■ CHINA
"Bus accident kills 21
Twenty-one people were killed after a bus plunged into a river in southwest China, as millions of Chinese returned from their Lunar New Year holidays, state media reported yesterday. The accident took place in mountainous Guizhou Province on Tuesday on a road linking the cities of Chishui and Zunyi, Xinhua news agency said. Fourteen people were also injured in the accident and were being treated at a nearby hospital, local authorities said. Guizhou was one of the provinces hardest hit in recent weeks by record snowfalls that wreaked havoc on the country's road and rail networks. The report said it was unclear whether the road where the accident took place was covered in ice or snow.
ts waste and promised corrective measures. The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries said it would amend regulations in June to remove two waste dump areas in the Sea of Japan which are in waters under Japanese jurisdiction. "The government will exclude the two areas ... as waste dump areas," the ministry said in a statement. It stressed, however, that no waste had actually been dumped there since at least 1998 when a bilateral fisheries agreement was signed.
■ CHINA
Hamsters in demand
A sudden spike in the demand for pet rodents, inspired by the start of the "Year of the Rat," has forced the price of hamsters up by as many as six times in China, the People's Daily reported yesterday. Prior to the Lunar New Year, hamsters went for as little as 5 yuan (US$0.70) each, but now they cost as much as 30 yuan, it said in a report posted on its Web site. "More people want rat-like pets," said Yi Xiaoran, an online hamster trader. "I've got at least twice as many customers looking for hamsters now than before Lunar New Year." However, medical professionals warn about health risks as some rodents may carry rabies, Xinhua news agency said.
■ CHINA
Truck spills sulfuric acid
A tanker truck carrying more than 30 tonnes of sulfuric acid has crashed in the southwest, spilling its load into a river and causing "serious pollution," Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The accident occurred on Tuesday, when the truck ran into the guard rail on a highway linking Anning and Chuxiong in Yunnan Province, it said. "Some of the sulfuric acid has flown into a roadside river and has caused serious pollution. Many fish were killed," Xinhua said. No human casualties were reported, but up to 1,000 vehicles were stranded on a section of the highway, it said.
■ INDIA
Mustache firing case heard
The case of a flight steward who claimed the state-run domestic carrier dismissed him because of his handlebar mustache was heard on Monday by the Supreme Court, a report said. Joynath Victor De, a former Indian Airlines employee, said the carrier assigned him to ground duties in 1998 and later compulsorily retired him in 2001 for allegedly not adhering to service rules on uniform and appearance. "How can a person with a mustache be removed? This is a democratic country," said judges H.K. Sema and Markandey Katju, Press Trust of India news agency reported. It was not clear if De, who filed suit in 1998, was seeking reinstatement or compensation.
■ CROATIA
Hoax embarrasses daily
A leading daily was deeply embarrassed when it published an interview with the prime minister that turned out to be a hoax by a journalism student who answered the editor's questions by e-mail. The "interview" with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, focused on Croatia's drive to join the EU and NATO, was published by the Jutarnji List on Saturday -- only for the government to deny it had taken place. The daily's editor, Davor Butkovic, admitted he had not spoken to Sanader, but said he had exchanged mobile phone messages and agreed to receive answers in an e-mail.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Shock horror for cable thief
Police in central England are hunting for a badly scorched would-be copper power cable thief after finding a hacksaw embedded in an 11,000 volt power cable on Saturday night. The thief, who also left a lit blow torch at the scene, is expected to be badly charred, spiky haired and not exactly the brightest bulb in the socket. "The sheer stupidity of cutting through power cables should be glaringly obvious to everyone," said Phil Wilson, customer operations manager with local power company Central Networks. "Putting the hacksaw through the cable would have created an almighty bang and the line would have burned for quite a few seconds, showering them with molten copper."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Council pays for exorcism
Officials paid a psychic to exorcise a supposed poltergeist from state housing after the distressed occupants said otherwise they would leave and become homeless, a council official said on Tuesday. Easington Council in County Durham said the family could not be persuaded to stay in the house and that through paying half the psychic ghosthunter's ?120 (US$235) fee they were saving money as otherwise they would have had to pay for emergency housing. The Fallon family told reporters they heard banging from the loft, saw items fly across rooms and had doors slammed in their faces.
■ ISRAEL
Bribe deduction rejected
Some companies request tax deductions for philanthropy, others for restaurants bills. But one Israeli business tried to push the envelope by asking to deduct nearly US$860,000 it paid in kickbacks. A Tel Aviv district court rejected the petition last Friday. The business, whose name was withheld by the court, asked to deduct the sum for kickbacks that were paid to help spur a business deal. The Israeli daily Maariv reported that the deal took place in an unidentified African nation. The company alleged the kickback was necessary as a part of the local business custom and therefore should be exempted from the Israeli law.
■ ISRAEL
Chefs in spring roll strike
Israel's Asian restaurants went on a one-day spring roll strike on Tuesday in protest over government plans to rid kitchens of foreign chefs and said sushi and noodles would be the next items off the menu. The restaurants were angry at government plans to purge Japanese, Chinese and Thai eateries of Asian cooks and replace them with Israelis as part of a program to cut the number of foreigners working in the Jewish state. The Israeli Ethnic Restaurant Organization said the 300 Asian restaurants refused to serve spring, or egg, rolls on Tuesday.
■ BOLIVIA
National disaster declared
The government declared a national disaster on Tuesday after severe floods in the country's northeast killed 51. Some 47,000 families have been hit by the flooding, which threatened the Amazon city of Trinidad. Defense Minister Walker San Miguel announced the declaration a day after President Evo Morales toured the region hit by flooding, the result of heavy rainfall since November. Trinidad's population of 300,000 was under imminent danger from flooding and authorities have begun taking emergency measures to confront the threat. "In Trinidad 300 tents have been set up and 80 tonnes of food and provisions have been distributed," Morales spokesman Alex Contreras said.
■ MEXICO
Gang kills army informants
Drug gang hitmen killed three army informants on Tuesday and dumped them near a military training base close to the US border, scrawling threats on the bodies in black ink, police said. The three men, who police said gave the army regular tip-offs about drug gang activity in the city of Tijuana near San Diego, California, were strangled. "The messages were written on the chests and on the foreheads. One of them read `You're next, we're going in,'" said a police spokesman who declined to be named. President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and other cities in Baja California, the country's most violent state, to destroy two warring drug cartels.
■ UNITED STATES
Parton postpones tour
Dolly Parton's breasts may be two of the wonders of the entertainment world, but the country music icon says they are a pain in her back. Parton, 62, said on Monday she would postpone her upcoming North American tour after doctors told her to take it easy for six to eight weeks to rest her sore back. "Hey, you try wagging these puppies around a while and see if you don't have back problems," the folksy singer-songwriter said in a statement. The tour was due to begin on Feb. 28 in Minneapolis, two days after the release of Backwoods Barbie, her first album of mainstream country music in 17 years.
■ UNITED STATES
Cab driver plays cupid
Finding your better half this Valentine's Day could be as easy as hailing a taxi -- especially if Ahmed Ibrahim is in the driver's seat. The 53-year-old cupid cab driver, as he refers to himself, has spent the past few years playing matchmaker to lonely New Yorkers, setting up more than 70 dates. Nineteen have led to relationships that lasted more than a year. Ibrahim plans to decorate his yellow cab with red and white hearts and roses for today. "I've organized so many dates and it really makes me feel good about it," Ibrahim said. "I've not had one complaint."
■ UNITED STATES
Body found in bathtub
A partially mummified body was found in a bathtub filled with dirt in a Phoenix, Arizona, apartment that was stacked to the ceiling with garbage and human waste. The owners of the small, standalone unit thought it had been abandoned in August, when rent stopped being paid, Phoenix police Sergeant Joel Tranter said on Monday. Tranter said the owners did not decide to do anything about the filthy apartment until last week, when they paid other tenants in the complex to clean it out. When they started shoveling the dirt out, they found the leg of a body and called police, Tranter said.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing