■ Nepal
Electricity cuts begin
Electrical power cuts for 21 hours each week began yesterday because a lack of rainfall has affected power-generating reservoirs, an official said. People throughout the Himalayan nation will endure three hours without electricity each day and more cuts may be implemented next month, said Arjun Karki, chief of the nation's Electricity Authority. The power cuts have been blamed on inadequate rainfall during the monsoon season last year.
■ Malaysia
Dengue fever toll hits 13
Thirteen people have died of dengue fever this month, most of them in the most populous state Selangor, where authorities are scrambling to contain an outbreak, a news report said yesterday. Eleven people died in Selangor, which abuts Kuala Lumpur, the New Straits Times said, while two deaths were recorded in Kuala Lumpur and the state of Negeri Sembilan. Health Department Deputy Director Ramlee Rahmat said his ministry has "roped in health officers" from at least six other states to curb the Selangor outbreak, the paper said.
■ China
Students end up as bar girls
China has shut down a dancing school that sent 22 underage students half way across the country to work as bar girls, state media said on yesterday. The Guilin Dance Vocational School in the southern province of Guangxi had "violated state rules on internship programs," caused a "bad social impact" and offended the minors' legal rights, the Shanghai Daily said, citing a statement from the city's educational bureau. After six months at the dancing school, the girls were sent to nightclubs in Hangzhou, the paper said.
■ Pakistan
Militants kill policeman
Suspected Islamist militants killed a policeman and critically wounded another in the country's wild tribal belt where security forces are battling al-Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas, officials said. The suspected militants ambushed a police vehicle when it was on a routine patrol late on Thursday in the town of Tank. "They fired indiscriminately at the vehicle, killed a policeman and fled," an intelligence official said. Tank adjoins South Waziristan tribal region where a Pakistani air strike on a suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda base earlier this month killed up to 20 militants.
■ Australia
Gnomes `massacred'
It's being called the "Gnomesville Massacre" and emergency workers in the west are offering a reward for the capture of vandals who smashed their way through a local tourist attraction. An unknown number of attackers lopped off the heads or smashed several dozen of the pot-bellied statues this week at Gnomesville, a collection of more than 1,000 colorful characters deep in a forest south of Perth. The population of Gnomesville has grown from a handful of statues placed covertly in the forest a few years ago, making it a popular stop for tour buses.
■ New Zealand
Lamb Day declared
The country's love affair with sheep gained official recognition yesterday, when the agriculture minister declared Feb. 15 "National Lamb Day." The country has 4 million human inhabitants and 60 million sheep. Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton suggested the country had no reason to be embarrassed about their sheep population, and said that Lamb Day would mark the 125th anniversary of the first shipment of frozen meat from New Zealand to London. "We hope all New Zealanders will recognize this meat industry milestone and mark it by enjoying lamb for dinner on Feb. 15, to celebrate 125 years of meat exports," Anderton said.
■ Australia
Scientist slams Howard
The scientist officially named Australian of the Year yesterday by Prime Minister John Howard accepted the honor, but immediately accused the government of dragging its heels on climate change. Tim Flannery was awarded the title for his contribution to the country's understanding of environmental issues such as global warming. But Flannery said Howard was a major part of the problem because his government refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The world has just two decades to avert catastrophic climate change, Flannery said.
■ Belgium
Iguana faces amputation
Mozart, an iguana with an erection that has lasted for over a week, will have his penis amputated in the next couple of days. Veterinarians at Antwerp's Aquatopia had sought to treat the animal's problem, but decided removal was the only solution because of the risk of infection. The good news for Mozart and his mates is that male iguanas have two penises. Mozart, sitting on the shoulders of his keeper as camera crews focused on his red, swollen erection, seemed unperturbed by the news. "It doesn't bother him. He doesn't know what amputation means," vet Luc Lambrecht said.
■ Belgium
Skydiver's death probed
Police are investigating a high-altitude murder mystery involving a skydiver who fell to her death in an apparent "crime of passion" fight over a lover, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Els Van Doren, 37, fell 4,000m to her death last November after her parachute and emergency chute failed to open. Police believe someone tampered with her parachute, Michel Zegers from the Tongeren prosecutor's office said. Els Clottemans, a 22-year-old skydiver detained for questioning last week, is the "prime suspect" in the investigation, Zegers said. News reports say Clottemans killed Van Doren in a jealous rage after learning Van Doren had an affair with her boyfriend.
■ United Kingdom
Gay supporters warned
Senior British government ministers including the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and Home Secretary have been warned that Catholic Church leaders will campaign against Labour candidates in the Scottish elections if the government requires Catholic adoption agencies to allow gay couples to adopt. Mario Conti, the Catholic archbishop of Glasgow, has written to five Scottish Cabinet members repeating his warning to Prime Minister Tony Blair that preventing Catholic agencies from discriminating will be a "betrayal." Senior Catholic officials said on Thursday they would urge Catholic voters to remember the track record of each party and cast their vote for candidates whose moral stance was closest to the Church.
■ United Kingdom
Greek royal auction held
Christie's auction house trumpeted on Thursday the success of a controversial London sale of a former Greek king's belongings, which went ahead despite warnings from Athens that it could be illegal. The auction of objects belonging to Greek king George I, who died in 1913 -- is the first sale of objects belonging to the former royal family since its fall in 1973. The 850 items, many of them silverware and works by jeweller Peter Carl Faberge, went under the hammer in a two-day sale at Christie's from Wednesday. Greek Culture Minister George Voulgarakis called for the sale to be stopped even before it started, saying the items involved were "part of the history of the modern Greek state."
■ Finland
Hospital fire injures 18
Eighteen people were hurt, four seriously, when a fire broke out in a psychiatric ward in southwestern Finland on Thursday night, officials said yesterday. The fire started in a clothing rack in the hospital in Nokia, 190km northwest of Helsinki, but its cause was still unknown, officials said. Seventeen patients and a member of staff were treated in nearby hospitals. Four suffered lung damage from inhaling smoke.
■ United States
Rare Rembrandt sold
A Rembrandt painting of an apostle in prayer sold for US$25.8 million at Sotheby's in New York on Thursday, falling short of the record price of nearly US$29 million for a work by the Dutch painter. A spokesman for Sotheby's said the painting, Saint James the Greater, had been sold to a buyer who wanted to remain anonymous. The auction house had valued the 1661 painting at between US$18 million and US$25 million. The record for a Rembrandt is held by Portrait of a Lady, Aged 62, which was sold at auction by Christie's in London in December 2000.
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■ Brazil
Rescue crews find body
Rescue crews on Thursday found the final missing body of seven victims buried in the collapse of a subway station construction site two weeks ago. The body had yet to be identified, but it was believed to belong to 60-year-old office worker Cicero Augustinho da Silva, who went missing after being seen near the construction site at the time of the Jan. 12 accident, said a Sao Paulo fire department spokesman. Silva was believed to have died when a 40m-wide circular hole lined with concrete gave way without warning at the site, swallowing pedestrians, dump trucks and a minibus passing nearby.
■ Mexico
Transsexual rights bill
A congressman said on Thursday he will submit a bill in March that would amend the country's Constitution to guarantee the rights of transsexuals and change civil laws to ensure they can legally change their name and gender. David Sanchez Camacho's bill would insert a paragraph into Article Four of the Mexican Constitution stating that "every person has the right to the recognition and free exercise of their gender identity and their gender expression." Article Four currently guarantees equal rights for women and men and states the rights of children and families, but it does not mention homosexuals or transsexuals.
■ United States
Obama rebuts rumors
The Democratic senator, Barack Obama, has launched an aggressive counterattack against rumors that he is a Muslim and was educated at a madrasah in Indonesia. In an interview with a Chicago television station, Obama denounced what he called a "climate of smear," intended to scupper his run for the White House next year. "When I was six, I attended an Indonesian public school where a bunch of the kids were Muslim, because the country is 90 percent Muslim," he said. "The notion that somehow, at the age of six or seven, I was being trained for something other than math, science and reading is ludicrous."
■ United States
New rocket on schedule
The new rocket that will replace the space shuttle for carrying crews to the International Space Station is on schedule and within weight guidelines, NASA officials said on Thursday. NASA's associate administrator for exploration, Scott Horowitz, said that the design of the rocket, the Ares I, was progressing well and that the rocket should be ready for its first test flight on schedule in 2009. Horowitz acknowledged that the design had increased in weight, a subject of speculation in the aerospace industry, but said that was not unexpected in the early stages of rocket development. Horowitz said the rocket, derived from the solid-rocket boosters that help lift the shuttles, was well within performance limits to lift the 25-tonne Orion crew exploration vehicle into orbit.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing