■ China
Panda celebrates birthday
An elderly panda has celebrated her 25th birthday in a Chinese zoo with cake and flowers. Basi, whose age is equivalent to 100 in human terms, has far outlived the normal panda life expectancy of 12 years, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Yesterday, Basi gnawed a huge birthday cake in her enclosure at a zoo in the southeastern city of Fuzhou, the report said. It said she waved flowers to zoo visitors. Basi toured the US in the late 1980s and served as the mascot for the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, according to the report. She also appears regularly on Chinese television.
■ Japan
Heavy loot thief's downfall
An aging Japanese thief felt the gravity of his crime when the weight of his loot tripped him up during his attempted getaway. The 70-year-old man walked into a post office in the city of Kawagoe, just north of Tokyo, late on Friday and poured liquid over the floor, saying he would set off an explosion if he wasn't given money. A clerk filled a paper bag the man was carrying with coins worth some ?250,000 (US$2,000) and weighing 10kg. As the man ran off, the bag broke under the weight and he stumbled and fell as he tried to pick up the money. Tsugio Chigira, deputy head of the Kawagoe police station, said the man told police he needed the money to pay back debts.
■ Australia
Beach sleepers run over
Two British backpackers asleep on the beach of Fraser Island were run over yesterday by one of the four-wheel drives that conservationists say have become a plague on the island off Queensland, reports said yesterday. The couple had been sleeping in the dunes on Eli Creek when they were run over at 6:30am. The 25-year-old man was flown to Hervey Bay Hospital with a suspected broken arm, fractured ribs and cuts to his head. The woman, also believed to be in her twenties, suffered minor cuts and bruises.
■ China
Winters to get costlier
The government is phasing out free winter home heating for millions of employees of state companies, requiring them to start paying market prices by the end of 2007, a news report said yesterday. The order was issued on Saturday by the Ministry of Construction and seven other ministries, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "Urban residents in northern China will have to pay for their cozy winter living," the agency said. Many urban households in northern China rely on steam radiators fed by hot-water plants. Xinhua said more than 90 percent of those heating companies are losing money. The government is promising subsidies to help low-income workers pay for heating, Xinhua said.
■ Malaysia
PM defends police
Malaysia's prime minister has defended the police for not revealing the identity of a woman whose naked video in police custody sparked a protest from China. The woman initially was believed to be a Chinese national or an ethnic Chinese Malaysian, based on her appearance in the video images that showed her being forced to strip and perform squats in front of a female officer in a police lockup. But a 22-year-old Malay Muslim who testified at a government-backed inquiry last week claimed she was the woman. Police have confirmed she was the victim. "Who could have revealed the identity earlier? The police? Do you think people would have believed them?" Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on Sunday.
■ United Kingdom
Kids want money and fame
Becoming rich and famous is the most important thing in life, a revealing survey of British children said yesterday, also showing that the nation's youngsters consider footballer Wayne Rooney more famous than Jesus. The survey of 2,500 under-10s to mark National Kids' Day asked children to rate what they considered "the best thing in the world," with becoming rich taking top spot. However, expectations of what constituted wealth varied somewhat, with estimates ranging from ?200 million to a more modest ?460 (US$355 million to US$815 dollars). Being famous came second, above the more traditional pursuits of football, pop music and animals.
■ Russia
No heat for Siberian city
More than 100,000 people in a Siberian city were left without heat and hot water amid subzero temperatures on Sunday after a breakdown at the central heating plant, an emergency official said. The incident occurred around 11am in the city of Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva region, about 4,700km southeast of Moscow, said a spokeswoman from the Emergency Situations Ministry. A short-circuit in the plant's electrical system caused a hot water pipe to burst, she said. Workers hoped to restore power and begin sending hot water flowing later in the evening, but with temperatures hovering around minus 37oC, workers were emptying water from the system to prevent main supply pipes from freezing, she said.
■ United Kingdom
Police find sculpture clues
British police said Sunday they had found a flatbed truck and crane that were apparently used in the theft of a US$5.2 million Henry Moore sculpture. The truck and crane, discovered on Saturday night, were filmed by a security video as they took the 2-tonne "Reclining Figure" bronze sculpture from the Henry Moore Foundation estate north of London, police said. They fear the thieves may have stolen the 1969/1970 work on Thursday night to melt down and sell for scrap metal, even though it could earn far more money if sold as a precious art work.
■ Poland
`No secret prisons'
President Aleksander Kwasniewski said Sunday that flights operated by the CIA may have stopped over in Poland but denied that prisoners were secretly held in his country. The president spoke days before Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz is to present the findings of an inquiry on whether covert CIA prisons existed in Poland where top al-Qaeda suspects were detained. Marcinkiewicz ordered the inquiry after reports that the CIA ran secret detention centers in Poland until recently for suspected terrorists captured by US forces.
■ Germany
Merkel to visit Israel
Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Israel in late January to lend support to the Jewish state after a series of inflammatory verbal attacks from Iran's president. It will be Merkel's first trip to the Middle East since she took office on Nov. 22 but gave no precise dates or further details have been given. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has caused outrage by saying Israel should be wiped off the map, and that the Nazi's mass extermination of Jews was a "myth". Merkel this week said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust was "incomprehensible".
■ Iraq
German hostage released
A German aid worker and archaeologist kidnapped in Iraq have been released after three weeks in captivity, Germany's foreign minister said. Susanne Osthoff was in "good physical condition" on Sunday at the German embassy in Baghdad, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "I am glad to be able to announce to you ... that Mrs. Susanne Osthoff is no longer in the hands of the kidnappers," Steinmeier said at a hastily convened news conference in Berlin. He did not disclose any details about the release. Osthoff, 43, was the first German to be kidnapped in Iraq. She disappeared on Nov. 25 in northern Iraq along with her Iraqi driver, whom German media have identified as Khalid al-Shimani.
■ United States
Bogus Tamiflu intercepted
US customs agents have intercepted more than 50 shipments sent from Asian suppliers of counterfeit Tamiflu, the antiviral drug being stockpiled in anticipation of a bird flu pandemic, marking the first such seizures in the US, authorities said. The first package was intercepted on Nov. 26 at an air mail facility near San Francisco International Airport, said Roxanne Hercules, a spokeswoman for US Customs and Border Protection. Since then, agents have seized 51 separate packages, each containing up to 50 counterfeit capsules labeled generic Tamiflu.
■ United States
Bus firm talks break down
Two private bus lines serving as many as 50,000 commuters in New York City shut down early yesterday as weekend negotiations failed to stop a strike that could spread citywide this week. The transit union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority briefly negotiated on Sunday in a midtown Manhattan hotel, but the talks were "not in the final analysis fruitful," the MTA's chief negotiator said. Commuters using Jamaica Buses and Triboro Coach lines, based in the borough of Queens, should "make other arrangements for Monday and be aware that all buses and trains may be shut down [today]," the Transport Workers Union said in a message on its Web site.
■ United States
Fake firefighter charged
A man accused of sexually assaulting a woman while posing as a firefighter was charged with kidnapping, sexual abuse and other offenses, authorities said. Peter Braunstein, 41, is also charged with burglary and robbery in the Halloween sex attack, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgen-thau's spokeswoman Barbara Thompson said on Sunday. He faces a Tennessee charge of assaulting a police officer. Braunstein, a former fashion writer on the run since early last month, was arrested on the University of Memphis campus after a campus police officer confronted him on Friday afternoon.
■ Colombia
Rebels kill eight police
Colombian rebels killed eight police officers and captured at least 30 others at a remote jungle station on Saturday in what appears to be one of the biggest blows against the security forces in years, the police said on Sunday. The scale of Saturday's attack by hundreds of members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia became clear on Sunday when police and army reinforcements reached the Afro-Colombian town of San Marino in a rain forest in Choco province near the Panama border. The combined toll of police killed and taken prisoner revealed by police spokesmen was the worst for many years.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was