■ South Korea
Talks on the back burner
South Korea's Foreign Ministry ruled out a summit yesterday between President Roh Moo-hyun and Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, only days after Koizumi called for such a meeting. "We don't have such a plan for now," Deputy Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said without elaborating. On Tuesday, Koizumi called for the summit to try to repair the relations strained by the latest standoff over a string of disputed islets -- known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.
■ China
Securing the Olympics
More than 40,000 police officers in Beijing are being trained to handle potential terrorist attacks ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the government said yesterday. The officers began the two-year program on Thursday with a hostage rescue demonstration, the official Xinhua news agency said. Training this year will focus on improving physical strength while next year's program will include simulated conditions, according to Zhao Yuan, director of training at the Beijing Police College, where the sessions are being held.
■ China
Belt your boss
Can't stand your boss, but can't afford to quit? Hire a stand-in to yell at instead. A pair of entrepreneurs in Shanghai are offering themselves as targets for verbal and -- within limits -- physical abuse, letting frustrated office workers vent without killing their careers. Zhang Li and Chen Jun, the founders of Wantong Ltd, said their own workplace frustrations inspired them to quit their jobs and form the company last month.
■ Bangladesh
Storm brews in Bay of Bengal
Coastguards and volunteers were put on alert yesterday as the powerful storm "Mala" gathered force in the Bay of Bengal. Weather officials said the storm was expected to hit land near Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar and could also affect India and Myanmar. Regional weather officials only recently started naming the severe storms that routinely lash south Asian countries. "Mala", the first to be named, means "a garland of flowers" in Bengali.
■ Afghanistan
Police chief survives blast
A senior police official escaped an assassination attempt but his two guards were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle yesterday, police said. Niaz Mohammed, the chief of Danan district, said he came under attack on a road about 25km east of the southern city of Kandahar. Mohammed blamed the Taliban for the attack, although he offered no evidence to back up his claim. More than four years since a US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime, attacks led by militants are causing concern for thousands of NATO troops moving into volatile southern regions to take over from US forces.
■ Indonesia
Iran to invest in oil and gas
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will sign US$600 million in investments in Indonesia's gas and oil sector during a state visit next month, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday. "Iran wants to invest US$200 million to fix offshore refinery platforms in Indonesia and also to invest US$400 million in building a gas pipeline from South Sumatra to Batam," Yuri Thamrin said at a press briefing. Indonesia is the sole Southeast Asian member of OPEC, but it was a net oil importer last year. Its oil industry has suffered and foreign investors have been scared away amid perceptions of corruption, poor infrastructure and judicial unpredictability.
■ Australia
Crocodile wields chainsaw
A crocodile chased its owner up a tree and made off with his chainsaw when it couldn't get him, news reports said yesterday. Peter Shappert, the owner of the Northern Territory's Corroboree Park Tavern, said the man was cutting down a tree that had fallen into his pet croc's pen. "He's been a bit upset with the noise, so he's come shooting out of the pond, run up the tree and tried to grab Freddy the chainsaw man," Shappert told national broadcaster ABC. "So he's missed Freddy and grabbed his chainsaw instead." The crocodile, called Brutis, lost a few teeth in the tussle with the chainsaw, which he gave up after 90 minutes. The man, only identified as Freddy, made his escape when Brutis was occupied with the chainsaw.
■ Czech Republic
Toilet-nappings puzzle cops
Police on Thursday were trying to flush out the thieves responsible for a string of toilet thefts nationwide. In the latest incident, a portable toilet with contents was stolen on Tuesday night from a railroad site near Hluboka nad Vltavou. "It's a mystery," said police spokeswoman Lucie Ptackova. Police in Brno are also investigating a toilet raid in a men's washroom inside an office building. The loss was pegged at 15,000 koruna (US$650). In recent weeks, new toilet bowls were stolen from construction sites in at least three other cities. "Every thief specializes in something, and some are interested in toilets," said a Brno police officer.
■ France
Bakers battle baguette drop
Bakers are battling a slump in bread consumption that poses a threat to the trademark national image of people carrying a baguette under their arm. Recent research shows the French have turned steadily away from bread over the last 100 years, and now eat far less of the former staple than most other Europeans. Daily consumption is 150g per person -- just a quarter of what it was before 1914 -- way below Germany, where people eat some 230g a day. Even the Danes, Italians and the Dutch eat more, French bakery officials said. "The French baguette is a legend and the legend is not dead," prize-winning baker Chistian Vabret said.
■ United Kingdom
Windfarm greenlighted
ScottishPower was given permission on Thursday to build the largest onshore windfarm in Europe, after it agreed to erect a new radar tower for Glasgow airport. The new windfarm, at Whitelee, in the southwest of Scotland, will cost &$163;300 million (US$540.3 million) to build and its 140 turbines will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. The new facility is expected to generate some 322 MW of electricity when it enters full operation in 2009. In order to prevent the windfarm producing a fizzy image on the radar screens that monitor aircraft taking off and landing at Glasgow's airport, the company will build a new radar tower at a former ScottishPower power station at Kincardine in Fife on the other side of the country.
■ United Kingdom
Transsexual wins case
A British transsexual woman won her legal claim of discrimination on Thursday for having been treated like a man when it came to receiving her pension. Sarah Richards -- who was a man until 2001 -- had been told she would have to wait until she was 65 to receive her pension, as all men do in the UK. She had applied to have her pension paid from the age of 60 like other women. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said it had found in favor of Richards, born a man in 1942. Under British law at the time, her sex was determined by her birth certificate, leading authorities to officially consider her a man. The court said Britain had discriminated against Richards by not recognizing her new gender.
■ Hungary
Plum trees pilfered
Thieves stole 150 plum trees from an orchard in the eastern village of Patyod, police said on Thursday. The trees -- estimated to be worth 2 million forints (US$9,500) -- were uprooted and taken from an orchard in the village, which is about 280km northeast of Budapest, police said. The theft was discovered only after the orchard's owner returned from a holiday.
■United States
Chicago bans foie gras
Taking a lead in humane food production, Chicago's city council voted 48-1 on Wednesday to ban the production and sale of foie gras, the first US city to do so. The ban will go into effect on June 26. Anyone ignoring the new regulations will face an initial US$500 fine. Restaurant owners complain that the ban is an unnecessary interference by the city council. The city's mayor, Richard Daley, has also expressed reservations. "We have children getting killed by gang leaders and dope dealers," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. "And we're dealing with foie gras? Let's get some priorities."
■ United States
Suspects flee in limousine
San Francisco police arrested a man and woman suspected of robbing a bank and fleeing in style by using a limousine as their getaway car, officials said on Wednesday. Roy Westry and Cynthia Johnson, recent parolees in their 40s, were pulled over on Tuesday afternoon by police officers alerted to a nearby bank robbery involving a 2006 Cadillac limousine. The vehicle belong to Westry's employer. Police department inspector Dan Gardner said: "This is the second time in a couple of years that a limousine has been used as a getaway car in a bank robbery. I've been doing this job a long time and nothing surprises me any more."
■ United States
NASA targets vultures
NASA is trying to rid the Kennedy Space Center in Florida of vultures after the shuttle struck one of the large birds during lift-off last year on the first flight after the Columbia disaster. The space center has set up what it calls a "road kill posse" to quickly clear as many carcasses as possible from site, in hopes of encouraging the vulture population to relocate by cutting off its food supply. When the shuttle Discovery lifted off the launch pad last July on the first flight since the 2003 Columbia accident, it hit a vulture during its climb to orbit. Discovery did not suffer any damage that time, but NASA fears collisions with the large birds could damage shuttle heat shields.
■ Nicaragua
US goods boycott spreading
A pro-immigrant boycott of US goods is spreading south, with groups in the country pledging on Thursday to avoid US firms and products on May 1 to pressure the US to legalize undocumented migrants. The proposed boycott -- which is building steam in Mexico, where it is known as the "Nothing Gringo" campaign -- is timed to coincide with the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in the US. Tania Quezada, a spokeswoman for the Nicaraguan Health Workers Union, said local union groups are asking the public that "nobody buy or consume any US product in this country" on May 1.
■ Colombia
Gaviria's sister killed
The sister of former president Cesar Gaviria was killed in a botched kidnapping attempt that underscored fears of violence a month before national elections. Liliana Gaviria, 52, was killed late on Thursday by unknown assailants in the province of Risaralda, 175km west of Bogota. Cesar Gaviria was the nation's president between 1990-1994, before becoming secretary general of the Organization of American States. He currently leads the main opposition party, the Liberals. "It pains us. It pains us greatly that such crimes occur," said President Alvaro Uribe, announcing a US$434,000 reward for the capture of those responsible. "The government will do all it in power to make sure this crime doesn't go unpunished."
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the