■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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in