■VENEZUELA
Chavez warns over US base
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to build a US military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act as “aggression.” Chavez said he would not allow Colombia’s US-backed government to establish a US military base in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela. The Venezuelan leader said if Colombia builds the base, his government will revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region. “We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire,” Chavez said, referring to the US during a speech to a packed auditorium of uniformed soldiers. “Colombia is launching a threat of war at us.”
■UNITED STATES
Pitt, Jolie expecting twins
Hollywood’s most glamorous parents, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, are expecting twins, Jolie confirmed on Wednesday in a TV interview from Cannes, France. Actor Jack Black let the news slip while doing a joint interview with Jolie in the French Riviera to promote their movie, Kung Fu Panda. “You’re going to have as many as the Brady Bunch when you have these,” he said during the chat with the Today show’s Natalie Morales. Asked by Morales if she was indeed having twins, Jolie replied: “Yeah, yeah, we’ve confirmed that already. Well, Jack’s just confirmed it, actually.”
■CANADA
Toddler left behind at airport
An immigrant family left a 23-month-old boy in Vancouver airport and learned he was missing only when contacted during the next leg of the trip. Jun Parreno, the boy’s father, told the Vancouver Sun the mix-up occurred on Monday as he, his wife and two grandparents of the child, were scrambling between their arrival in Canada and a connecting flight to Winnipeg on Air Canada. Running late after having to unpack and repack all their luggage, “we had 10 minutes before boarding,” said Parreno, who was emigrating with his family from the Philippines. “We were running for the gate.” He said he thought his son was with the three other adults, who were running to the gate ahead of him, and they thought the little boy was with him.
■UNITED STATES
Cookie sales finance trip
A Girl Scout has financed her trip to Europe with Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos, possibly breaking a US record in the process. Jennifer Sharpe, a 15-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, sold 17,328 boxes of Girl Scout cookies this year, which shatters the old record for her local Girl Scouts group and is believed to be a record, though the national organization, Girl Scouts of the USA, does not track individual sales. “It’s always been one of those goals I wanted to accomplish,” Sharpe said on Wednesday.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez to try to free hostages
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday he will try to re-establish contacts with Colombian rebels in an attempt to win freedom for more hostages held by the guerrillas. Chavez said he spoke by phone with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and offered to “try to make contact” with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Sarkozy’s campaign to free French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt so far has been unsuccessful. “I’m going to try to do whatever possible to free not only Ingrid Betancourt, but all the people who are in the hands of the FARC,” Chavez said during a meeting with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates.
■ UNITED KINGDO
Books shortlisted for prize
A warts-and-all biography of author V.S. Naipaul was nominated yesterday for the £30,000 (US$58,350) Samuel Johnson Prize, billed as the world’s richest non-fiction award. But Patrick French’s critically acclaimed The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of V.S. Naipaul faces tough competition from an eclectic shortlist of authors. The prize will be announced on July 15. Tim Butcher was shortlisted for Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart which recreates explorer H. M. Stanley’s famous Congo expedition. Crow County by Mark Cocker recounts his ornithological obsession while The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia by Orlando Figes delves into the hidden histories of ordinary people under the Soviet tyrant. Bookmakers William Hill made French the 5-2 favorite. Second favorite is Kate Summerscale for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Or The Murder At Road Hill House about a gruesome killing that inspired a generation of writers. Alex Ross completes the shortlist with The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a sweeping musical history.
■AUSTRIA
Kids having taste problems
Three out of four children aged between 10 and 13 are unable to distinguish between basic flavors — sweet, sour, bitter and salty— a study has found. Only 27.3 of children recognized all flavors while 23.6 percent recognized only one, researchers from Vienna University said. In addition, 8.1 percent of the children did not recognize any flavor. The researchers said they established a possible connection between a fast food diet and the seemingly degenerating tastebuds of Austria’s children. The test results of students, who said that they never or almost never ate fast food, were “significantly better” than those who regularly consumed fast food. Children from rural regions and students in grammar schools scored better results than children from urban regions and secondary schools. Better results were achieved by those who consumed less white bread and ate fruit and vegetables regularly, the study said. Almost three-quarters of the testers could determine the flavor “sweet,” while only 44.9 percent recognized salty flavors.
■KENYA
Villagers hack man to death
Angry villagers on Tuesday hacked to death a man accused of the ritual murder of a child whose torso was recovered in a pit in eastern Kenya, police said. Thirty-year-old Jacob Gichunuku Kaloo, was slashed and stoned to death in Igembe district a day after the headless and limbless corpse of a six-year-old boy was found, police commander Hebson Kadege said. Ritual killing is still common in many African tribes that practice witchcraft.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Government hits back
The government hit back at critics on Wednesday who have been urging the country’s state-run power producer to cut its exports to conserve electricity for the domestic market. Since January, the country has been disrupted by frequent power cuts caused by a shortage of capacity and Eskom, which produces 95 percent of the country’s power, has come under fire for selling to neighboring countries. “We treat our customers in neighboring countries as customers,” Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said. “So for the life of me, I still cannot comprehend this logic that somehow we must punish these foreign customers, and that we’re somehow criminal in exporting to them.”
■INDONESIA
Jakarta offers GISAID data
The government says it will start sharing all information about its bird flu cases with a new global database, a move experts say will help monitor the disease following the country’s yearlong standoff with the WHO. China, Russia and other nations that have long withheld influenza virus samples and DNA sequencing data from the international community are also taking part in the initiative, saying it offers full transparency and, for the first time, basic protection of intellectual property rights. The free, online site was launched yesterday, 18 months after strategic adviser Peter Bogner and 77 influential scientists and health experts wrote a letter to Nature magazine calling for information about bird flu to be shared more quickly and openly, and creating the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID).
■VIETNAM
Record drug haul made
Police found 8.8 tonnes of hashish covered by jeans in cartons shipped from Pakistan en route to China in what they described as the country’s largest drug haul, newspapers reported yesterday. The cannabis resin had a street value of nearly US$90 million, several newspapers quoted anti-narcotics police officers as saying about the seizure on Monday in a warehouse in Mong Cai town on the border with China. Police detained five people carrying Indonesian or Chinese passports on suspicion of being owners of two containers used to transport cannabis resin from Pakistan.
■PAKISTAN
Mob kills theft suspects
Residents of a Karachi apartment building attacked and set fire to three alleged robbers on Wednesday, killing them all, police said. The residents heard gunshots from an apartment where a neighbor was resisting robbers. A mob confronted the thieves and beat them with burning wood from the oven of a nearby bakery, setting them on fire. Police said two of the men were dead when they arrived and the third died later.
■MALAYSIA
Airport squad starts work
A special team of police began round-the-clock security yesterday at Kuala Lumpur International Airport after a spate of crimes. A battalion of 141 officers will guard the country’s main international airport, said Musa Hassan, inspector general of police. Last month, four armed men shot and injured five people at the airport, including a police officer, during a 3.3 million ringgit (US$970,000) robbery.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in