■ Japan
Vending machine donations
A non-profit organization has developed the nation's first vending machine to collect donations, a newspaper reported yesterday. At a glance, the drink machine that the charity Heartful Vender installed on Wednesday at a university in the northern city of Sendai looks like an ordinary vending machine, but it has an extra button for donations, the Mainichi Shimbun said. Consumers can press the button to decide how much to donate from their change when they buy a soft drink. The money collected is to be sent to a charity network for disaster recovery and facilities for the disabled.
■ India
Divinity arrested
A self-styled divinity, known as the Tiger Baba, has been arrested for his links with the illegal wildlife trade, news reports said on Wednesday. Tiger Baba was arrested on Monday from the premises of the temple in the Indian capital from which he operated, the Times of India newspaper reported. While the tiger skin which the baba used as a seat was found to be fake, 11 tiger teeth, 34 tiger claws, two wild boar teeth and a stuffed tiger head seized from his premises looked genuine, the police said. The police arrested the 65-year-old Tiger Baba in a joint decoy operation with People for Animals, a nongovernmental organization based in Delhi. The divinity has been remanded to judicial custody until May 9.
■ India
Pepsi fined over condom
A court on Wednesday fined US beverage giant PepsiCo's Indian subsidiary and ordered it to pay compensation to a man who discovered a condom in his bottle of Pepsi, a report said. "This case is an eye-opener for others who are engaged in manufacturing softdrinks and are required to maintain the prescribed standards of purity in public interest during the course of their business activities," K. K. Chopra, chief of the consumer court was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. Describing the case as "rare" with a serious bearing on public health, the court directed PepsiCo India Holdings Ltd to pay 100,000 rupees (US$2,220) in damages to the Consumer Legal Aid Fund, the report said. The company was also ordered to pay the complainant, Sudesh Sharma, 20,000 rupees.
■ Myanmar
Drugs incinerated
The military junta incinerated US$1.4 billion worth of heroin and other drugs in a giant bonfire organized for foreign diplomats to show the country's commitment to cleaning up its image as a drug haven. Diplomats from Thailand, China, the Philippines and Japan, among other Asian countries, attended the ceremony on Wednesday in the northeastern part of the country where drug enforcement officials torched a massive cocktail of narcotics confiscated since the beginning of the year. It included about 55kg of heroin, over 1,000kg of opium, thousands of stimulant tablets and thousands of liters of chemicals used to make narcotics.
■ China
Expert warns on pollution
Rising pollution levels in the Three Gorges reservoir are increasing the risk of an ecological and public health disaster, a leading national scientist said in comments published yesterday. "After water started to accumulate in the reservoir, the flow rate of the [Yangtze] river dropped, resulting in a decreased ability of the river to clean itself," the China Business Times quoted environmental expert Shu Weiqun (舒為群) as saying.
■ United Kingdom
MI6 advertises for spies
Britain's foreign secret service launched its first overt recruitment operation yesterday. For the first time in its 97-year history, MI6 published an advertisement in a newspaper. Historically, MI6 is believed to have recruited promising individuals through covert introductions and recommendations. MI6's inaugural advert in the Times gave a hint of what life as a spy might be like, with a montage of images including a gun, desert, jungle and a plane, as well as its imposing headquarters in central London. Applicants must be British, resourceful, in good health and able to keep a secret. "You must not share news of your application with anyone," the MI6 Web site said.
■ United Kingdom
Snoop Dogg arrested
Rapper Snoop Dogg and five associates were arrested after a fracas at Heathrow Airport that injured seven police officers, British media reported yesterday. The Press Association news agency said members of the star's entourage had hurled bottles of whisky and argued with staff at a duty free shop after being refused entry to a first-class lounge. London's Metropolitan Police said officers were called to "reports of a disturbance involving 30 people in a business lounge" at Terminal 1 on Wednesday. When police told the group that they would not be allowed to board their flight, "a number of the group became abusive and pushed officers," a spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity.
■ United Kingdom
Hedgehog count under way
The search is on for Britain's small, prickly, shy and fast disappearing hedgehogs. On the eve of Hedgehog Awareness Week, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and People's Trust for Endangered Species are launching HogWatch -- a plea for people to report where and when they last saw one of the inquisitive but shy animals. "It is vital to know where hedgehogs are still present and determine why their numbers appear to be falling," said Paul Bright, an ecology lecturer at London University. "Hedgehogs have been around for 20 million years -- we want to ensure they stay around."
■ France
`Taxing' game launched
The budget minister has invited the public to sort out the troublesome economy by playing an Internet game. From next month, Jean-Francois Cope will invite up to 10,000 people at a time to log on to his new Web game, "Cyberbudget," and experience his economic dilemmas for themselves. Their seemingly unenviable mission is to manage the country's budget while avoiding the pitfalls of national debt and its bloated public sector. For four years, France exceeded the EU's budget deficit limit of 3 percent of GDP, only coming in on target last year.
■ Nigeria
Darfur peace paper drafted
African Union mediators presented a draft agreement calling for peace and development in Darfur and urged the warring parties in western Sudan to sign and implement it quickly. Union mediators in the Nigerian capital handed their first proposed comprehensive document to peace delegates late on Tuesday. The proposed agreement addressed complaints from Darfur rebel groups that they had been neglected by the national government. It called for the president to include a Darfur expert, nominated by the rebels, among his top advisers.
■ United States
Drivers run dry to beat prices
Some California drivers are resorting to desperate measures to beat the surge in gas prices at the pump -- deliberately running dry on the state's freeways and simply waiting for rescue. "Every time fuel goes up, we start noticing it. But right now we are noticing it a lot more," Andy Lujan, owner of California Coach Towing in Orange County, said on Tuesday. Lujan's 20 trucks roam the busy freeways of Orange and Los Angeles counties as part of a publicly funded patrol that gives a free gallon of gas to drivers who have run out of fuel.
■ United States
Rove before grand jury again
Karl Rove appeared on Wednesday before a US grand jury probing the leak of a CIA officer's identity but his lawyer said there was still no sign the top presidential adviser will face charges in the case. Rove remains under investigation but has not received any indication from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about whether he would be charged, attorney Robert Luskin said. Fitzgerald has told Rove, US President George W. Bush's top political adviser, that he is not a target of the investigation, Luskin said, meaning that he has not received a letter indicating that legal charges are likely.
■ Iran
Tehran bought missiles
Iran has purchased North Korean long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Europe, the head of Israel's military intelligence was reported yesterday as saying. Some of the missiles, which have a range of 2,500km and are known in the West as BM-25, have already arrived in Iran, General Amos Yadlin said in a lecture on Wednesday in comments reported by the Haaretz newspaper. While Iran already had missiles capable of hitting arch-enemy Israel and US bases in the Middle East, the new weapons pose a threat for countries elsewhere in the region and in Europe that now come into Iranian range, Haaretz said.
■ United States
China slammed over lawyer
The House of Representatives accused China on Wednesday of harassing Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) for his human rights work and urged authorities to restore his law license. In a resolution, the House commended Gao and other "rights defense" lawyers "for their courage and integrity" in taking politically sensitive cases. With the resolution, Congress "expresses moral support for this grass-roots `rights defense' movement in China.'' It also asks US President George W. Bush to "raise the issue of the government of China's harassment, arrest, detention and persecution of rights defense lawyers and activists and the need for the government of China to respect the basic human rights of its citizens."
■ Iraq
Shopping for death squads
It doesn't cost a lot to set up your own death squad in Baghdad. Military uniforms, guns and even police vehicles are easily available to all comers in the markets of a city where gangs of men dressed as police have killed dozens of people and stolen tens of thousands of dollars. Anyone with a modest amount of cash can set up their own fake squad. At Baghdad's Bab al-Sharjee market anyone can walk into one of about 15 shops selling police and military supplies and buy a police commando uniform for 35,000 dinars (about US$24) or an ordinary police uniform for US$15. No questions asked, no identity checks. Badges of rank from captain to major-general -- enough to ensure no one asks questions on the mean streets of the capital -- go for US$2.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of