■JAPAN
No March summit with PRC
Prime Minister Taro Aso will not visit China this month, Japanese government officials said yesterday, following earlier reports that Tokyo and Beijing were trying to schedule a summit this month. “We’ve been coordinating with China to hold the meeting as soon as possible, but we now recognize that realizing it within March is difficult,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters. No firm dates had been announced by either government, but Japanese officials had told reporters both sides were trying to schedule Aso’s meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) for late this month.
■PHILIPPINES
Pilot averts crash
A plane with 80 passengers aboard was seconds away from a crash when a man teaching his girlfriend to drive sped across the runway as the aircraft landed, newspapers reported yesterday. The Cebu Pacific plane briefly touched down at Legazpi airport on Saturday but took off again as the van being driven by the couple crossed the runway, the Philippine Star said. The man is the son of a local aviation official, who has been ordered suspended from duty. “It could have been a disaster if not for the presence of mind of a veteran pilot,” Legazpi Mayor Noel Rosal told the newspaper.
■MALAYSIA
Drugs found in CPUs
Customs police foiled an attempt to smuggle in 4 million ringgit (US$1.1 million) worth of the psychotropic drug nimetazepam, better known as Eramin 5, at the cargo area of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, news reports said yesterday. Customs officers had become suspicious when a shipment of 10 computer central processing units, or CPUs, arrived from Taiwan weighing 148kg, when the weight of a single unit is normally less than 5kg, department director general Mohamed Khalid Yusof said. “The officers then opened the package and found about 260,000 Eramin-5 pills stashed inside the CPU shells, which had already been emptied of all electronics,” Mohamed Khalid was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times daily.
■PAKISTAN
Blast kills 14: police
The death toll from a suicide bombing in the city of Rawalpindi has risen to 14, with another 18 people wounded, police said yesterday, regional police commander Nasir Durrani said, including the suicide bomber in the death toll. Officials said the bomber was probably deployed to attack a mass protest, which had been scheduled in Rawalpindi and Islamabad on Monday, but was called off after the government vowed to reinstate the country’s top judge.
■FINLAND
Same-sex soul-searching
Archbishop Jukka Parma of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on Monday called for “calm discussion” between supporters and opponents of same-sex unions and its consequences for the Church. Parma’s remarks were made after he accepted a 200-page report on the charged subject that has been drafted by a working group appointed by the bishops’ conference. In 2002 the country made same-sex unions legal. However, the Church has yet to decide on guidelines concerning requests for blessings of same-sex unions. At the end of 2007, some 1,080 couples had registered same-sex partnerships.
■EUROPE
Satellite launch postponed
The European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday postponed the launch of its most sophisticated Earth observation satellites to date because of a technical glitch at a Russian cosmodrome, the ESA spokesman said. “The doors of the launch service tower did not open,” Franco Bonacina said by telephone. He said the cause of the fault had yet to be established. “The two big doors installed at the tower should have opened to allow the tower to retrieve and expose the launcher to free air to be launched,” Bonacina said.
■SPAIN
Vultures are in trouble
Vultures are hungry, even starving — and the regional government in Madrid plans to do something about it. EU laws aimed at halting the spread of mad cow disease require the countryside to be kept clear of dead livestock even if they died of natural causes. But Juan Carlos Atienza of the Spanish Ornithological Organization says the lack of animal corpses since the law was introduced in Spain in 2002 has hit certain vultures very hard. Esperanza Aguirre, president of Madrid’s regional government, said on Monday the capital aims to ease the vultures’ hunger by allowing some dead animals to remain.
■NIGERIA
Prankster gets 19 years
An undergraduate has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for obtaining US$47,000 from an Australian woman by convincing her over the Internet that he was 57 years old, white and madly in love with her. Lawal Adekunle Nurudeen met his victim on the Internet in 2007 and convinced her that he was a British widower called Benson Lawson. He said he was an engineer working in Lagos whose wife and only child had been killed in a car accident. “The victim, a 56-year-old woman from Australia, told the convict that she wanted a husband and all the men she had met always disappointed her,” said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the anti-corruption police.
■SIERRA LEONE
Parties clash, women raped
Six women were raped on Monday in clashes between the two largest political parties, said officials. The clashes were set off on Friday, when members of the opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party were accused of throwing stones and broken bottles a parade led by the mayor of the ruling All People’s Congress. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd on Friday and again on Monday, as thousands of ruling party supporters converged on the opposition party’s headquarters, trapping party members on the roof of the four-story building. An official at a downtown hospital who asked not to be named because he is not allowed to speak to the press said six women who were raped during the riot were treated there and at least 14 were treated for other injuries.
■TURKS AND CAICOS
Britain to take over
Britain plans to dissolve the Cabinet and legislature of the territory for two years following a corruption inquiry that found “clear signs of political amorality and immaturity,” Governor Gordon Wetherell said on Monday. He said an order has been drafted to suspend parts of the British territory’s Constitution and transfer the authority of ministers to him. The order was to be submitted to the queen for approval today before going to the British parliament next Wednesday. Prime Minister Michael Misick blasted the order on Monday night and called for political parties to put aside their differences and oppose “the strong arm of modern-day colonialism.”
■CANADA
Actress critically injured
British actress Natasha Richardson was in critical condition in a Montreal hospital after being severely injured in a skiing accident in Quebec, two Web sites reported yesterday. People.com and IrishCentral.com reported that the Tony award-winning actress and wife of actor Liam Neeson suffered a head injury on Monday. Richardson, 45, is the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave.
■UNITED STATES
Astronauts lose bike
Discovery astronauts risk becoming couch potatoes after the spacecraft’s exercise equipment went on the fritz. NASA officials said on Monday that the “ergometer” — a stationary bike-like contraption specially designed for use in zero gravity — was not functioning properly. This means astronauts will have to improvise to stay in shape during the 13-day mission. The deleterious effects of microgravity on the body makes exercise vitally important in helping astronauts maintain bone density and muscle mass.
■UNITED STATES
Shooter planned arson
Florida police say a man who fatally shot his estranged wife, his stepdaughter and her boyfriend and another person at a weekend party also tried to blow up his neighborhood by placing gas cans and propane tanks around his apartment before setting it a fire. But the tanks never exploded. Investigators say 48-year-old Guillermo Lopez drove to his apartment after the early Sunday shooting, then lit it and his truck on fire. He then fatally shot himself.
■BRAZIL
Lula wants tariff lifted
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday implored US businessmen to help convince Washington to lift an import tariff of US$0.53 for every 3.7 liters it places on his country’s ethanol fuel. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal-sponsored investor forum on Monday, Silva defended the gasoline alternative as a cheap and easy way to end dependence on foreign oil and help reduce global poverty. US farmers make ethanol from corn but Brazil makes ethanol from sugar in a process that is much more efficient and costs less.
■UNITED STATES
Power lines disorienting
Researchers who reported last year that most cows and deer tend to orient themselves in a north-south alignment have now found that high voltage power lines can disorient the animals. When the power lines run east-west, that is the way grazing cattle tend to line up, researchers led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany reported in yesterday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cows and deer grazing under northeast-southwest or northwest-southeast power lines faced in random directions, they found.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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