■ Cambodia
Bird flu breaks out in poultry
Cambodia's Agriculture Ministry has announced that a new outbreak of bird flu in poultry has been found in the country's southeast, state television station TVK reported yesterday. It was not immediately clear from the announcement whether the detected virus was the virulent H5N1 type. The ministry said the disease had been detected on Friday in Prey Veng province, which borders Vietnam. The H5N1 virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has killed at least 138 people worldwide, including six in Cambodia.
■ Australia
Church battles nude nightlub
An Australian church is trying to stop the proprietors of a nightclub from going ahead with plans to feature nude shows when it opens in a building owned by the church on Friday. The dean of St David's Anglican Cathedral in Hobart, capital of the southern island state of Tasmania, is upset that the nightclub next door has been handing out flyers promising full frontal nudity when it opens. The church has served the bar with a notice demanding an undertaking that no such activity takes place, and has threatened legal action if the opening night show goes ahead. Reverend Lindsay Stoddart said the nightclub appeared to be in breach of "moral covenants" in the lease which prevent the building from being used for "immoral purposes."
■ Japan
Abe unveils PM candidacy
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said yesterday he would run for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a race that will decide who succeeds Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "I will do my best with a strong ambition," Abe said at a gathering with supporters in his home constituency of Shimonoseki in western Yamaguchi Prefecture.
"I want to explain to people this ambition of mine in early September," the Jiji Press news agency quoted him as saying. Abe, the frontrunner in the race to replace Koizumi, plans to formally announce his bid for the LDP presidency on Sept. 1, Jiji said.
■ United States
Chinese pilot wants asylum
A Chinese pilot who belongs to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement wants political asylum in the US, saying on Friday he feared punishment if he returned home. Yuan Sheng, 39, of China Eastern Airlines said he abandoned his crew after his flight carrying about 300 passengers from Shanghai landed in Los Angeles on Aug. 8. Just before his flight took off from Shanghai, he said, airport police questioned him and wanted to detain him for talking to ground safety staff about alleged withdrawals of members from the Chinese Communist Party and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. "If I go back, [family members] would not be able to see me, and I might be tortured in prison just like other Falun Dafa practitioners," Yuan said.
■ China
Encephalitis kills 17 people
An outbreak of mosquito-borne encephalitis B has killed 17 people in a city in northern China in the past two weeks, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Health experts and local authorities in Yuncheng in Shanxi Province were working on urgent measures to prevent the spread of the disease, the agency said. It quoted the city's health bureau as having confirmed at least 40 cases of the disease, which causes inflammation of the brain.
■ Serbia
Police renting out choppers
Serbs seeking a bit of extra protection or perhaps a helicopter for the weekend can now turn to the police, which from this month will be renting out its personnel, transport and even animals for private use. A detailed price list published in the official gazette showed that the cost of hiring a policeman to guard money transports or sports events would be 300 dinars (US$4.50) an hour. A police horse goes for 2,400 dinars a day, a trained dog for 1,800 dinars a day, and a helicopter for between 45,000 and 140,000 dinars per hour. The government said the scheme was designed as "a chance for police to gain additional financial means and have their own income."
■ Ethiopia
Police and Muslims clash
Riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas on Friday at hundreds of stone-throwing Muslims who were protesting the demolition of a half-built mosque in Addis Ababa, witnesses said. More than 100 protesters were taken away in four military trucks. Another 100 were under armed guard on the street. At least one car was overturned and several others had windows smashed during the clashes in Merkato District. Police restored order to the area after several hours. Federal Police Commander Hailu Demsash said that the houses and the mosque were demolished because they had been illegally built on state-owned land.
■ Portugal
Fire service on high alert
Authorities extended the high alert status for the country's fire service by 24 hours on Friday as 16 wildfires raced out of control through pine and eucalyptus forests. The fire service has been on high alert for the past week. It was called to some 500 wildfires of varying size each day, officials said. The National Fire and Civil Protection Service said almost 1,600 firefighters and 15 water-dropping aircraft were deployed on Friday to tackle wildfires in the central and northern areas. The government says most fires are due to a combination of poor forest management and negligence. Police are investigating whether some were started deliberately.
■ Mauritania
Sea migrants found dead
Police said on Friday that 16 African migrants died in their attempt to make the treacherous sea journey from West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands. Fishermen found the boat carrying 97 Africans on Thursday off the coast of Mauritania. Survivors said they threw the bodies of 11 people overboard after they died from lack of food or water during the voyage, police official Yahfdou Ould Amar said. Another five people died later in a Mauritania hospital after the rescue, Amar said. The boat had left days earlier from Dakar, Senegal, hundreds of kilometers to the south.
■ United Kingdom
Blair stays on holiday
Prime Minister Tony Blair was last night resisting calls to return from holiday and recall parliament in the face of renewed pressure from lawmakers. Blair talked to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott about the terror threat and continued to make calls on the Middle East, from the boat in the Caribbean where he is on holiday. Officials conceded that Blair has discussed returning home, but say he is nervous of appearing to issue an effective vote of no-confidence in the handling of the terror threat. He believes home secretary John Reid and Prescott have handled the crisis effectively.
■ United States
Family sue over housing rule
A Missouri couple who must get married, or move, in order to comply with a housing ordinance in Black Jack, Missouri, sued the town on Thursday, claiming rules prohibiting the unmarried couple and their children from living together are unconstitutional. The petition challenges a city ordinance that prohibits more than three people from living together in the same house if they are unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption. Plaintiffs Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving and their three children moved from Minnesota to Missouri earlier this year. Black Jack, a town of about 7,000, refused to grant the couple and their children an occupancy permit for their home because they do not meet the definition of "family" as set forth by the city, the complaint alleges.
■ Brazil
Mother-in-law confesses
Police have arrested a 52-year-old woman accused of hiring a hitman who kidnapped and killed her daughter-in-law on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. A police investigator said on Friday that Solange Viana confessed to ordering the slaying of her daughter-in-law, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, for less than US$500 after investigators told her that her son could go to jail. "She says she committed the crime because of her sick love for her son. She alleges her son was humiliated in the relationship," said Joel Fernandes, head of homicide investigations in the Vilar dos Teles municipality. Fernandes said the couple had split up but had been trying to make up when the wife was killed.
■ United States
`Undercover Kitten' killed
Fred, a tabby who found fame as "The Undercover Kitten," has died in a traffic accident, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said on Friday. Fred was a rescued stray when law enforcers enlisted him in February. He posed as a would-be patient to help police nab a man pretending to be a veterinarian. He got his due at a news conference, where he sported a tiny badge on his collar. The 15-month-old feline also received a Law Enforcement Appreciation Award. Fred ran out Moran's back door into her yard on Wednesday while Moran was attending to two elderly dogs. Neighbors found his body in the road later that morning.
■ United States
Lefties earning more
Left-handed men, often seen as having an advantage over right-handed counterparts in sports like tennis, also enjoy much better paydays, a new study says. Left-handed men with at least some college education earned 15 percent more than similarly educated right-handers, while those who finished college earned about 26 percent more, wrote Christopher Ruebeck of Lafayette College, and Joseph Harrington and Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
■ United States
Anti-war activist hospitalized
Anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan was hospitalized for dehydration and exhaustion after fasting for more than a month and protesting earlier this week in 38oC weather, friends and relatives said. Sheehan was hospitalized after friends picked her up on Friday afternoon at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where she arrived after spending several days in Seattle at the Veterans for Peace Convention, said friend Tiffany Burns. Sheehan, who has been on a liquid diet as part of the nationwide ``Troops Home Fast'' hunger strike, had been treated and released from a Seattle emergency room on Thursday night.
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