■ CHINA
Navy ship goes to Japan
A naval ship left yesterday for a port call to Japan for the first time since World War II in a further sign of easing in Sino-Japanese relations. The guided missile destroyer Shenzhen departed from its base in Zhanjiang and was scheduled to arrive in Japan next Wednesday for a four-day visit, Xinhua news agency reported. The port call is the first to Japan by the People's Liberation Army naval forces and is supposed to be reciprocated under plans agreed to by the countries' defense ministers in August. The ship's first stop will be Tokyo.
■ CHINA
Jailed reporter wins award
Imprisoned journalist Li Changqing (李長青) has been awarded the World Association of Newspapers' annual press freedom prize, the Paris-based organization said on Tuesday. Li was sentenced last year to three years in prison for "spreading false and alarmist information." His arrest followed an investigation into a graft-busting bureaucrat that Li promoted in his writings who was later sentenced to life in prison on bribery charges. Supporters said the accusations against the official, Huang Jingao (黃金高), were trumped up. Prosecutors accused Li of leaking information about a dengue fever outbreak to an overseas Web site.
■ AUSTRALIA
Navy rescues 16 from boat
The navy rescued 16 people, 10 of them children, from a boat sinking in rough water off the northwest coast, the defense department said yesterday. It was not immediately clear whether they were trying to seek asylum or where they were from. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said they had set off in a wooden boat from Indonesia's Rote Island. Immigration officials were working to determine their identities and nationalities. Many asylum seekers set off from Indonesia in rickety boats bound for Australia. In 2001 the Norwegian vessel Tampa rescued 433 asylum seekers from a sinking Indonesian ferry and attempted to take them to Australia. Prime Minister John Howard refused to allow the ship to dock.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Piglet found in toilet paper
A piglet nicknamed Andrex is recovering after being found in the back of a truck full of toilet paper at a supermarket. The animal, thought to be two or three weeks old, was discovered in a delivery at a Tesco store in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. Staff wrapped the piglet in a blanket and called the RSPCA, a Tesco spokesman said on Tuesday. He was taken to an animal shelter in Radcliffe-on-Trent, outside Nottingham, suffering from cuts and bruises to his snout.
■ FRANCE
Chirac under investigation
Judges have placed former French president Jacques Chirac under investigation for embezzlement of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris, his lawyer Jean Veil said yesterday. Chirac, who lost his immunity from prosecution after leaving office in May, has consistently denied any wrongdoing while he was mayor between 1977 and 1995. The case revolves around jobs allegedly handed out to sympathizers by Paris city hall.
■ ZIMBABWE
Ian Smith dies at 88
Rhodesia's last prime minister Ian Smith, who has died aged 88, once insisted black rule would not come to pass in a thousand years. Four years later he was a citizen of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It was a typically outspoken and ill-judged prediction by a man who turned his country into a global pariah but also won grudging admiration in some quarters for defying international isolation and sanctions for more than a decade. Smith spent his last days living with his daughter-in-law in Cape Town. Janet, his wife, died in 1994. Their only son Alec died last year.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Met mascots too white
The Metropolitan Police in London are spending £15,000 (US$31,000) to create "ethnically diverse" mascots after complaints about a model deemed too white and too male, reports said on Tuesday. Met chief Sir Ian Blair ordered the new politically correct models after an Asian officer complained about PCSO Steve, the mascot produced to visit to schools to promote the police force. Critics said the fact that Steve was white, with blue eyes and blond hair, risked leaving Asian and women officers "isolated," the Daily Telegraph said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Charity pub crawl planned
A group of "pilgrims" is planning to stage a charity pub crawl next month to mark the anniversary of a mysterious London meander by a senior English clergyman, who denies he was drunk. The Bishop of Southwark made headlines last December when he wandered home from a pre-Christmas party at the Irish embassy, ending up with a black eye, lost possessions and colorful tales reported of his antics en route. The clergyman, Tom Butler, claimed to have no memory of what happened to him on the night, but witnesses recorded how at one point he was found sitting in someone's car, throwing toys out of the window. When asked to explain himself he uttered a line which has since come back to haunt him: "I'm the bishop of Southwark, it's what I do." Now the Ship of Fools, dubbed "the magazine of Christian unrest," is organizing a "pilgrimage" involving pub-hopping along the bishop's alleged route. "Only 30 pilgrims -- for the sharp-eyed among you, the number which assembled in Southwark at the start of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales -- will be able to make the trip," the organizers said.
■ BRAZIL
God is one of them
"God is Brazilian," President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva said on Tuesday in relation to his government's announcement earlier this month that massive new oil reserves had been discovered offshore. "This discovery ... proves that God is Brazilian," he said during a speech at his presidential palace in Brasilia. His theological assertion is not original: people there have long claimed that God shares their nationality on the basis of the natural resources at their disposal. The British magazine The Economist also made reference to that, saying in its take on the oil find in an article last week titled "God may indeed be Brazilian after all."
■ UNITED STATES
Trio sentenced for hate crime
Three men who beat a homosexual man and chased him onto a road where he was struck by a car and killed were sentenced to prison, prosecutors said. In what prosecutors called a hate-inspired robbery scheme, the men found Michael Sandy in an Internet chat room frequented by gay men, lured him out to New York's Plum Beach with a promise of a date and attacked him. The men received sentences of seven to 21 years in jail for second-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and attempted robbery.
■ UNITED STATES
Polygamist gets jail
The head of a polygamist sect was jailed for five years to life on Tuesday following his conviction on rape charges over the marriage of a schoolgirl against her will to a cousin. Warren Jeffs, 51, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was found guilty in September on two counts of acting as an accomplice to rape. At a sentencing hearing in St George, 480km south of Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jeffs was given consecutive terms of five years to life for each offense.
■ UNITED STATES
Boy stabs brother over TV
A 12-year-old boy stabbed his 13-year-old brother during a fight over what to watch on TV, seriously hurting him, police said. The older brother was in extremely critical condition, authorities said. The two had been fighting when the younger boy allegedly went to the kitchen, returned with a 12cm knife and stabbed his brother in the abdomen, Phoenix Police Lieutenant Rob Howe said. Their father heard them fighting over the TV, Phoenix Police Sergeant Joel Tranter said. The boys' seven-year-old sister was in a different room at the time of the stabbing.
■ UNITED STATES
Dolphin has three mothers
A two-month old dolphin calf at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, is being nursed by three females, the aquarium said. While it is known that female bottlenose dolphins can spontaneously produce milk if a calf is present, the practice is not well documented and aquarium staff are carefully watching the process. The unnamed calf was born to a dolphin named Jade, who is being helped in her nursing duties by the mother-daughter team of Chesapeake and Shiloh, the aquarium said in a statement issued Tuesday to announce the birth. Aquarium officials are compiling a list of possible names for the calf, which appears to be thriving.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema