■SOUTH KOREA
Euthanasia case approved
The Seoul High Court yesterday confirmed a lower court verdict allowing ending life-prolonging measures for a 76-year-old coma patient, making it the first time mercy killing has been formally permitted in the country. In November, a court ruled in favor of ending life-prolonging measures for the woman at the request of her family but without the patient’s consent. The woman, identified only by her family name, Kim, fell into a coma last year following cerebral damage, Yonhap news agency reported.
■HONG KONG
Third body washes ashore
The badly decomposed remains of a third suspected immigrant have washed up in Hong Kong, police said yesterday. Marine police officers pulled the man from the sea on Monday, hours after the discovery of another body on a beach in the northeast of the territory. Police had received a report from a fisherman earlier on Monday of another body found on a beach. On Saturday the body of a man with a mainland identity card was found washed ashore, according to the South China Morning Post newspaper.
■SOUTH KOREA
Cash tops Valentine’s list
Cash is the unromantic but preferred Valentine’s Day gift this year as the economic downturn bites, a report said yesterday. In contrast to other societies, women traditionally give single men gifts to mark Feb. 14. The Korea Herald, citing a survey by a local matchmaking company, said 27 percent of 256 men who were interviewed opted for cash while 13 percent chose travel-related presents. Twelve percent wanted a wallet, rather than something to fill it with, but only 7 percent desired chocolate — the most popular gift in previous years.
■SOUTH KOREA
Guru jailed for sex crimes
A South Korean cult leader who told followers to have sex with him to purge their sins was yesterday jailed for 10 years. Jeong Myeong-seok — whose JMS sect stands for both “Jesus Morning Star” and his initials — was convicted of raping or sexually assaulting four women between 2001 and 2006. An appeals court added four years to a lower court’s sentence of six years. The court was crowded with about 70 of Jeong’s followers, some sighing and others shedding tears at the sentence, media reports said. Jeong, now in his early 60s, fled South Korea in 1999, one day after rape allegations against him were broadcast on national television. He was formally charged in absentia with rape in 2001. The cult leader was arrested in Hong Kong in 2003 for visa violations but later fled an extradition hearing. China extradited him to Seoul in February last year.
■GERMANY
Circus zebras on the run
These fugitives were wearing stripes even before they were caught. Police in the city of Augsburg said they had to chase four circus zebras through the streets after they escaped from their handlers. Police spokesman Robert Goeppel said one of the escapees gave itself up to by passers-by as it wandered the city streets. The other three were eventually corralled in a paddock on the outskirts of town. Goeppel says there were no injuries, either to humans or zebras, during Monday’s chase.
■NETHERLANDS
Super deal on gasoline
Nighttime was the right time to get tanked on Friday in the town of Genderen. An unmanned gas station began offering customers gas for 1 euro cent (US$0.13) per liter — a discount of more than 99 percent — due to a glitch that occurred at about midnight. “Most people were home in bed, so it could have been worse,” Piet-Hein Bogaers, director of the company that operates the station, Vollenhoven Olie BV, said on Monday. As word of the deal spread, business boomed at the station, 100km southeast of Amsterdam. Bogaers said that, by the time the mistake was fixed on Saturday morning, customers were lined up to buy gas. Many had even called to alert the company.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Smell key to chip success
Scientists said they may have found out why the great chip smells so irresistible: a complex blend of scents that includes butterscotch, cocoa, cheese and flowers. The aroma has been unpicked by food scientists at Leeds University. “Whether oven-cooked or fried, the humble chip doesn’t smell of just chips — the aroma is much more complex and probably explains why chips are everyone’s favorite,” said Graham Clayton, who led the research for National Chip Week that started on Monday. “Aromas including butterscotch, cocoa, onion, cheese and would you believe … ironing boards, all combine to help make chips one of Britain’s iconic dishes,” he said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Top drug adviser apologizes
The top drug adviser apologized on Monday for saying that taking the drug ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse riding, after coming under sharp criticism by the interior minister. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, issued a statement apologizing to “those who may have been offended” by his article setting out his view of the drug’s risks. “I would like to apologize to those who have lost friends and family due to ecstasy use,” he said. “I would like to assure those who have read my article that I had no intention of trivializing the dangers of ecstasy.”
■BAHRAIN
Groups decry censorship
A crackdown on Web sites the government deems indecent or socially explosive has triggered calls for reforms by rights activists and bloggers, who say the ban tarnishes the kingdom’s reputation for openness. “Instead of tackling the social issues people discuss online, the government blocks Web sites. But that does not change the reality,” said Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. “Hundreds of Web sites are blocked now, and many are related to politics, human rights issues or are Shia community forums.” Culture and Information Minister Sheikha Mai bint Mohammed al-Khalifa issued a decree last month advising local Internet service providers to block access to Web sites it considers pornographic or incite violence and religious hatred.
■MEXICO
Phone users to be monitored
A national register of mobile phone users is to be established that will include fingerprinting all customers in an effort to catch criminals who use the devices to extort money and negotiate kidnapping ransoms. Under a new law published on Monday, mobile phone companies will have a year to build up a database of their clients, complete with fingerprints. The idea would be to match calls and messages to the phones’ owners. Hundreds of people are kidnapped in Mexico every year and the number of victims is rising sharply as drug gangs, under pressure from an army crackdown, seek new income. Most of the nation’s 80 million mobile phones are prepaid handsets with a given number of minutes of use that can be bought in stores without any identification. The phones can be topped up with more minutes via vendors on street corners.
■UNITED STATES
Vaginal gel offers AIDS hope
An experimental vaginal gel has yielded promising results in preventing HIV infection in women, according to clinical trials conducted in Africa and the US, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Monday. The microbicide PRO 2000 made by Indevus Pharmaceuticals Inc proved safe and 30 percent effective in preventing AIDS infection, the NIH said. Thirty-three percent effectiveness would have been considered statistically significant, it said. The involved more than 3,099 women in six African cities and one in the US.
■CANADA
Bankruptcy figures soar
The number of consumers and businesses going bankrupt soared nearly 47 percent in December. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy said on Monday that 8,299 individuals and businesses went bankrupt in December, up from 5,659 for December 2007, a jump of 46.7 percent. The latest numbers are a staggering sign of how quickly the Canadian economy has slowed. The financial crisis and the global sell-off of commodities have hit the country hard.
■UNITED STATES
Smoking curbs clear hurdle
Lawmakers in Virginia — where the world’s largest cigarette factory churns out Marlboros — passed curbs on smoking in restaurants. Monday’s 59-39 vote in the House of Delegates approved a watered-down bill that allows smoking only in private clubs, outdoor cafes, designated smoking rooms and establishments that are off-limits to minors. The bill already exempted private clubs and outdoor patios. On Monday, it was further diluted by Republican amendments that would allow smoking in any establishment off-limits to minors and in any restaurant rented for a private, invitation-only event.
■CANADA
Duck death firm charged
Environmental authorities on Monday charged Syncrude in the death of 500 ducks that landed in its oil sands sewage ponds in Alberta. The waterfowl died last April after being coated with toxic oil residue from a mine left behind in the ponds by Syncrude Canada Limited, the world’s largest producer of synthetic crude oil from oil sands. Officials allege Syncrude did not use noise makers designed to scare birds from the contaminated ponds and did not immediately report the ducks’ demise, as required by law. “This was the single largest reported incident of oiled birds in the oilsands region,” Environment Canada said in a statement. The Alberta government called it “an environmental tragedy.”
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
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of