■ THAILAND
PM blocks Web sites
Thailand plans to block more than 800,000 pornographic or violent Web sites that officials say are harming the kingdom's youth, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Saturday. Speaking during his weekly radio address, Thaksin said he would order Thailand's Internet service providers (ISPs) to block Web sites deemed dangerous by the government, which currently bans about 2,000 sites. "I will warn the ISPs to do that first and if they don't follow the order, their licenses would be cancelled," he said. The ban, which affects both foreign and domestic-based Web sites, is likely to come into force before Thailand's Children's Day on Jan. 14.
■ VIETNAM
Birds poisoned
The commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City has begun poisoning pigeons and other wild birds as it moves to prevent avian flu from spreading into the crowded city, an official said on Friday. The H5N1 bird flu virus has flared in 19 of the country's 64 provinces, the most recent cases being in the northern provinces of Quang Ninh and Nghe An, the Agriculture Ministry said in a report on Friday. The World Health Organization (WHO) said another human case was confirmed in the northern Hai Phong Province. The infected 15-year-old boy had recovered and been discharged from hospital, the WHO said in a statement from its headquarters in Geneva. The H5N1 virus has killed 68 people in Asia, including 42 in Vietnam, since late 2003.
■ CHINA
Astronauts honored
China's top leaders yesterday honored two astronauts who spent five days in space with a military-themed ceremony that was broadcast live on television and was apparently designed to rouse support for communist rule. Dressed in stiff army green instead of their bulky white spacesuits, Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng (聶海勝) and Fei Junlong (費俊龍) basked in the elaborate praise heaped on them by China's president and other leaders at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "The fact that China had realized the great jump from one-person-one-day space flight to multi-person-multi-day space missions within two years has marked a new landmark victory in China's manned space technology," Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) said.
■ PAKISTAN
Prisoners earn degrees
A total of 51,169 prisoners in 30 Punjab Province jails have earned educational and religious degrees or certificates during the last seven years, a news report said yesterday. Most of the prisoners showed an inclination toward Islamic education. Between 1997 and last year, as many as 47,583 have received certificates in Islamic religious education, 1,923 earned degrees and certificates in formal education, and some 1,580 passed courses in regional languages and vocational training.
■ AUSTRALIA
Bishops appeal to Singapore
The leaders of Australia's Roman Catholic Church said they've made a desperate appeal for Singapore to spare the life of an Australian who is scheduled to be hanged on Friday for heroin trafficking. The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference on yesterday released the text of a letter they delivered to the Singapore Embassy in the capital, Canberra, asking the government not to execute Nguyen Tuong Van, 25. Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark intends to "informally" lobby Singapore's prime minister for clemency.
■ ZIMBABWE
Voting gets underway
Voters in Zimbabwe began casting ballots early yesterday to choose members of a new upper house in polls widely seen as a farce aimed at reinforcing the stranglehold President Robert Mugabe's party has on the legislature. Some 3.3 million voters are eligible to vote in the elections that have been overshadowed by infighting within the country's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change over leadership style. The polls have attracted little attention of the ordinary Zimbabweans reeling under a triple digit rate of inflation and unemployment rates of more than 70 percent.
■ SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
Poetry scandal averted
Belgrade's Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic has stopped a Serbian cultural institute from including poems glorifying the country's most wanted war criminals in a UN-funded collection, radio B92 reported on Friday. Draskovic said in order to prevent a "political and cultural scandal" he had pulled the plug on the epic poetry project. The project was to have seen epic Serbian poems, collected by the independent Belgrade-based Arts and Literature Institute, submitted to UNESCO, the UN agency protecting cultural heritage worldwide. Apart from real Serbian epic poetry however, the compilation included poems celebrating Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
■ SPAIN
Minister to attend signing
Spain confirmed on Friday that the defense minister would travel to Venezuela to attend the signing of a deal to sell military hardware to the South American country. Defense Minister Jose Bono will represent Spain at the signing of what would be Spain's largest-ever defense deal, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa de La Vega said. However, she did not say when the signing would take place. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said the deal would be signed tomorrow. The deal calls for two companies -- state-controlled shipyard Navantia and EADS-Casa to sell US$2 billion worth of military transport planes and patrol boats to Venezuela.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Harsh winter ahead
Parts of Britain were returning to normal yesterday after snowstorms and freezing temperatures led to chaos. Such wintery weather -- unusual for most part in the British Isles -- served to remind Britons of a warning given earlier by the Met Office that this winter could be harsher than usual. Tesco, the biggest retailer, said the cold snap had triggered a surge in demand for traditional winter favorites such as porridge, soups, pies, puddings and hot chocolate. Up to 25cm of snow fell in some parts, and forecasters predicted that snow was heading for London soon. The coldest Dec. 25 recorded was minus 18.3oC, in 1878 in County Durham in northeast England.
■ EGYPT
Police watch polling stations
Hundreds of police deployed outside polling stations yesterday and Egyptian voters complained of attacks by thugs as runoff elections started in 122 parliamentary seats scattered across the Arab world's largest country. The banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is fielding scores of candidates and has performed strongly in early rounds of voting, complained that more than 140 supporters were arrested yesterday and Friday.
■ BRAZIL
Penitentiary beauty selected
South America's latest beauty queen won't be campaigning for world peace any time soon. Unless, of course, it helps get her out of prison. Angelica Mazua, a statuesque Angolan facing international drug smuggling charges, on Thursday was voted Miss Penitentiary 2005 after a six-hour contest pitting 40 female inmates from 10 prisons around Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo. "People told me, `You're tall. You should enter the contest,' so that's why I entered," said Mazua, who has been jailed for four months and faces about five years behind bars if convicted. "I've always been interested in fashion," she said. Prison officials began the contest last year to boost inmates' self confidence.
■ UNITED STATES
Jail break, four still out
Nine maximum security inmates escaped from a county jail by climbing down a rope made of bed sheets, authorities said. Five were quickly recaptured before they could leave the jail grounds on Friday, said Will Paulakis, a division chief at Yakima County Corrections Department in Washington. Authorities were searching for the other four, including a 20-year-old man scheduled to go on trial on Dec. 5 on charges of second-degree murder, another charged with burglary, and two in custody on second-degree assault allegations.
■ CANADA
Red panda recovered
The Toronto zoo has recovered a red panda that had escaped its pen and evaded capture for more than a month by blending in with Canada's colorful red maple leaves, officials said on Friday. "We looked day after day after day for him, but there are a lot of trees in the park including many maple trees that have a reddish color this time of year, so it was easy for him to hide in the leaves," said zoo executive director Bill Raply. The nine-year-old animal was found by a gardener sitting in a tree about 2km away, healthy, but a bit thinner.
■ IRAQ
Blasts kill 16 civilians
Two car bombs killed 16 civilians yesterday in a blast at a petrol station in central Iraq and another one targeting a two-car convoy carrying foreigners through central Baghdad, police said. A suicide bomber killed 12 when he drove his pickup into a crowded station in Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad, said police Lieutenant Colonel Mahmoud Mohammed. In central Baghdad, a parked car bomb detonated when two armored cars drove by, killing four people, Lieutenant Thaer Mahmoud said. No one in the convoy was injured, but one of the armored cars was damaged and removed by US forces, Mahmoud said. The foreigners were not immediately identified, but none were injured, he added.
■ HAITI
Elections moved to next year
Struggling to organize elections amid political violence and general disorder, Haiti on Friday delayed the vote until early next year and gave up trying to inaugurate a new government by a constitutional deadline of Feb. 7. The unstable Caribbean country's electoral council said it had decided to hold the first round of presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 8, and a run-off on Feb. 15, ignoring an earlier call by the interim government for the first round of the ballot to take place on Dec. 27. Originally scheduled for mid-November, the elections taking place under UN supervision have been delayed repeatedly because of street violence, poor management by electoral authorities and logistical problems.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in