■NEW ZEALAND
Woman gets mermaid tail
Nadya Vessey, who lost her legs to a childhood illness, can swim like a mermaid thanks to special effects wizards Weta Workshop, news reports said yesterday. The workshop, which won Oscars for effects on The Lord of the Rings, made a mermaid wet suit for her with a fishtail, which she tested in a Wellington pool. Weta costume-maker Lee Williams said in an interview with Televison New Zealand that she wanted Vessey to be “beautiful and sexy” in the suit, which has hand-painted fish-like scales. A thrilled Vessey said the idea stuck with her after telling a little boy who asked what had happened to her legs that she was a mermaid. Weta agreed to Vessey’s request for a suit because it was a challenge.
■INDIA
Bus crash kills 39
At least 39 people were killed and 14 injured yesterday when a bus skidded off a mountain road and fell into a river, police said. The accident occurred when the driver of the bus lost control while taking a sharp turn on the road at Pul Doda in Doda District, about 180km northeast of Jammu. The bus fell 90m. Thirty-six bodies were recovered while three passengers died on the way to hospital. The victims consisted of 30 men, eight women and a child. At least five passengers were in critical condition, the police said.
■BRUNEI
Beer run leads to jail
It was a beer run on the high seas. Customs officers arrested two men who tried to smuggle 1,382 cans of contraband beer by boat into the country, a news report said yesterday. The men entered Brunei’s waters on Tuesday but tried to flee when they realized they had been spotted, the Borneo Bulletin newspaper said. Customs authorities foiled the escape after a high-speed chase, making their biggest seizure of alcohol this year, the report said. Sale and consumption of alcohol is banned although non-Muslim visitors are allowed to bring in limited amounts for private consumption.
■CHINA
Food safety agency planned
The government will set up a central food safety commission to help cut down on scandals involving dangerous food products, state media said yesterday. The commission will be under the auspices of the State Council and will be set out under a new food safety law, Xinhua news agency said. The commission’s task would be “to strengthen the country’s food monitoring system, whose low efficiency has long been blamed for repeated food scandals,” the report said. Experts have said a key reason for the country’s regulatory shortcomings is that too many different agencies have jurisdiction over the food industry.
■THAILAND
Militants kill two civilians
Suspected militants killed two civilians in the south, while more than a dozen people including soldiers were injured in an upsurge in separatist violence, police said yesterday. In troubled Yala Province on Tuesday, a group of militants stormed a food shop and killed the 24-year-old owner, while three of his relatives were wounded by gunfire, police said. Elsewhere in Yala, a 41-year-old woman who worked as a government informant was shot dead. In a spate of attacks on security forces the same day, two soldiers were injured by gunfire in an ambush by separatists in Yala, while in a nearby district a bomb and shooting attack wounded two army rangers.
■LIBYA
Qaddafi blames Israel
Lybian leader Muammar Qaddafi demanded on Tuesday that any international legal proceedings against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir be halted immediately, charging that it was Israel and not the Sudanese president who was to blame for the Darfur conflict. “It’ll be no surprise to anyone when we say that we have found unequivocal proof that the Darfur problem was fomented by foreign forces,” Qaddafi said in a speech carried by the independent Al-Libya TV channel. “Key rebel leaders have opened offices in Tel Aviv and meet frequently with the [Israeli] army,” he said. “If Tel Aviv, among others, is behind the events in Darfur, why then call Bashir or the Sudanese government to account?” he asked.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Medina calm after clashes
The holy city of Medina was calm on Tuesday night a day after clashes between Shiite pilgrims and Sunnis resulted in nine arrests, witnesses said. There were further disturbances and arrests early on Tuesday but calm was restored after talks between senior local officials and Shiite representatives, witnesses said by telephone. Interior ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki confirmed that nine people were arrested on Monday following clashes at the Prophet Mohammed’s mosque in the western city, which attracts millions of Muslim pilgrims every year.
■ISRAEL
Arab homes to be torn down
Authorities in Jerusalem said on Tuesday they had no immediate plans to demolish scores of Arab homes in the east of the city, but that they had designated the area for a park. Palestinians said on Monday the Israeli-controlled municipality of Jerusalem was preparing to evict 1,500 Palestinians and demolish 88 homes in East Jerusalem’s Silwan district, to convert it into an open public space. The dispute is part of a wider conflict over Jerusalem. Israel regards all of the city as its capital, including East Jerusalem and adjacent parts of the West Bank annexed since their capture in 1967, a claim not recognized internationally.
■SOMALIA
Peacekeepers attacked again
Islamic insurgents attacked a peacekeeping base in Mogadishu for the second time in a week on Tuesday and clashes between the soldiers and militants left at least 18 people dead throughout the city. Dozens of others, including women and children, were seriously injured in Tuesday’s fighting, which came two days after a suicide bomber attacked an African Union (AU) peacekeeping base, killing 11 Burundian soldiers. An extremist Islamic group called al-Shabab, which claims the AU troops are an occupying force and has threatened them, has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack. Medina Hospital Director Dahir Mohamed Dhere said 78 people injured in the fighting were admitted to his hospital.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Artist found guilty
A London artist who created a huge inflatable sculpture that killed two women after it broke its moorings and flew across a park was found guilty on Tuesday of breaking health and safety rules. Claire Furmedge, 38, from Chester-le-Street, County Durham, and Elizabeth Collings, 68, from Seaham, died when they fell from the artwork Dreamspace in July 2006. At Newcastle Crown Court on Tuesday the creator of the artwork, Maurice Agis, 77, of Bow, east London, was convicted of one charge of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act.
■ARGENTINA
Farmers end strike
Farm unions ended a five-day strike on Tuesday and sat down with government officials for the first time in a nearly year-long struggle over export taxes that farmers said, together with a drought, were choking off their profits. “At last, we can say that a new period of talks has begun, with some partial results in wheat, dairy products, eliminating [export] taxes and beef subsidies. But we still don’t agree on soybean and sunflower seed,” strike leader Eduardo Buzzi said. He and other farm union leaders met for more than four hours with Production Minister Debora Giorgi and other government officials.
■UNITED STATES
Doctor, group win UN award
A doctor from Egypt and a non-governmental organization from Nicaragua have won the 2009 UN Population Award for raising awareness on population issues, the UN Fund for Population said on Tuesday. Mahmoud Fathalla founded the Egyptian Fertility Care Society, one of the first family planning organizations in Egypt, in 1974, and has since been advising his government on issues related to population and health. He is a doctor and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Assiut University in Egypt. Since the 1970s, Nicaragua’s Movimiento Comunal Nicaraguense has been working on issues related to gender equality and health in hundreds of municipalities in the Central American country.
■UNITED STATES
Student wins pancake race
A university student has won the trans-Atlantic pancake race held between a local and British town, breaking the all-time record on Tuesday. Tasha Gallegos, 22, won the American leg of 60th Pancake Day Race with a time of 57.5 seconds, beating the winner of the British leg by more than four seconds and breaking the record set in 2001 by Lisa Spillman of Liberal, who ran the 380m competition in 58.1 seconds. The 60th Pancake Day Race pits frying pan-wielding runners in the US town of Liberal, Kansas, against runners in Olney, England. Legend says that the Olney race started in 1445, when a harried housewife arrived at church still clutching her frying pan with a pancake in it.
■UNITED STATES
Seven shot at Mardi Gras
A Mardi Gras parade erupted into chaos on Fat Tuesday when a series of gunshots struck seven people, including a toddler. The child was not seriously injured and two suspects were in custody, police said. The shootings happened near the Garden District after the last major parade of the celebration, Rex, had ended. A stream of truck floats that follow the parade were passing by when gunfire broke out. “It sounded like a string of fireworks, so I knew it was more than one shooter,” 29-year-old limousine company manager Toni Labat said. Labat said one man dragged himself on the ground screaming for help after being wounded and another man was gasping for air and bleeding from his mouth.
■MEXICO
Truck drivers protest fuel
Hundreds of angry truck drivers, horns blaring, circled the office of the president with their rigs on Tuesday demanding lower diesel fuel prices as a cushion against recession. The demonstration followed a one-day strike on Feb. 16 that brought no fuel policy change from the government, which has frozen gasoline prices for all of this year and which last month reduced a scheduled price increase for diesel fuel.
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