■ United States
Anti-missile fleet beefed-up
The Navy will double to six by the end of the year the number of its ships in the Pacific capable of shooting down enemy ballistic missiles, the head of the Pentagon missile-defense project involved said on Wednesday. "I think it gives the nation more options," Rear Admiral Alan Hicks, program manager for AEGIS ballistic missile defense, said in Huntsville, Alabama, after speaking to a conference on the fledgling shield. In coming years, a growing number of ship-based interceptor missiles will be deployed on 18 AEGIS cruisers and destroyers. The six ships due to be available this year will carry a specialized AEGIS combat system as well as Standard Missile SM-3 interceptors, Hicks said.
■ Canada
Activists protest star power
The constellation of political and entertainment world stars drawn to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto has drowned out the voices of the people living with AIDS, a group of activists complained. The activists, many from South Africa, nearly derailed a news conference Wednesday to protest the presence of former US president Bill Clinton and others, saying they had drawn media attention away from the plight of people living with HIV or AIDS. "We are quite aggrieved," said Sipho Mthanthi, general secretary of the Treatment Action Campaign of South Africa. The news conference quickly became an ideological discourse over whether the AIDS meeting was being tugged off track by the celebrities whose sessions have dominated news coverage of the event.
■ Peru
`Good luck potion' kills
The government warned people to be wary of fake medicine men offering cure-all miracle herb potions on Tuesday, after a bogus brew killed a man hoping to shake off his family's spell of bad luck. "Avoid consuming brews made with herbs of questionable origin or hallucinogenic plants prepared by so-called Shamans," the country's Health Ministry said in a statement, warning the potions used could kill or cause long-term illness.
■ United States
Containers spark alert
US Customs officials in Seattle evacuated one of North America's largest ship container terminals on Wednesday after two cargo containers from Pakistan alarmed bomb-sniffing dogs. Officials found no explosives or chemical or biological agents in containers, one filled with clothes and the other with large bundles of used or recycled textiles. The containers raised suspicion when a screening using gamma ray technology about the contents' density did not match the items listed on a ship's manifest.
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