with alleged ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network was found guilty on Thursday by a Northern Ireland court after computer discs were found in his flat with information on how to blow up a passenger plane. According to testimony, Abbas Boutrab, 27, downloaded information from the Internet at a Belfast library that police found on 25 computer discs during a search of his flat outside Belfast, news reports said. The discs contained information on how to build a bomb and how to carry out a bombing of an airliner, investigators said.
■ ITALY
Workers protest budget
Protesters gathered in the cold early yesterday at the start of a general strike called to oppose the Italian government's 2006 budget and set to snarl transport and shut down offices across the country. The strike is the second such protest against a budget proposed by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition, which has been struggling to contain its budget deficit amid sluggish economic growth. Berlusconi's government faces elections next year, with a vote expected in April.
■ NIGERIA
Protests target ex-governor
Thousands of protesters called on Thursday for the governor of Nigeria's oil producing Bayelsa state to resign after he fled money laundering charges in London and returned home disguised as a woman. Waving placards and beating drums, the crowd of mostly young men, some stripped to the waist and barefoot, said Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha should account for the millions of pounds found in illegal foreign bank accounts. "Alamieyeseigha we are ashamed of you. Go back to London," read one banner. "He should honorably resign," said Famous Daunemigha, who said he was a youth leader. British authorities charged Alamieyeseigha with laundering ?1.8 million (US$3 million) in September and froze assets worth ?10 million, but he skipped bail and re-emerged in Nigeria where he enjoys constitutional immunity.
■ GREECE
Monks clash, trade blows
Black-robed Orthodox monks traded blows on Thursday in the Mount Athos monastic community in northern Greece, as a bitter fight between church authorities and a rebel monastery turned violent. A spokesman for the rebel Esphigmenou Monastery said workmen and rival monks tried to demolish the community's offices at Karyes, the administrative center of the mediaeval sanctuary -- from which women and female animals are banned. A police spokesman said nobody was injured in the clashes.
■ UNITED STATES
Accused Lego thief indicted
A 40-year-old man is behind bars, accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of Lego sets. William Swanberg was indicted on Wednesday by a Washington County grand jury on two counts of felony theft and one count of attempted felony theft. Swanberg -- who is being held on US$250,000 bail -- allegedly stole Lego sets from Target stores in Oregon by switching the bar codes on the boxes, covering over the pricing labels of expensive sets with labels from inexpensive ones, said detective Troy Dolyniuk, a member of the Washington County fraud and identity theft enforcement team.
■ BRAZIL
Vatican says `no' to singer
The Vatican has withdrawn an invitation for Brazilian singing star Daniela Mercury to perform before the pope in a Christmas concert because she took part in an anti-AIDS campaign promoting the use of condoms last year, the singer said on Wednesday. The concert, featuring artists from around the world, is scheduled to take place on Dec. 3 in Rome before Pope Benedict. Mercury was informed on Tuesday of the Vatican's decision by organizers of the event in Brazil. Mercury said in a statement that she regretted the decision but had the right to disagree with the Catholic Church's opposition to using contraceptives as a way of stopping the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
■ UNITED STATES
Balloon crashes at parade
NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York to bring viewers the news that an M&M balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters. In fact, when the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade, even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene. As an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-old sister were being treated for injuries, the parade's announcers kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square, where the parade ends.
■ UNITED STATES
War protesters give thanks
While US President George W. Bush enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal at his Texas ranch, protesters against the war in Iraq held a rival feast on Thursday down the road at their makeshift camp. The president dined on roasted free range turkey with gravy and whipped sweet potatoes, as well as pecan pie and pumpkin pie, the White House said. Meanwhile, some 75 protesters prepared "a typical Iraqi meal," including curried lentils garnished with diced tomatoes, vegetables, almond rice with apricots, salmon and tilapia all washed down with "Iraqi tea." "The emphasis was on simplicity to contrast the abundance we have here with the misfortunes of the Iraqi people," said organizer Hadi Jawad.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese