■ CHINA
Police arrest mine lawyer
Police in northern China have arrested the lawyer representing a mine where 105 workers were killed in an explosion last week, state media said yesterday. Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the owner of the mine but have been unable so far to track him down, police sources told Xinhua news agency. The disaster happened on Dec. 6 near the town of Linfen in Shanxi Province. Xinhua said 128 miners were working in the shaft at the time of the blast, that was only approved for 60 miners.
■ CHINA
Movie import issue raised
Beijing denied suspending movie imports from the US, after US officials "forcefully" raised the issue and demanded answers during tense meetings this week. US entertainment industry journal Variety last week reported that China had begun a three-month suspension of US movies, amid speculation the Chinese were looking to punish the US over a range of trade disputes. China officially allows just 20 foreign films to be screened in Chinese theaters each year.
■ CHINA
Panda hunting investigated
The Chinese government is investigating reports that villagers were persuaded to hunt down giant pandas and trade their pelts, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Local forestry police had detected several cases of such illegal activities around Ya'an City in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Citing a report carried in China's Nanfang Weekend newspaper on Thursday, Xinhua said mysterious buyers of panda fur had been persuading villagers to hunt the animals for up to 500,000 yuan (US$68,000) per pelt.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Cats glow in the dark
Scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said. Three Turkish Angora cats were born in January and February through cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in the dark. Scientists from Gyeongsang National University and Sunchon National University took skin cells from a cat and inserted the fluorescent gene into them before transplanting them into eggs.
■ MALAYSIA
Kids play in floods
Authorities ordered parents yesterday to stop letting children play in floodwaters that have ravaged the country and left 19 people dead and said that monsoon rains might not ease until February. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak was quoted by the national Bernama news agency as saying that many children regarded the floods as a water carnival without realizing the depth and the strength of the water current. The floods have claimed 19 lives since last week in Kelantan and three other states. Some 20,279 people are still sheltering in town halls, schools and community centers on high ground.
■ AUSTRALIA
Cities plan lights-out
Twelve cities around the world have agreed to darken their skylines for an hour as part of an Australian initiative to raise awareness about climate change, organizers said on Friday. Sydney, which was plunged into near-darkness when millions of people switched off nonessential lights for the inaugural "Earth Hour" event this year, will be joined next year by 11 cities in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, World Wildlife Fund Australia said in a statement. Canada's CN Tower in Toronto and Chicago's famous Sears Tower could be among thousands of skyscrapers to switch off lights at 8pm on March 29.
■ INDIA
Priest's leg stolen
Police in Andhra Pradesh are hunting two men accused of hacking off and stealing the right leg of a Hindu priest, which he claimed had magical powers, they said on Friday. Last week the two men allegedly visited 80-year-old priest Yanadi Kondaiah and got him drunk before chopping off his right leg, local police official Pendakanti Dastgiri said. The priest was rushed to a hospital. The priest "claims his right leg possessed a rare mystic power which makes his predictions come true," Dastgiri said. The men apparently became interested in the leg after predictions given to them by Kondaiah turned out to be correct.
■ JAPAN
Seniors do shoplifting
Crimes by older people jumped threefold this year compared with a decade ago, domestic media reported on Friday. About 45,000 people over 65 were prosecuted between January and last month, nearly half of them for shoplifting, the Tokyo Shimbun said. Assaults by older people rose to 1,700 from just 100 in the same period a decade ago, it quoted the National Police Agency as saying.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Lovers dumped by SMS
U R dumped -- one in seven say they have suffered the same fate as Britney Spears' ex-husband and been told it's all over via text message or e-mail, a survey said on Friday. While hiding behind technology might appear a cowardly way of splitting up, it contrasts with the 4 percent who simply drop all communication with their lovers without notice. "Most of us send e-mails and texts everyday, so it comes as no surprise they are now being used to ditch someone -- however distasteful this is," said Rob Barnes from moneysupermarket.com, which carried out the survey.
■ SAUDI ARABIA
Envoy to return to Qatar
An ambassador will be sent to Qatar after a four-year pullout, and a ban on the Qatar-based satellite al-Jazeera TV has been lifted, media reports said. Foreign Minister Saudi al-Faisal said that a Saudi ambassador is "going back soon" to Qatar. The thaw comes after Saudi King Abdullah visited Qatar earlier this month -- the first such visit by a Saudi king in 17 years -- to attend the Doha-hosted conference of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Qatar in Sept. 2003 in protest of al-Jazeera airing a program about the Saudi royal family that Riyadh deemed insulting.
■ LATVIA
Rangers 'driven to despair'
Authorities have given residents something to cheer about when they invited them to cut their own Christmas trees for free -- only to be chased away by forest rangers. A Riga forestry agency said on Wednesday a state body had invited residents to cut their trees from forests located 50km or more outside the capital, but people instead descended on protected areas around the city. The authority was quoted as saying that forest rangers around Riga had been struggling to keep people away. "The authority's staff are being driven to despair," a spokeswoman said.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
New rape laws in force
With one of the highest rape rates in the world, South Africa will enforce new laws starting today to try to reduce sexual and predatory crimes. The new act will repeal the common law offense of rape and replace it with a new expanded definition of rape, which will make all forms of penetration without consent -- irrespective of gender -- punishable as rape. Under existing law, rape refers only to forced vaginal penetration by a male sexual organ. The act also creates new offenses for adults by criminalizing the witnessing of certain sexual conduct, such as the display of child pornography.
■ NETHERLANDS
Suspect given holiday leave
Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo's former prime minister who is on trial for war crimes, will leave his jail cell to spend the holidays at home, the UN Yugoslav tribunal said on Friday. Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1998-1999 war against the Serb army, is accused of illegally detaining and mistreating prisoners. He has pleaded innocent. Judges approved his provisional release even though his trial has been plagued by witnesses unwilling to testify, citing fears of reprisals. The prosecution completed its case last month, and the defense said it will not call any witnesses -- the first time in more than 100 cases tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that a suspect did not put up a defense.
■ CANADA
'Rogue elf' alert
The post office and police are trying to track down a "rogue elf" who wrote obscene letters to children on behalf of Santa Claus, a newspaper reported on Friday. The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 postal code. Return letters from Santa are in fact written by an 11,000-strong army of post employees and volunteers. "We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there," a Canada Post spokeswoman told the paper.
■ UNITED STATES
NYC crime at record low
New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 murders this year -- the lowest number of homicides recorded since reliable record-keeping started in 1963. There were 457 murders reported as of Dec. 11, about 16 percent fewer than at this time last year, police statistics showed. Rapes, robberies and burglaries were also down and felony assaults were holding steady, at about 16,200 for the past two years. New York City's homicide rate reached an all-time high of 2,245 in 1990, making it the murder capital of the US at the time.
■ UNITED STATES
Clubs defend ladies' night
Men are not discriminated against by "ladies' nights" at Manhattan nightclubs, just as people in their 20s do not suffer because some restaurants let children eat for free or have "early bird" specials for older customers, said nightclub lawyers fighting a federal lawsuit. Roy Den Hollander has sued clubs including Lotus and the China Club, saying he was discriminated against by ladies' nights, which offer women free or discounted admission and drinks. Deborah Swindells Donovan, a lawyer for Lotus, called the lawsuit frivolous in papers filed Friday in US District Court.
■ UNITED STATES
Internet druggist gets jail
A graduate student from India who organized an illegal Internet pharmacy network was sentenced on Friday to 30 years in prison. Akhil Bansal, 29, a doctor studying for a business degree at Temple University, Pennsylvania, ran a network with his family that smuggled 11 million prescription pills from India and distributed them to 60,000 Americans, prosecutors said. "You distributed poison throughout the country," US District Judge Paul Diamond told Bansal in court on Friday. Bansal maintained his innocence. "Truly in my heart, I believe I did not commit these serious charges," he said. He said he would appeal.
■ UNITED STATES
Snowball charge dropped
Prosecutors dropped assault and harassment charges on Thursday against an Australian man who threw a snowball at a Colorado ski resort co-worker's back. It was in "the best interest of justice" to dismiss the case against 21-year-old Andrew Thistleton, prosecutors said. Thistleton was scheduled to go on trial Thursday morning for a second time. His first trial ended in a mistrial last week. Authorities said Thistleton hit Michelle Oehlert with the snowball in February when both were working at a Copper Mountain ski resort rental shop. Oehlert told police the blow was painful because she had an injury from a car accident.
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