■TIBET
Pills used for ‘desert rats’
Authorities have scattered 200kg of contraceptive pellets across the Tibetan plateau to control what they describe as a “plague of desert rats” blamed for destroying fragile high-altitude grasslands and accelerating the spread of deserts. But biodiversity experts say the campaign could worsen soil degradation and that poisons used could damage other parts of the plateau’s ecosystem. The drugs were designed to induce abortions and prevent pregnancy in “gerbils,” Xinhua news agency reported. It is possible they were referring to the pika, a small animal related to the rabbit, which has long been the target of government eradication campaigns. Workers began spreading the contraceptive in the Gurbantunggut desert in Xinjiang last May.
■PHILIPPINES
Journalist gets protection
President Gloria Arroyo yesterday ordered police to protect a journalist who has received death threats for linking the military to the murder of a communist insurgent’s daughter. “We must bring political killings to zero, including assassinations of government officials and media personalities,” she said in an address at the national police academy. Her speech came just days after the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists placed the Philippines on a list of countries where media personnel are allegedly murdered with impunity. Elgine Damasco of Radio Mindanao Network in Davao and his colleagues have blamed intelligence operatives from the military for the death threats.
■NEW ZEALAND
Mom charged in plane birth
A 29-year-old Samoan woman who gave birth on a flight to New Zealand was charged on Wednesday with abandoning her baby girl in an aircraft toilet. She faces a maximum seven-year prison sentence for abandoning the baby, who is now in custody of the child welfare department. The woman underwent surgery at Middlemore Hospital after what police said was a complicated birth on board the plane as it arrived in Auckland from Apia, the capital of Samoa, last Thursday. The baby was reportedly found by cleaners in the plane’s toilet rubbish can. The woman was identified when immigration authorities noticed her bleeding.
■NEW ZEALAND
Teen jailed for murder
A 15-year-old teenager was jailed for life yesterday for beating a Scottish tourist to death with a baseball bat. Jahche Broughton was just 14 when he attacked Karen Aim in Taupo, North Island, on Jan. 17 last year. Broughton, who pleaded guilty to murder in a court in Rotorua, was sentenced to remain in jail for 12-and-a-half years before he will be eligible for parole for the killing of the 27-year-old backpacker. He was also sentenced to six years for injuring a 17-year-old woman with intent to cause grievous bodily harm — an attack that took place just two weeks before Aim’s murder.
■JAPAN
Poll is bad news for Ozawa
Two out of three voters want opposition Democratic Party chief Ichiro Ozawa to resign over a funding scandal that is clouding his party’s prospects in this year’s general election, a Kyodo news survey showed on Wednesday. Support for unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso, however, rose almost eight points to 23.7 percent, but almost two-thirds of voters were still dissatisfied with him. Ozawa said on Tuesday, after a close aide was charged with accepting illegal corporate donations, that he would stay in his post.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Wacky surnames dying out
The number of people with surnames like Cockshott, Balls, Death and Shufflebottom — likely the source of schoolroom laughter — has declined by up to 75 percent in the last century. A study found the number of people with the name Cock shrank to 785 last year from 3,211 in 1881, those called Balls fell to 1,299 from 2,904 and the number of Deaths were reduced to 605 from 1,133.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police probe ‘terror’ charity
Regulators said they were probing allegations that a local charity was linked to a huge cache of weapons and a bomb-making factory found in an Islamic school in Bangladesh. “The matter is of serious concern to us, and we are taking this action given the gravity of the matter, the public interest and the need to protect charity work and funds,” said Andrew Hind, head of the Charity Fund that regulates charities in England and Wales. Bangladeshi police on Tuesday raided an Islamic seminary or madrasah on the remote island of Bhola in the south of the country, uncovering firearms, bullets and explosive devices. The recently-opened madrasah was owned by the UK-based Green Crescent charity, police said.
■GERMANY
Leaky ceiling reveals pot
A leaky ceiling has directed Berlin police to a full-scale indoor cannabis plantation in a three-room apartment. Police said they found some 780 blossoming cannabis plants, along with more than 1,000 seedlings and more than 6kg of marijuana, in the second-floor apartment in the capital on Sunday. They said on Wednesday that they were called to the building because water was dripping through the ceilings of rooms underneath the apartment. All three rooms of the apartment had been converted for growing cannabis — complete with ventilators, lamps and a watering system that appeared to be the cause of the leak. A police statement said that the tenant — a 34-year-old woman — and a male acquaintance were under investigation.
■UNITED STATES
Saberi parents plan Iran trip
The father of imprisoned journalist Roxana Saberi said he and his wife were making plans to go to Iran to see her in a couple of days. “I’m hoping if she sees us, it will lift her spirits,” Reza Saberi said on Wednesday. The Iranian government has said Roxana Saberi was imprisoned for doing reporting work in the country after her press credentials expired. Her parents found out about her arrest in a brief phone call from her on Feb. 10. Saberi, who grew up in Fargo, is a dual citizen of the US and Iran who has reported for a number of international news organizations. Her father said he worried his daughter may go on a hunger strike. He said she told him a prosecutor in Iran had told her she would remain in detention for months or even years.
■FRANCE
Workers release 3M boss
A 3M industrial conglomerate manager was released yesterday after being held for more than a day by angry workers trying to force their US employer to improve their redundancy package. Following hours of talks between representatives of labor unions, 3M-Sante and 3M France, the laboratory manager of the company’s factory in Pithiviers, 85km south of Paris, left the office where he had been held since Tuesday afternoon. The factory, which produces pharmaceutical products, employs 235 people but 110 of these jobs are to be shed this year because of falling orders and another 40 are to be shifted to another plant.
■UNITED STATES
Test flight ends in tragedy
The pilot of an F-22A fighter jet was killed when it crashed in California while on a test flight, news reports said. An Air Force spokeswoman said the crash took place about 55km northwest of Edwards Air Force Base. The F-22 Raptor is one of the most sophisticated fighter jets in the world and the crash was the first for this model since it went into full production, the spokeswoman said. The F-22 has been the focus of speculation about US President Barack Obama’s plans to cut spending on costly weapons systems. At US$140 million each, the F-22 is the Air Force’s most expensive fighter.
■UNITED STATES
EPA nominee withdraws
US President Barack Obama’s nominee for the No. 2 position at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jon Cannon, removed himself from consideration on Wednesday. Cannon said he was removing his name from consideration to be EPA deputy administrator because of scrutiny of America’s Clean Water Foundation, where he once served on the board of directors. “While my service on the board of that now-dissolved organization is not the subject of the scrutiny, I believe the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation are too great to delay confirmation for this position, and I do not wish to present any distraction to the agency,” Cannon said in a statement released by the EPA. The EPA Inspector General’s Office found in 2007 that the Clean Water foundation mismanaged more than US$25 million in EPA grants, the Washington Post reported.
■UNITED STATES
Stunt just like old times
Twenty-two students at St. Mary’s College of California have done something their predecessors famously did 50 years ago: cram into a phone booth. Teams competed to fit as many bodies as possible into a phone booth on the campus green on Wednesday, a half-century after Life magazine published a now-famous photograph of 22 St. Mary’s students stuffed into a phone booth, a popular college stunt in the 1950s.
■UNITED STATES
Man ‘kept mom in freezer’
A man has been accused of stashing his 98-year-old mother’s dead body in a freezer so he could keep cashing her Social Security checks. State police say they discovered Herta Auslander’s body in a freezer chest in October after receiving a tip she had died more than a year earlier. An autopsy concluded she died of natural causes. Police say Roland Auslander was arrested on Wednesday following a stakeout at his home in Cooks Falls northwest of New York City. They say he’s charged with grand larceny, unlawful disposal of human remains and forgery for faking his mother’s signature.
■UNITED STATES
Embargo violator jailed
A judge sentenced a woman to six years in prison on Wednesday for breaking a US trade embargo with Iraq by selling telecommunications equipment before the war in 2003. Dawn Hanna, who netted US$1.1 million, was motivated by greed and repeatedly ignored warnings from potential partners about doing business with Iraq, said US District Judge Marianne Battani. The prosecutor said Hanna lied to US and British authorities and committed perjury during the trial when she claimed the equipment was destined for Turkey. The equipment had “encryption technology,” which meant it could be used for civilian and military purposes, the government said. Hanna was in charge of international sales at Technology Integration Group Services of Rochester.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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