■ Singapore
PM wants people to smile
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) has launched a campaign urging the city-state's 4 million people to smile during the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF in September, the Straits Times reported yesterday. "We should make a special effort to welcome all the delegates to this event, to make their stay here fruitful and memorable. We should greet them literally with 4 million smiles," the daily quoted Lee as saying at the start of the campaign on Sunday. On Sept. 19 and 20, Singapore will host 16,000 delegates and visitors for the annual meetings. Photographs of smiling Singaporeans will be combined into a digital mural to welcome the delegates to the country. The government has warned that it will use severe punishments such as caning for protesters who commit violent acts during the IMF-World Bank meetings.
■ Hong Kong
MI3 `insulting' to Chinese
The latest Mission Impossible movie has had scenes cut from it in Chinese cinemas because officials believe they are insulting to Shanghai, a news report said yesterday. Censors were unhappy about scenes showing laundry hanging on bamboo poles and a slow response by police to a high-speed chase, the South China Morning Post reported. The movie starring Tom Cruise will be screened in China from July 20 after the movie's makers apparently agreed to changes requested by the Chinese government, the newspaper said. Cruise and his co-stars were in Shanghai last year to film part of the third instalment of the blockbuster series.Last week, the Da Vinci Code was banned after a two-week run in Chinese cinemas following protests by state-backed Catholics in some parts of the country.
■ France
Former prez bemoans crisis
Former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing says France is in "crisis," and that none of its EU partners are looking to Paris for initiatives ahead of presidential elections next year. France will offer proposals for the EU's future at the 25 nation bloc's summit on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, but "nobody attaches any importance to them," Giscard d'Estaing said late Sunday on LCI television. "It is a country in crisis, a country that cannot take the initiative, a country whose horizon is limited to 10 months right now," he said, referring to next year's presidential and legislative elections. Giscard d'Estaing, who led the effort to draw up the EU Constitution -- which was rejected by French and Dutch voters last year -- said it was a "good idea to extend the reflection period" for the text.
■ United Kingdom
Suspects to enter pleas
Five men charged with the murder of policewoman Sharon Beshenivsky will appear in court today for a pre-trial hearing. The men, charged with murder, robbery and firearms offenses, are due at Leeds Crown Court to enter pleas before a trial later this year, police and court officials said. They are accused of killing the 38-year-old last November when she and a colleague responded to an emergency alarm at a travel agency in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The defendants are: Yusuf Jama, Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah, Raza Haq Aslam, Faisal Razzaq and Hassan Razzaq.
■ Congo
Sexual violence highlighted
Women in Africa are ravaged not just by poverty but by systematic sexual violence too, a UN Security Council delegation on a four-nation tour of the continent were told on Friday. Whether in the parched deserts of Sudan's Darfur region, or in the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, women are systematically subjected to the same sordid routine: rape with impunity by armed militias and soldiers, often those ostensibly their protectors, a text presented to UN delegates by a group of women's rights advocates said.
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