■ AUSTRALIA
Rudd rejects holiday call
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday rejected calls from Aboriginal rights activist Mick Dodson, named this year’s Australian of the Year on Sunday, for the national holiday to be moved out of respect for his people. National Day is celebrated on Jan. 26 to mark the arrival of white settlers in 1788. But Rudd refused to entertain the notion. “To our indigenous leaders and those who call for a change to our national day let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no,” said Rudd, speaking at an Australia Day function. “There have always been controversies about national days, but this is not the point. The central point is then what we resolve to fashion as a nation ... and whether the nation we fashion through our resolve, our energies and our efforts is a nation which includes all, not just some ... That is why I support this, our national day.”
■NEW ZEALAND
Old tuatara becomes dad
A captive reptile has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 after receiving treatment for a cancer that made him hostile toward prospective mates. The centenarian tuatara, named Henry, was thought well past the mating game until he was caught canoodling with a female named Mildred last March — a consummation that resulted in 11 babies being hatched yesterday. An endangered species, the hatchlings born at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery will provide a badly needed boost to the tuatara’s genetic diversity, said Lindsay Hazley, the tuatara curator.
■PAKISTAN
Bicycle bomb kills five
A bomb planted on a bicycle exploded near a women’s hostel in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan yesterday, killing five people and wounding several, police said. “It was a cycle bomb. Five people died on the spot while the wounded were shifted to hospitals,” police officer Bashir Khan said by telephone from the scene. Khan declined to say if the women’s hostel was the target. A hospital and a press club are also in the vicinity.
■INDONESIA
Muslims banned from yoga
Muslims in the country are now banned from practicing yoga that contains Hindu rituals like chanting, but will continue to be allowed to perform it for purely health reasons, the chairman of the country’s top Islamic body said yesterday. Cleric Maruf Amin said the Ulema Council issued the non-binding ruling following weekend talks attended by hundreds of theological experts in Padang Panjang, a village in West Sumatra province. Although the ruling is not legally binding, most devout Muslims are likely to adhere to it — as they consider it sinful to ignore a fatwa.
■CAMBODIA
Pact reached on border row
Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said yesterday he and visiting Thai Minister Kasit Piromya had agreed they must end a land dispute near an ancient temple, where troops from both nations clashed on Oct. 15, leaving four soldiers dead. “The demarcation of the border at Preah Vihear temple and discussions over troops is an urgent priority,” he told a joint press conference after the meeting. “Both sides — Cambodia and Thailand — agreed to set up a date from Feb. 2 to 4 in which the joint border commission will start to demarcate territory.” Thailand’s defense minister will visit Cambodia on Feb. 6 to discuss withdrawing troops from disputed territory around the 11th century Khmer temple, he said.
■UNITED STATES
Governor turns to media
Although Illinois lawmakers set to launch impeachment hearings against Governor Rod Blagojevich yesterday, Blagojevich has refused to appear before the Senate to defend himself against a host of abuse of power charges. Instead, he was trying to influence public opinion with TV appearances. The Democratic governor is refusing to take part in his own trial, arguing the rules are so biased that he can’t get a fair hearing. “You can conceivably bring in 15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Teresa to come in to testify to my good character, to my integrity and all the rest. It wouldn’t matter,” he told the Today show in an interview scheduled to air yesterday. He was also to appear live on Good Morning, America, The View and Larry King Live.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown’s support slides: poll
Public support for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour government has plunged, according to a poll published yesterday that shows it trailing the main opposition Conservatives by 15 points. A ComRes survey for the Independent newspaper puts the Conservatives on 43 percent (up four points on last month), Labour on 28 percent (down six) and the third opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, unchanged on 16 percent. It is the first time Labour have fallen below 30 percent in any poll since September. ComRes telephoned 1,012 adults in Britain last Wednesday and Thursday.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Coffee, hallucinations linked
A study conducted on 200 university students has linked high caffeine consumption to a higher tendency to hallucinate. The study, carried out at Durham University and reported in a German magazine for physicians, asked students to outline the amount of coffee, tea, caffeine tablets and energy drinks they consumed. Their stress levels and tendency to hallucinate were then recorded. The study showed that students who drank more than seven cups of caffeine in instant coffee were three times more likely to hear voices than students with very low caffeine consumption.
■UNITED STATES
Police boy patrols Chicago
A 14-year-old aspiring police officer donned a uniform, walked into a Chicago police station and managed to get an assignment — patrolling in a squad car for five hours before he was detected, police said on Sunday. The boy did not have a gun, never issued any tickets and didn’t drive the squad car, Deputy Superintendent Daniel Dugan said. Assistant Superintendent James Jackson said the ruse was discovered only after the boy’s patrol with an actual officer ended on Saturday. Dugan said the boy looks older than 14 and was motivated by a desire to be an officer, not malice or “ill intent.”
■MEXICO
Cheesecake record set
The nation has long been known for tacos and tequila — but cheesecake? Chef Miguel Angel Quezada says 55 cooks spent 60 hours making the world’s biggest cheesecake — a 2-tonne calorie bomb topped with strawberries. The monster cake used nearly a tonne of cream cheese, the same amount of yogurt, 350kg of pastry, 250kg of sugar and 150kg of butter. Carlos Martinez of Guinness World Records declared the cheesecake the world’s largest on Sunday at an event sponsored by Kraft Foods, maker of Philadelphia cream cheese. There wasn’t much competition. Guinness had no previous record for cheesecakes. Organizers gave out 20,000 slices around Mexico City.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
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