■VENEZUELA
Officials told to tighten belts
Bureaucrats can look forward to fewer expensive SUVs, top-of-the-line cellphones and whiskey-fueled parties next year. Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said on Sunday that next year’s budget “will have significant restrictions” compared with this year’s US$63.9 billion plan as President Hugo Chavez’s government keeps a close watch on slumping international oil prices. “There are expenses that must be eliminated and others that must be reduced,” Rodriguez said in an interview on the privately owned Televen TV network. Flamboyant spending is common in the government and whiskey usually flows freely when state-run institutions throw extravagant parties in December.
■UNITED STATES
Tracks excite scientists
Scientists have found the oldest fossilized tracks of a tiny legged animal, from 570 million years ago, that push back the advent of more complex creatures on Earth by some 30 million years, a report said on Sunday. The fossilized trails, thought to belong to a centipede or a leg-bearing worm that lived in the water, were found in sedimentary rocks in Nevada, Ohio State University geology professor and chief author Loren Babcock said. The finding was reported to the Geological Society of America meeting on Sunday in Houston, Texas. The tracks, two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2mm in diameter, date back some 570 million years to the Ediacaran period. They suggest that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought.
■UNITED STATES
Mortgage debt forgiven
Mortgage finance company Fannie Mae said it is forgiving the mortgage debt of a 90-year-old Ohio woman who shot herself in the chest last week as sheriff’s deputies attempted to evict her. Addie Polk’s plight was cited by Representative Dennis Kucinich on Friday before the House of Representatives voted to approve the US$700 billion financial rescue package. Fannie Mae announced later on Friday that it would dismiss its foreclosure action, forgive Polk’s mortgage and allow her to return to the Akron home where she has lived since 1970, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. Polk remains in Akron General Medical Center, but was expected to recover from her chest wounds.
■UNITED STATES
Pilot McCain prone to error
Senator John McCain was prone to mistakes during his time as a Navy pilot, and if today’s standards were applied, his career may have ended in a hard landing, the Los Angeles Times said yesterday. The paper said that when McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider in Texas in 1960, he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane’s wings. Investigators concluded that the 23-year-old McCain was not paying attention and erred in using “a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn.” The crash was one of three early in McCain’s career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials, the Times said, adding: “This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.”
■BRAZIL
Presidential invader shot
Authorities say a man who tried to invade the residence of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was shot in the leg after repeatedly ignoring warnings from security. Officers opened fire after the alleged intruder refused to obey orders to leave.
■NETHERLANDS
Frank’s house not protected
The government had no objections in the 1950s to tearing down the house where Anne Frank wrote her wartime diary, a newspaper report said on Sunday. The place where the young Jewish girl described life hiding from persecution by the Nazis was not considered worthy of preservation, De Telegraaf said, quoting from a letter written by then-foreign minister Joseph Luns. Luns said the house where Anne and her family hid from 1942 until her betrayal in 1944 was “not an historical monument” and unremarkable from an architectural point of view. The newspaper said the letter was discovered when the part of the ministry’s archives was being moved. In the mid-1950s a developer proposed knocking it down to make way for a modern building, but dropped the idea after protests. The building is now a museum.
■KUWAIT
Girl hugs male singer
An official said authorities abruptly ended a music concert by an Egyptian singer when a young female fan jumped on stage, hugged the male singer and gave him a kiss. Qanas al-Adwani, who heads the government department monitoring public entertainment, said the girl’s behavior at Friday’s concert “defied the conservative traditions” of the country. Al-Adwani also said the fan’s behavior broke controls on public entertainment. Concerts have to be licensed by the government and monitors from the Information Ministry watch the crowd to make sure nobody stands up to dance.
■FRANCE
Kouchner misquoted in news
A dropped “h” landed Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in trouble on Sunday after he was misquoted as saying Israel could gobble up Iran if it wanted to. “I honestly don’t believe that it will give any immunity to Iran ... because you will eat them before,” Kouchner was quoted by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper as saying in an interview about the possibility of Tehran gaining a nuclear weapon. But the Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement later saying Kouchner had said “hit,” not “eat,” and was referring to a pre-emptive strike.
■RUSSIA
Chechen street renamed
Chechnya’s pro-Moscow leader on Sunday renamed a Grozny street in honor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin nearly a decade after Russian forces virtually flattened the city. “This avenue is being renamed after Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin because he is the savior of the Chechen people ... He saved us from genocide,” pro-Moscow administrative chief Ramzan Kadyrov said at a Soviet-style ceremony.
■UNITED KINGDOM
WWII survivor passes on
Ted Briggs, the last survivor of the World War II attack on the battle cruiser HMS Hood, has died, his naval association said on Sunday. He was 85. Briggs died on Saturday in a hospital in Portsmouth, England, HMS Hood Association chairman Peter Heys said. Briggs was one of only three seamen among the 1,418-strong crew to survive an attack by the German battleship Bismarck on May 24, 1941. A salvo from the Bismarck hit the Hood during the Battle of the Denmark Strait and the magazine exploded, tearing the ship in half. It sank within three minutes. Briggs, an 18-year-old signalman, later described how he had been sucked under by the sinking ship before being propelled to the surface, where he saw the Hood disappearing below the waves.
■AUSTRALIA
Bride denies murder
A millionaire died two days after his wedding and one day after changing his will to the benefit of his new wife, a court in Melbourne was told yesterday. Margaret Vandergulik, 61, has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her 60-year-old husband but not to his murder. Patrick Plumbe’s charred body was found behind the wheel of his burnt-out car. At his funeral, Vandergulik is alleged to have confided to a former lover that she killed Plumbe.
■AUSTRALIA
Cop cars to carry advertising
Police cars are to carry corporate advertising in a revenue-raising exercise that the Queensland Police Service promised would “make our communities safer places to live,” the Brisbane Airport Corp said yesterday. Chief executive Koen Rooijmans said he was proud to pay to have the corporation’s logo on police vehicles. “The police service dedicates significant time and resources to keeping Brisbane Airport safe and secure for our passengers, so it is immensely gratifying to assist such a positive initiative like Crime Stoppers, who work so hard to keep Queensland safe and crime-free,” he said.
■AUSTRALIA
Learner reverses into pool
A learner driver showing off his skills to a friend reversed through a fence and into his Adelaide neighbor’s swimming pool, news reports said yesterday. Police issued him with a ticket for failing to maintain control of the car and for not being accompanied by a licensed driver, national broadcaster ABC reported.
■NEPAL
President endorses goddess
The country’s Maoist president has endorsed the choice of a three-year-old girl to be worshipped as a goddess, officials said yesterday, upholding an age-old tradition despite his government’s atheist stance. The selection of the child goddess, or Royal Kumari, had for centuries required the approval of Nepal’s kings, but the abolition of the monarchy earlier this year brought about a shift of protocol. “In Nepal’s changed political context, President Ram Baran Yadav has taken the responsibility of approving the Kumari as he’s now head of state,” said Hemraj Subedi, an official on the board that selected the girl in Kathmandu. Three-year-old Matine Shakya was chosen to replace the current Royal Kumari, 12-year-old Kumari Preeti Shakya, because the older girl is close to puberty, after which she will be considered ritually unclean. The Kumari, which means virgin, must meet 32 strict criteria — including having a “chest like a lion” and “thighs like a deer” — as well as pass tests that include being in a room with sacrificed buffalo and not crying.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema