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World News Quick Take

■ 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.
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