■CHINA
Tainted baby powder recalled
The state quality watchdog said baby skin powder manufactured by German housekeeping and healthcare products maker MAPA has been removed from shelves for allegedly containing asbestos. Authorities sealed up 48 cans of the baby powder in Suzhou Debao Baby Supplies Co Ltd, the brand’s general agent, in an inspection on Saturday, the General Administration of Inspection and Quarantine said. MAPA, part of French rubber and plastics conglomerate Hutchinson Worldwide, markets its baby care products under the NUK brand.
■INDONESIA
Vote-buying probe launched
The government has launched an investigation into allegations of vote-buying by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s youngest son ahead of national elections this week, an official said yesterday. Electoral authorities in East Java Province were probing allegations Edhie Baskoro, a candidate for Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, handed out money to voters at a rally, local official Arif Supriadi said. Democratic Party Secretary-General Marzuki Ali said Baskoro was not involved in the handing out of money, reportedly 10,000 rupiah (US$0.88), at the rally in East Java’s Ponorogo district. The country heads to the polls on Thursday to choose between thousands of candidates from 38 parties in a legislative vote that will help decide the field of contenders for presidential elections later in the year.
■AUSTRALIA
Drunk mother arrested
A mother allegedly breastfeeding her baby while driving was found to be too drunk to take a breathalizer test after almost crashing into a police car, police said yesterday. The 19-year-old woman was arrested in the central desert town of Alice Springs on Saturday night after she drove her station wagon from a hotel car park into the path of a patrol car. Police pulled her over and allegedly found her breastfeeding her infant son at the wheel, the national AAP news agency reported. Regional police Superintendent Jamie Chalker said he was horrified by the reported incident. The woman was granted bail and will appear in court later this month to face several charges.
■NEPAL
Sherpa starts record climb
A Sherpa guide who holds the record for most climbs up Mount Everest set off yesterday on a new expedition to scale the world’s highest mountain for a 19th time. Appa, who like most Sherpas goes only by one name, flew out of the capital, Kathmandu, with his team yesterday for the small airstrip at Lukla, from where they will trek to Everest’s base camp and spend a few days acclimatizing and preparing for their summit bid in May. He first climbed the 8,850m summit in 1989 and has done so almost every year since. His closest rival is fellow Sherpa guide Chhewang Nima, who has made 15 trips.
■AFGHANISTAN
Chancellor visits troops
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Kabul yesterday to visit German troops there, a government spokesman said. Germany has about 3,800 troops in the country and has a parliamentary mandate to send a total of 4,500 as part of the NATO mission. Merkel, who faces an election in six months time, is reluctant to increase the number of combat troops it sends to the mission, which is unpopular among Germans. She has also resisted pressure from allies to send its soldiers to the more dangerous southern areas of the country, where allied forces are battling a Taliban insurgency.
■ITALY
Afghan children rescued
Police have discovered 24 Afghan children living in filthy conditions in the sewer system under a Rome railway station, local media reported on Saturday. The children, ranging in age from 10 to 15, were unaccompanied and some were in poor physical condition, the reports said. They slept under cartons or dirty blankets in the hiding place not far from the Colosseum, the daily La Repubblica reported. Railway police discovered the children along with 98 other people, including other Afghans, the report said, adding that they were being cared for by the city’s social services.
■SOMALIA
Ships hijacked off Somalia
A German-flagged cargo ship and a French-flagged yacht were hijacked over the weekend. Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Program, did not name the vessel but said it had a crew of 24, according to the Spiegel Online Web site in Germany. Described in one news report as a container vessel, the ship was seized about 750km off the southern Somali port of Kismayo, between the Seychelles and Kenya, Spiegel Online reported. Meanwhile, Ecoterra International, an organization monitoring piracy in the region, said yesterday that the French yacht with four crew members was attacked on Saturday “around 640 kilometers off Ras Hafun in northeast Somalia.” There was no immediate confirmation from the French naval forces engaged in anti-piracy operations in the area but Ecoterra said brief satellite phone contact was made with the ship on Sunday.
■IRAQ
Blasts kill 10 people
Four car bombs exploded across the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing 10 people and wounding dozens, police said. A car bomb parked in a busy central Baghdad street next to a group of casual laborers queuing for work killed five people and wounded 15, police said. Two others were parked in two popular markets. One in Husseiniya, on Baghdad’s northern outskirts, killed two people and wounded eight. Another in the eastern Sadr City slum killed one person and injured at least five. A fourth bomb in east Baghdad targeting the convoy of an interior ministry official killed two bystanders.
■MOLDOVA
Communists lead vote
Moldova’s ruling Communists, led by President Vladimir Voronin, won 50 percent in a parliamentary election, preliminary official results, with just more than 91 percent of votes counted, showed. The new parliament will vote in a president to replace Voronin, the only Communist leader in Europe. In power since 2001, he cannot stand for a third consecutive term. The results posted on the Central Election Commission’s Web site did not make clear whether the Communists could gain the 61 seats out of 101 in the assembly needed to choose their own candidate.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Rubber band fine proposed
Postmen should face on-the-spot fines for dropping the red rubber bands they use to bundle letters, a litter watchdog said yesterday. Keep Britain Tidy said Royal Mail staff should not be above the law and be subject to the same £80 (US$120) spot fine for littering as the public. “Elastic bands may not be as visually offensive as dog dirt or half-eaten pizza, but they are most definitely litter,” the charity’s Dickie Felton said. “Is it really too much to ask them to put the rubber bands in their pocket as they do their daily rounds?”
■UNITED STATES
Knowledge of Islam lacking
More than half of Americans acknowledge having a poor understanding of Islam but support President Barack Obama’s plan to seek improved relations with the Muslim world, according to an opinion poll released on Sunday. The survey by the Washington Post and ABC News showed that 55 percent of those polled said they lacked a good understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam. Forty-eight percent said they had an unfavorable view of Islam, while nearly three in 10, or 29 percent, said they saw mainstream Islam as advocating violence against non-Muslims. At the same time, 58 percent said Islam was a peaceful religion, according to the poll. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said Obama would handle this diplomacy “about right.”
■UNITED STATES
Photographer Morabito dies
Photographer Rocco Morabito, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his shot of a utility worker saving the life of a fellow lineman, died on Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida. He was 88. His dramatic photograph, tagged “Kiss of Life” by a Jacksonville Journal copy editor, appeared in newspapers around the world in 1967. The photo showed an electrical lineman who had come into contact with a 4,160-volt line being resuscitated by a fellow lineman as he dangled from the top of the pole. His Pulitzer Prize was for Spot News Photography.
■UNITED STATES
Texas hit by wildfires
Firefighters from the Texas-Oklahoma border to the Gulf Coast struggled on Sunday to contain wildfires that have destroyed homes, killed cattle and charred thousands of hectares. The largest of those fires, a 6,070 hectare blaze near the Texas town of Wheeler, destroyed eight homes and 26 outbuildings, including barns and garages. An unknown number of cattle were killed, the Texas Forest Service said. Four houses, two businesses and six outbuildings were destroyed in a fire in Aransas County on the Gulf Coast on Sunday afternoon.
■UNITED STATES
Dead whale found on beach
A dead gray whale calf has washed up on a Southern California beach. Marine biologist Alisa Schulman-Janiger said the three-month-old male calf was estimated to have been dead for about 10 days when it washed ashore on Sunday off Orange County. The 7.62m long whale has three deep parallel cuts in its side, indicating it was hit by a ship propeller. Further testing will determine whether the injuries occurred before or after death.
■MEXICO
Worshippers protest policy
About 200 worshippers marched on Sunday to protest the government’s destruction of “Death Saint” shrines, saying the country’s fight against drug cartels had veered into religious persecution. “We are believers, not criminals,” the protesters chanted as they marched to the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown. At shrines, chapels and small churches across the country, tens of thousands of people worship the Death Saint, which is often depicted as a skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper. In crime-ridden neighborhoods, people of all walks of life believe the saint protects against violent death. But it is popular with drug traffickers, too. Last month, army troops accompanied workers who used back hoes to topple more than 30 shrines in the city of Nuevo Laredo. Many were elaborate, one-story, marble-clad constructions with electric lighting and statues of the skeletal Death Saint.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of