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Taiwan News Quick Take

■ BRAZIL

Officials distribute condoms

Health officials on Sunday began distributing millions of condoms to fight the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases during the five-day-long Carnival. The government expects to hand out some 19.5 million condoms by Carnival's end on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 6, state news service Agencia Brasil reported, under the program first launched several years ago. "We have to let society know the importance of prevention," Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao said as he kicked off the campaign at a Rio de Janeiro cultural center.



■ VENEZUELA

Chavez calls for alliance

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday urged the nation's allies to form an "anti-imperialist" military alliance to defend Latin America from possible attacks by the US. Warning that Washington poses a threat to regional security, Chavez called on Nicaragua, Bolivia and communist-led Cuba to "put together a common defense strategy and create our armed force" -- a military coalition united against US dominance in the region. "The enemy is the same: the empire of the United States," Chavez said. "Anybody who messes with one of us will have to mess with all of us because we will respond as one."



■ UNITED STATES

Storms drench California

Thunderstorms brought new waves of rain on Sunday to southern California, following days of drenching weather and heavy mountain snowfall. Up to 5cm of rain had fallen by early afternoon in valley and coastal areas since nightfall on Saturday, with about double that in the mountains, the National Weather Service said. Officials said the rain brought a threat of serious slides on hillsides stripped of vegetation by last year's wildfires. Mud and minor rock slides prompted authorities to shut a highway through a San Diego-area burned between Ramona and Escondido. The Los Angeles County and Orange County fire departments were on standby for flash floods and mudslides.



■ UNITED STATES

Navy resumes sonar training

The Navy has resumed sonar training off the coast of Southern California despite the continuing legal battle over how the exercises affect whales and other marine mammals. The training by the carrier strike group of the USS Abraham Lincoln is part of a broader exercise to prepare the group for deployment, the Navy said in a news release. Earlier this month, a federal judge temporarily lifted certain measures designed to lessen the impact of sonar on whales, a day after US President George W. Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law. The Natural Resources Defense Council alleges the Navy's sonar causes whales and other mammals to beach themselves.



■ HONDURAS

Cubans offered visas

Tegucigalpa has granted temporary residency permits to a group of 22 Cubans who arrived on the Caribbean coast last week in a small boat, an official said on Sunday. The Cubans, who were at sea for 10 days before landing on the coast of Colon Province, will be allowed to stay for 30 days, said regional immigration director Francisco Alvarado. "They all said their intention was to reach Miami, where they have relatives and friends," he said. The Cubans said they had set out on Jan. 15 from the Cuban port of Manzanillo. A local resident on the coast gave the Cubans shelter for two days before they were taken to the immigration office. ■ AUSTRALIA

"Monarchy to remain for now

The government will likely only break its ties with the British monarchy and become a republic when Queen Elizabeth II dies, the former leader of the campaign for a republic said yesterday. Malcolm Turnbull, now a conservative politician, said he did not believe the time was ripe for Australia to shake off a tradition spanning more than two centuries. "I know this is not very consoling to many republicans and this doesn't give me any joy to say it," the former chairman of the Australian Republican Movement told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "But my own judgement is that the next time when you would have your best prospects would be at the end of the Queen's reign -- so when she dies, or abdicates."



■ CHINA

Elephant attacks teacher

A wild elephant in Yunnan Province attacked an American by tossing him with its trunk, causing the man to suffer from fractured ribs and stomach injuries, an official said yesterday. Jeremy Allen McGill, who teaches English in Wuhan, was found unconscious by a security guard around dusk on Thursday at the "Wild Elephant Valley" nature reserve in Xishuangbanna. "It wasn't clear why he was attacked," said an official with the Xishuangbanna foreign affairs office who would only give his surname, Chen. "The elephant just used its trunk to pick the man up and then let go." McGill's abdomen and lungs were "seriously injured" and he had broken ribs, Chen said.



■ INDIA

Vets raid homes for chickens

Veterinary staff in eastern India are capturing chickens in night-time raids on the backyards of homes to surprise villagers unwilling to part with their poultry as an outbreak of bird flu spreads. Bird flu has spread to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts, with samples of dead chickens testing positive in two new districts, officials said yesterday. Experts fear the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily transmitted from person to person, leading to a pandemic, but there have been no reported human infections in India yet.



■ AUSTRALIA

Pig hunters face charges

Three pig hunters face 58 criminal charges after a wild hunting spree in which they drove their truck through fences and gates on 11 farms and were pursued by a farmer in an aircraft and police. The pig hunters are charged with a "spate of malicious damage incidents" over almost 12 hours on Australia Day on Saturday in New South Wales, police said on yesterday. The pig hunters, who smashed their four-wheel drive through fences and gates across 11 properties, were finally arrested on Sunday, police said. "Three men have been charged after their vehicle was tracked by witnesses in a small aircraft following a spate of malicious damage incidents," police said in a statement.



■ HONG KONG

US Navy warship docks

A US Navy warship yesterday made the first visit to Hong Kong by an American ship since November when an aircraft carrier group and two minesweepers were separately turned away, dealing a blow to improving China-US relations. The USS Blue Ridge and its 700 sailors would stay in Hong Kong for a couple of days, Captain David Lausman told reporters on board the ship. The arrival of the ship comes two months after the USS Kitty Hawk and its strike group, carrying about 8,000 sailors hoping to join their families in Hong Kong for a holiday break, were refused entry. ■ FRANCE

Comic book award shared

One of the most prestigious prizes in comic book publishing, the Grand Prix 2008 at Angouleme, was shared on Sunday for the first time in its 35-year history, organizers said. Philippe Dupuy and Iraqi-born Charles Berberian shared the achievement award, made by a jury of former winners at the western town's festival, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors. Australian author Shaun Tan won album of the year for La ou vont nos peres (The Arrival). "It was impossible to separate [Dupuy and Berberian]," said the festival's artistic director, Benoit Mouchard. "They had already won as a duo [in the past]."



■ GREECE

Church leader dies

The country's Orthodox Church leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, who eased centuries of tension with the Vatican but angered liberal critics who viewed him as an attention-seeking reactionary, died yesterday at his home of cancer, church officials said. He was 69. Christodoulos, who headed the church for a decade, was first hospitalized in Athens in June before being diagnosed with cancer of the liver and large intestine. He spent 10 weeks in a hospital in Miami but an October liver transplant operation was canceled when doctors discovered the cancer had spread. He died at his home in the Athens suburb of Psyhico.



■ SPAIN

Naked protest staged

Nearly 130 animal rights activists staged a naked protest on Sunday outside a cathedral in the northeastern city of Barcelona to denounce the torture and slaying of animals to make fur coats. Representing the average number of animals it takes to make a fur coat, the men and women, covered in red paint that resembled blood, lay down and curled up on the steps of the gothic Cathedral of Santa Eulalia in the heart of Barcelona. "Nowadays it is not necessary to kill animals to get their fur. Animals need their fur, we don't," international animal rights group AnimaNaturalis, which staged the demonstration, said in a statement.



■ SWEDEN

Shopping district evacuated

Parts of Stockholm's main shopping district were sealed off in a large police operation on Sunday because of a gas leak, Swedish police said. Spokesman Bjorn Engstrom said the location of the leak had been identified, but that an excavator was needed to get access to it, meaning it could take several hours before the area was safe. The three-story department store PUB and nearby Hotel Rica were evacuated and all market stands at the Hotorget square closed down, Engstrom said. Police opened up some of those areas later on Sunday as workers started repairing the leak.



■ UNITED KINGDOM

All cups now equal

Forty years after feminists threatened to burn their bras, British women have won another battle in the fight for equality. Asda, Britain's second-biggest food retailer and owned by US giant Wal-Mart, says it will no longer charge women more for bigger bras in its George fashion range. "We're putting an end once and for all to one of the last prejudices -- that of the bigger-busted woman," said brand director Fiona Lambert in a statement. "From now on, all bras at George will be exactly the same price from A cup through to F cup.
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