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World News Quick Take

■ SRI LANKA



Troops recapture town

Government troops recaptured a strategic town from Tamil rebels after killing at least 15 rebels and losing two soldiers in military operations in the area, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said yesterday. Adampan town, 312km north of the capital, was taken early yesterday, he said. Troops have been fighting in the area for more than four months. Seven soldiers were injured in the operations, but rebels during the last hours had put up very little resistance, he said. The town was a strategic point used by the rebels to smuggle in essential items, including fuel, into the areas held by them.



■SOUTH KOREA

35 bird flu cases reported

Bird flu outbreaks have spread to most of the country despite the massive culling of chickens and ducks across the country, the agriculture ministry said yesterday. The latest outbreak reported last weekend in the eastern city of Chuncheon is now confirmed to have been caused by the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, the ministry said. It has brought to 35 the total number of bird flu cases in South Korea. The outbreak has spread as far north as Seoul and to the southeastern cities of Ulsan and Daegu. The ministry also said two suspected cases had been reported in the southeastern city of Busan, the country’s largest port.



■AUSTRALIA

Exports to Egypt to resume

The government will resume exporting live cattle to Egypt, a practice stopped two years ago because of cruelty concerns, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said yesterday. Burke said the trade would recommence under new conditions designed to safeguard the treatment of the animals and agreed to by the Australian and Egyptian governments. “This decision has not been taken lightly and is subject to strict conditions,” Burke said in a statement. “They [cattle] will be handled and slaughtered in accordance with international standards for animal welfare.” Exports were halted after images of animals having their eyes poked out and tendons slashed by Egyptian workers were aired on Australian television in 2006.



■NEPAL

Everest opened to tourists

Authorities allowed the climbing season on Mount Everest to resume yesterday after blocking access to hundreds of climbers so that a Chinese team could ascend with the Olympic flame without any threat of protests on the mountain. Tourism Ministry official Dinesh Adhikari said yesterday that the climbers who had been waiting at the Mount Everest base camp could now depart for higher ground, lifting a nine-day ban on ascents. Chinese climbers took the Olympic torch to the 8,850m summit on Thursday from the Tibetan side of the mountain. Though they were climbing from the north side, Nepal also had banned climbing on the Nepalese side to the south to prevent any anti-China protests on the mountain.



■AUSTRALIA

Teacher fired for photos

A Sydney primary school teacher said yesterday she would take legal action to get her job back after being sacked for appearing nude with her husband in a women’s magazine. Lynne Tziolas was dismissed by her head teacher last week after a complaint from a parent over a spread in Cleo magazine that had nine couples talking about their sex lives. “As teachers we’re expected to be somewhat superhuman and not have a private life,” she said. “It’s denying the fact that teachers are normal. Yes we have sex, yes we enjoy it.”

■ SWITZERLAN

You want fries with that?

The government has agreed to ease restrictions on the importation of potatoes following fears that Euro 2008 soccer fans could face a shortage of French fries next month. A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture told national radio on Wednesday that the government would allow an additional 5,000 tonnes of potatoes to be brought in. The decision follows a request by Swiss potato industry association Swisspatat, which warned that supplies were already running low in the buildup to the tournament. The association has estimated that 3,000 additional tonnes will be needed to make chips for foreign supporters, with the remaining 2,000 used for other forms of potato.



■EGYPT

Police accused of torture

A public prosecutor referred to court on Thursday a police captain accused of torturing a civilian to death, a prosecution source said. The prosecutor accused Captain Moetaz al-Lewag of detaining Mohamed Gomaa without good cause in a police station in Fayoum, southwest of Cairo, and then beating him to death. Lewag has denied the accusation, saying Gomaa had a mental problem and hit his head against the wall repeatedly until he died. International and local rights groups say torture is systematic in Egyptian jails and police stations.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Chef demands fresh stuff

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay said restaurants should be fined if they serve out-of-season fruit and vegetables. “I don’t want to see asparagus in the middle of December. I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home-grown,” he said after raising his concerns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “Fruit and veg should be seasonal. Chefs should be fined if they don’t have ingredients in season on their menu,” he told the BBC yesterday. Ramsay, whose London restaurants include Petrus and The Savoy Grill, said Britain had become a nation of lazy eaters who followed trends and fads rather than substance.



■IRELAND

Guinness leaving Dublin

London-based drinks group Diageo announced yesterday that it was set to consolidate breweries around the country, including the historic Guinness brewery in Dublin. Diageo CEO Paul Walsh told journalists at the brewery at St James’s Gate, a major Dublin landmark, that the new brewery would be located at a completely new site in Clondalkin, north of Dublin. Diageo brewery closures were announced in other Irish cities, including Waterford, Kilkenny and Dundalk.



■ITALY

Police arrest mafia suspects

Police yesterday arrested 10 mafia suspects, including alleged members of two mob families linked to the murder of six Italians killed in a shooting in Duisburg, Germany, last August, news reports said. The suspects were picked up in morning raids in the southern town of San Luca — the traditional stronghold of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian version of the mafia — as well as in nearby Locride and in the northern cities of Udine and Bologna. German news reports that some of those arrested may be directly linked to the Duisburg killings could not be immediately confirmed. Two women, Maria Pelle and Antonella Vottari, the wife and sister of ‘Ndrangheta bos, Francesco Vottari, who was arrested last October, were among those arrested, news reports said.

■CANADA

Woman fired over treat

An attendant at a restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth US$0.16, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention. Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler. “It was just out of my heart, she [the toddler] was pointing and going ‘ah, ah.’ I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy,” Lilliman told the Toronto Star newspaper. Tim Hortons said on Thursday that the firing was a mistake and an “overzealous decision.”



■UNITED STATES

Victims snap photo

Police say they had no trouble tracking down a Pennsylvania robbery suspect because the victims had taken his picture while chatting with him at a bar a short time before the theft. The suspect, Andre Smith, struck up a conversation with a group of women at a bachelorette party at the Bensalem Township taproom early on Sunday morning, the township’s public safety director, Fred Harran, said on Wednesday. The women were taking photos of each other when Smith jumped in front of the camera, Harran said. Smith later was ejected from the bar for allegedly harassing customers. When two women in the group left the bar to go to a nearby convenience store, Smith robbed them of their purses, Harran said. The women recognized Smith — who apparently did not recognize them — and gave investigators a copy of the photo.



■UNITED STATES

Manson ranch closed

National Park Service officials say the Death Valley ranch where Charles Manson was arrested will be closed for a second time this year to search for possible human remains. A press release on Thursday said Barker Ranch will be closed for up to four days later this month. Manson and his followers hid out in the park after the 1969 killing spree that set Los Angeles on edge. A team of forensic researchers found possible unmarked graves at the site in February that they believe could be the bodies of additional Manson victims.



■CANADA

Head tax remembered

The government announced on Thursday that it would dedicate US$5 million to educate people about the Chinese head tax and other racist government policies in the country’s past. Between 1885 and 1923, the Canadian government collected C$23 million (US$22.6 million) in taxes from Chinese immigrants. About 81,000 immigrants paid the tax. It was discontinued in 1923 when the government banned Chinese immigration outright. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947.



■BRAZIL

Gang frees prisoners

An armed gang toting rifles and submachine guns burst into a police station in northeastern Brazil to free a pair of prisoners on Thursday, inciting an uprising that left one inmate dead, police said. Two inmates escaped in the firefight — but not the two the gang had sought to free, said Alberto Maraux, spokesman for Bahia’s State Security Secretariat. Fifteen men broke into an overcrowded jail for drug trafficking and homicide suspects before dawn on Thursday in the coastal city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia State, Maraux said. Three inmates fled amid the chaos, but one was shot and killed — although it was not clear by whom, Malraux said.


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