■ JAPAN
Support high for whale hunt
Nearly two-thirds of Japanese support continuing the country's annual whale hunts and more than half agree with using whales for food, a survey by the Asahi Shimbun said yesterday. Asahi said 65 percent of respondents to a telephone survey favored continuing the hunts, while 21 percent said they were opposed. Three-quarters of the men surveyed supported the hunts, versus 56 percent of the women, it said. Japan annual kills more than 1,000 whales in hunts that anti-whaling nations and critics dismiss as a disguise for commercial whaling.
■ JAPAN
Vice minister berated
The top bureaucrat at the economics ministry was chided by his boss yesterday after he ridiculed day traders as "stupid." Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari told reporters that Vice Minister Takao Kitabata made "some radical remarks which may be misleading." Kitabata made the remark in an apparent joke during a Jan. 25 speech in Tokyo organized by the ministry's research unit. As he advised managers about ways to prevent corporate acquisitions, Kitabata described day traders as "a typical example of the most disgraceful shareholders." "They have no interest in management at all," Kitabata said. "They are stupid, wanton and irresponsible. Therefore, you don't have to provide voting rights to them." Kitabata later apologized for his remarks.
■ Australia
Drunk threatened city
A drunken man's threat to blow up half a city with his TV remote control forced the police to declare a state of emergency at a luxury golf resort, a local court heard on Thursday. Geoffrey Martin Fryatt, 57, was arrested by elite paramilitary police after terrifying neighbors with a knife and threatening to detonate a store of chemicals with the TV remote. "One push of the button will blow up half of Brisbane," Fryatt shouted in the standoff last May before police opened fire with rubber bullets. Fryatt's lawyer told the Brisbane District Court that his client lost control after losing much of his life savings in a fraud carried out by his finance broker, local media said. Fryatt was sentenced to a year's probation.
■ sri lanka
Army kills 34 rebels
Government troops attacked separatist Tamil Tiger bunkers along the front lines in the country's embattled north, triggering gunbattles that killed 34 rebels and one soldier, the military said yesterday. Army troops destroyed three rebel bunkers on Thursday in the Vavuniya region, just south of the rebels' de facto state in the north, killing 20 guerrillas, a defense ministry official said. There was no immediate comment from the rebels.
■ Australia
`Pacific Solution' ends
The nation's widely criticized "Pacific Solution" policy of holding asylum seekers on remote islands ended yesterday when the last detainees flew out of Nauru, the government said. The 21 Sri Lankans who had been held on the tiny island in the South Pacific for nearly a year would be resettled in Australia, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said in a statement. The dismantling of the system honors a pledge made by the new center-left government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. A total of 1,637 people were detained on Nauru or the Papua New Guinea island of Manus under the policy, introduced in 2001 in an attempt to discourage boatpeople from seeking asylum in Australia.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Mandarin for high schools
Teenagers in England will be able to study for a new national qualification in Mandarin, reflecting the growing importance of China as a global power, an exam board announced on Thursday. Students aged 15 and 16 can study the subject for their GCSE exams from next year, the Assessments and Qualifications Alliance said. The board said it was making the announcement to coincide with the start of Lunar New Year. The qualification will be available from September next year. Another, smaller exam board in England already offers a Mandarin GCSE.
■ EGYPT
Pileup kills 29 people
At least 29 people, including children, were killed and 16 injured in a traffic pileup blamed on early morning fog southeast of Cairo on Thursday, police and Egypt's official MENA news agency said. Three minibuses and six trucks crashed into each other because of poor visibility on the road to the Cairo suburb of Helwan, police said. Ambulances rushed to the scene where the death toll had been expected to rise because some of the injured were reported to be in critical condition. Each year, about 6,000 people die and 30,000 are injured in road accidents in Egypt.
■ ISRAEL
A drug for high pilots?
A drug used to treat impotence could help Israeli fighter pilots operate at high altitude, the Israeli military's magazine reported in its latest issue. It said a retired general plans to present to the air force the results of a study he conducted on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where he found that tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis tablets, improved breathing in thin atmosphere. "The study's findings justify the continuation of tests with drugs of this type in low oxygen environments," an unnamed air force officer told Bamahaneh, the military's weekly magazine. An army spokeswoman said that there were no plans to use any such drug and a statement said the phenomenon of chronic oxygen starvation experienced by mountaineers and the immediate oxygen starvation that pilots suffer at high altitude are different.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
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