■ India
Dalai Lama gets Web site
Self-exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama yesterday launched a personal Web site to spread his message of world peace and take questions via e-mail. The Web site www.dalailama.com was inaugurated on the international Human Rights Day and the 16th anniversary of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. "The Web site is not to promote the Dalai Lama himself. It is to reach out to the world with his message of love, peace and compassion and universal responsibility," a team member, who designed the Web site said. His messages have been posted both in English and Tibetan and questions can be e-mailed directly to the Dalai Lama.
■ India
Drivers learn karate
Women taxi drivers in New Delhi are being trained in karate as part of plan to combat crime against women in cities. The women taxi driver project was launched on Friday at the international airport and key tourist sites. Officials say the project will also be launched in Mumbai and the southern city of Hyderabad. In March last year, a 59-year-old Australian woman was robbed and stabbed to death by a taxi driver in New Delhi. In late 2003, a Swiss diplomat was raped by two men in a car in the heart of the city after being abducted from a parking lot.
■ Laos
Cartographic help required
One of the world's poorest countries, this mountainous, landlocked nation says its maps are inadequate and wants South Korean help drawing up new ones. "They said they don't have a nationwide map yet," Suh Jeong-in, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official in charge of relations with Southeast Asia, said yesterday. "We're going to review the request positively with related agencies." South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon received the request during a meeting yesterday with Laotian Foreign Minister Somsavat Lengsavad on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
■ Pakistan
Kite ban extended
The Supreme Court in Lahore has extended a ban on making, selling and flying kites that it imposed two months ago after ruling that the sport has become increasingly deadly, an official said on Saturday. The court decided on Friday to extend the ban until it meets next on Jan. 26. Lahore is the site of Basant, an annual kite-flying festival where tens of thousands of people fly kites from rooftops and sports fields. About 19 people died and more than 200 were injured in February this year from wounds from metal kite strings or falls from roofs.
■ Hong Kong
Pets get Chinese medicine
A veterinary hospital has become the first facility of its kind to treat pets using Chinese medicine, a media report said yesterday. The hospital, set up at a cost of HK$2 million (US$256,410), is "the only clinic of its kind on the planet," the South China Morning Post reported. Consultants cost HK$180 and are available seven days a week. Health consultant Hermie Lee said slight changes have been made to the herbal medicine to make it more attractive to the animals. Gone are the bitter taste and pungent odor of many of the herbs. Instead, "we just take out all the bitter ingredients and add things like sugared dates," she said. Lee, who has a physiology degree and is studying Chinese medicine, already runs two human clinics.
■ United Kingdom
Man loses `dead cert' bet
A 91-year-old British man who staked a ?500 (US$870) bet that he would be dead by the end of the first week in December lost his stake by staying alive, a bookmaker said on Saturday. Arthur King-Robinson said he put the bet on at odds of 6/1 at the start of the year, because his wife would have faced an inheritance tax bill of ?3,000 had he died in the intervening period. "I thought I'd heard most things that people want to bet on after 30 years in the business," said a spokesman for bookmaker William Hill. "But one asking literally to place a dead cert was unique. I'm glad Arthur has lost."
■ United Kingdom
Bomb victim weds
It was the day she had dreamt of at the start of summer; the crisp winter's afternoon when she would marry the man she loved. But the morning of July 7 almost changed everything. Gill Hicks, 37, lost both her legs in the King's Cross tube suicide bomb. On Saturday she became the latest symbol of defiance in the face of terrorism when she took her first steps since the attack and walked down the aisle on prosthetic limbs to marry Joe Kerr, 47. Hicks had struck a deal with the Sunday Mirror to cover the wedding in central London.
■ Nigeria
Bail-jumper to be returned
The nation will return the impeached governor of oil-producing Bayelsa state to Britain, where he jumped bail to escape a money-laundering trial, President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Saturday. A court in London has charged Diepreye Alamieyeseigha with laundering ?1.8 million (US$3.1 million). The official fled Britain last month and returned to Nigeria, where as governor he enjoyed immunity from prosecution. But on Friday the Bayelsa state assembly stripped him of his immunity by impeaching him, and he was immediately arrested. "As a member of Interpol ... Nigeria will take the appropriate action as required by the British authorities on this matter," Obasanjo said in Abuja.
■ Kenya
Hijacked ship returns
A ship held for two months by Somali militiamen docked on Saturday at the port of Mombasa, a shipping agency official said. The MV Torgelow had sailed to Mombasa from Somalia's water, where it had been hijacked on Oct. 7 on its way to deliver food products, cigarettes and other goods to businessmen in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, said Karim Kudrati, managing director at Motaku Shipping Agency. "We are very happy," Kudrati said. After being released last week, the ship docked at El Maan port near Mogadishu to deliver its cargo before sailing home.
■ Israel
Attack on Iran not ruled out
A senior Defense Ministry official said yesterday that Israel has not ruled out a military strike against Iran if the country advances further in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Amos Gilad denied a Sunday Times article published on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already had a plan to attack Iran in March, saying Israel was working with the rest of the world to solve the matter with diplomatic means. "Right now the situation requires the focus on the international issue of protecting the peace of world," Gilad told Israel Radio. "But it isn't correct to say that a country that is threatened should deny that it will ever consider a different option."
■ United States
Child driver in hit-and-run
Police got a surprise when they stopped a van following a hit-and-run crash on Kentucky's Mountain Parkway: A seven-year-old boy was at the wheel, sitting on his father's lap. Donald Everett Waters, 39, faces two felony counts of wanton endangerment and numerous other charges following the Friday afternoon incident. When police caught up with the van on Interstate 64, Waters was working the foot pedals and his son Cody was on his lap steering, Clark County Sheriff's Deputy Ricky Estes said. He described Waters as "semiconscious." "He said he was en route to Florida, and his son was going to get him there," Estes said.
■ United States
FEMA to foot the bill
Under pressure from state and local leaders who say they cannot move thousands of hurricane evacuees from hotels into longer-term housing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Dec. 15 deadline, officials said on Saturday that FEMA would continue paying hotel bills, on a case-by-case basis, for at least three more weeks. The new program, which FEMA plans to announce today, will require evacuees to obtain an authorization number by calling 1-800-621-FEMA and explaining why they still need help.
■ United States
`Sopranos' star arrested
New York police said on Saturday they had arrested television and film actor Lillo Brancato on suspicion of carrying out a burglary in which a police officer was shot and killed. Brancato, 29, appeared several times as a mobster in the hit television show The Sopranos, and in several films including A Bronx Tale opposite Robert De Niro. He was arrested in June for heroin possession. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters that Daniel Enchautegui, a police officer of three years, was shot in the chest early on Saturday after investigating the sound of breaking glass in an unoccupied house in the Bronx. Before the officer died, he shot an unarmed Brancato and his armed accomplice, who have both been arrested, Kelly said.
■ United States
Antiwar activist dies
Eugene McCarthy, a former US senator and an indomitable antiwar activist whose firm stance against the Vietnam War forced a re-evaluation of the US role in the conflict, died on Saturday at the age of 89, Democratic Party officials announced. McCarthy, who represented the northern state of Minnesota in the US Senate for 12 years, passed away in his sleep at his retirement home in the US capital, the officials said, without disclosing the exact cause of the death. McCarthy is largely credited with ending the presidency of another fellow Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, a staunch advocate of a continued US military commitment to the Indochina conflict.
■ Barbados
Postal protest ends
It almost wasn't a merry Christmas in this Caribbean island for Barbadians awaiting gifts and season's greetings. Postal workers, irate over thefts of their delivery motorcycles and bicycles, ended a strike on Friday afternoon, one day after they walked out pledging not to deliver holiday letters or packages until their concerns were heard. The country's 250 postal workers believed thieves known locally as "postal pirates" were targeting them to steal their transport -- which the workers pay for themselves. Since October, the so-called pirates have nabbed seven motorcycles.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
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