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World News Quick Take

■ JAPAN

Cup Noodles recalled

Nissin Food Products Co said yesterday it was recalling half a million cups of instant noodles over fears of insecticide contamination in the latest food safety scare to rock the country’s consumers. A 67-year-old woman vomited and felt numbness on her tongue after eating Nissin’s Cup Noodle this week in the Tokyo suburb of Fujisawa, the city’s health office said late on Thursday. The product was made at a Nissin factory in Japan. A series of previous scares have involved food imported from China. The health office said on inspecting the Cup Noodle they had discovered paradichlorobenzene, the key chemical in bug repellent, but no puncture or other abnormality in the cup. Nissin was voluntarily recalling around 500,000 cups made on the same factory line the same day, a company spokesman said.



■ CHINA

Woman sentenced to death

A court has sentenced a Ugandan woman to death with a two-year reprieve for drug trafficking, hoping to send a strong message to would-be smugglers, state media said yesterday. Awor Ocer Lucy, 42, was sentenced at Guangzhou’s Intermediate People’s Court on Thursday for trying to smuggle 2kg of heroin through the city’s airport in April, the China Daily said. Death sentences with reprieves are usually commuted to life in jail. The court also sentenced a drug smuggler from Benin and another from Nigeria to life in jail, while a Philippine woman was handed a 15-year term, the paper said. The court said a sharp increase in drug smuggling by foreigners over the past two years had made it necessary to hand down the tough sentences. “The verdicts [will] sound alarm bells for foreign smugglers,” said court spokesman Li Zhongyuan, according to the paper.



■ RUSSIA

Children kill zoo kangaroo

Police in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don say three children aged 10 to 12 have admitted killing a 10-month-old kangaroo at the city’s zoo. The kangaroo and several seagulls were killed over the weekend. Rostov police spokesman Alexei Polyansky said on Thursday that the two boys and a girl admitted to the killings. He did not say how the animals were killed, but Russian news reports said they were beaten. Because the children are minors, their parents could be required to pay fines equivalent to the estimated value of the dead animals — 115,000 rubles (US$4,300). The zoo’s deputy director, Nina Yevtushenko, said its other seven kangaroos are in a state of shock: “In contrast to people, they feel the pain of their relatives.”



■ IVORY COAST

Toxic dumper jailed

A court jailed a Nigerian man for 20 years for the 2006 dumping of hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from an international oil trader that killed at least 16 people and left more than 100,000 needing treatment. Salomon Ugborugbo, 39, owned a local company whose trucks collected the eye-stinging waste offloaded from the Dutch-based company’s ship and dumped it at 17 sites in the main city, Abidjan. Thousands fled the sites, which included areas next to homes and a huge garbage dump. An Ivorian shipping agent, Essouin Koua Desire, was convicted of complicity in poisoning and sentenced to five years in jail.



■ ICELAND

‘Non-terrorists’ fight back

Icelanders who feel they have been branded terrorists by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are fighting back — with a snowball, a gun made from Lego blocks and bubble gum. Brown used anti-terrorist laws to freeze the assets of Icelandic bank Landsbanki after what he said was Reykjavik’s “completely unacceptable” failure to guarantee British deposits. Icelanders were outraged, saying the decision was deeply damaging to a country that does not even have a standing army. “It is so unfair, and so ridiculous — using a terrorist law against Iceland is like using a terrorist law against the Vatican,” said photographer Thorkell Thorkelsson. “The difference is there are more weapons in the Vatican.” Thorkelsson asked people to come to his studio bearing arms to show how dangerous Iceland is. Pensioner Hulda Edelvy posed for a photograph brandishing a staple remover and a pair of pliers. Some young people started a Web site www.indefence.is, which carries photographs of Icelanders at home holding placards saying “We are not terrorists.” More than 20,000 people, or about 7 percent of the island’s population, signed up in its first 12 hours. “People can do anything claiming they are working against terrorism. We are seeing the world turn into something George Orwell wrote about in 1984,” one poster said.



■ SOUTH AFRICA

Lawmaker becomes star

A lawmaker who toppled to the ground on live television after his chair cracked, and then collapsed, has become an unwitting Internet star as a video of the incident spreads online. The chairman of parliament’s finance committee, Nhlanhla Nene, was being interviewed live on a popular morning show when his chair gave a loud crack, collapsing seconds later as he disappeared from the screen. A video clip of the incident has made its way onto the BBC News Web site as well as YouTube and the popular social networking site Facebook with titles such as “chairman cracks under pressure.”



■ UNITED STATES

Hathaway’s ex pleads guilty

Movie star Anne Hathaway’s former boyfriend was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail on Thursday after pleading guilty to fraud. Raffaello Follieri, 30, had been accused of cheating investors by claiming he had Vatican connections, which allowed him to buy Catholic Church property at a discount. He pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and had agreed to forfeit US$2.4 million. Prosecutors said he used the money he bilked from investors to fund a lifestyle suitable for the boyfriend of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — traveling on private planes, enjoying expensive hotels and dinners and renting yachts. He also rented an exclusive Manhattan apartment for US$37,000 a month.



■ COLOMBIA

Head of intelligence resigns

The head of the intelligence agency resigned on Thursday amid allegations she had the agency spy on political opponents of President Alvaro Uribe. Maria del Pilar Hurtado presented her resignation to Uribe, to whose office the Administrative Security Agency (DAS) reports, as an “act of dignity,” she said. The director earlier fired the DAS social and political intelligence chief, Jaime Ovalle, who had signed the orders for intelligence gathering on Senator Gustavo Petro and other leaders of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA). In Congress on Tuesday, Petro, a vocal critic of the Uribe administration, presented incriminating documents signed by Ovalle in August and last month giving orders to spy on members of Petro’s party.



■ UNITED STATES

Louisiana man sues Oprah

A Louisiana man has filed a lawsuit against TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, claiming she and an attorney made false statements that led the FBI to arrest him on charges that he tried to extort her. Keifer Bonvillain, who had the charges dismissed, seeks damages of US$180 million from Winfrey, her attorney and the FBI in the federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday. Bonvillain, of Houma, Louisiana, was arrested in December 2006 after he allegedly recorded telephone conversations with an employee of Winfrey’s production company and told a company associate he wanted to publish a book based on the recordings.



■ UNITED STATES

‘Hit a Jew Day’

At least four students from a suburban St Louis middle school face punishment for allegedly hitting Jewish classmates during what they called “Hit a Jew Day.” The incident happened last week at Parkway West Middle School in Chesterfield. District spokesman Paul Tandy said some of the school’s approximately three dozen Jewish students were hit on the shoulders or backs. But in one case, a student was allegedly slapped in the face. It began with an unofficial “Spirit Week” among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a “Hug a Friend Day.” Then there was “High Five Day.” Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was “Hit a Tall Person Day” and, finally, “Hit a Jew Day.” District officials said a handful of children were directly involved. Those who actually struck classmates could face suspension and required counseling, Tandy said. Others who weren’t directly involved but taunted Jewish students or egged on classmates could face lesser penalties.


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