■INDONESIA
Buddha Bar drops its name
The first Asian branch of the chic Paris-based Buddha Bar has dropped its name amid complaints by Indonesian Buddhists that it denigrated their religion, the management said on Tuesday. The Jakarta franchise of the bar-cum-restaurant, opened in a historic colonial-era building last year, said in a statement it dropped its name “out of respect” for the country’s religion minister and did not mean to offend Buddhists. “There has been no intention to hurt the feelings of Buddhists in Indonesia. Taking down the Buddha Bar is as a form of respect to Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni,” manager Henry Marheroso said in the statement. The bar has changed its name to Bataviasche Kunstkring, the original Dutch name of the building, a former immigration office, it said. Buddhist activists said the bar had been forced to drop the name after the government’s intellectual property agency revoked its right to the local Buddha Bar trademark.
■NEW ZEALAND
Motel bans a whole town
The Australian owner of a motel and his Scottish “Basil Fawlty” manager have banned an entire town, including its member of parliament. Steve Donnelly, owner of the Supreme Motor Lodge in the North Island town of Palmerston North, said he became fed up with the rowdy behavior of sports teams from Wainuiomata, a town near the capital Wellington. So he and manager Malcolm Glen — who according the motel’s own Web site is better known as “Basil Fawlty” after the highly strung John Cleese TV character — banned the whole town of 17,000 people. When Wainuiomata’s member of parliament and former cabinet minister Trevor Mallard tested the ban yesterday by trying to book in, Glen gave him his marching orders. “As a Scotsman I don’t have a vote, it doesn’t matter to me, you’re banned,” Glen told the lawmaker.
■NEW ZEALAND
Islands’ names are not legal
Experts searching for alternative Maori names for New Zealand’s two main islands were startled to find that their commonly used English names — North Island and South Island — were never made legal, officials said on Tuesday. To repair the 200-year-old oversight, the country’s Geographic Board, which assigns and approves names for all New Zealand places, said it would take steps to legally name the two South Pacific islands that make up more than 95 percent of the country’s land mass. The board had spent several years exploring a process for formally recognizing alternative Maori names for each island when it noticed that the islands had never been given official names, board chairman Don Grant said. “We therefore want to formalize alternative Maori names and, at the same time, make the naming of ... North and South Islands official,” Grant said.
■AUSTRALIA
Recession good for gamblers
Gamblers who tipped that the government was wrong and that Australia would fall into recession this year were rewarded with big payouts yesterday from Internet betting agency Centrebet. Centrebet financial analyst Neil Evans said the smart money had always been on the economy contracting in two consecutive quarters and that astute gamblers had always discounted claims that billion-dollar stimulus packages would keep the economy growing. This week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd conceded he was wrong and that the economy would indeed go backwards this year.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Nazi-bred cows find new life
A herd of “super cows,” descended from animals bred in Nazi Germany, is making an impressive sight on a farm in southwest England. The animals, Heck cattle, were bred by the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, two zoologists who wanted to recreate the auroch. An extinct European wild ox, the auroch features as an important beast in Teutonic mythology. Only a few Heck cattle survived after World War II, but Derek Gow, a farmer and conservation consultant, has shipped 13 bulls and cows from Belgium to the farm in Devon, where they have joined a growing collection of beavers, polecats and water voles. Gow believes Heck cattle — which, he says, “look prehistoric” — could one day have an important conservation role, taking the place of aurochs in the environment. “They are an important part of the ecosystem because each cow produces its own weight in dung a year. That is excellent for the whole food chain, from dung beetles upwards,” Gow said.
■SOUTH AFRICA
ANC angry over chicken ad
The Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC) has vowed “militant action” against Nando’s, the chicken restaurant chain, for satirizing its controversial leader, Julius Malema, in TV and radio advertisements. Nando’s, known for its spicy “peri-peri” chicken, has a long history of poking fun at politicians through its ads. The baby-faced, shaven-headed Malema, 28, has been a favorite target of satirists for his boorish outbursts in defense of controversial ANC leader Jacob Zuma. In the Nando’s ad, a puppet of Malema is pressed by a news presenter about his demands for “change” within the ANC. Malema replies: “We will get the change [money] we need from Nando’s.” The league said the ad was a “racist” attempt to portray political leaders as “cartoons” and threatened to “mobilize” the public against Nando’s. A Nando’s marketing official was quoted in media reports as saying the ad was aimed at providing a bit of comic relief during election time.
■ITALY
Three kids left in pizzeria
Police were searching on Tuesday for a German woman and her companion who abandoned her three young children after dining late in a pizzeria and then going out to smoke a cigarette. Police official Lorenzo Mediano said in a telephone interview from the mountainous Aosta region in northwest Italy that, judging by their clothes, the couple and the children appeared to be poor and the youngsters looked “neglected,” although they were in good health. Pizzeria owner Carmelo Casella told state TV in Aosta that, after they ate at his restaurant on Sunday night, the couple went outside to smoke and never came back. After 10 minutes, the pizzeria’s staff went outside to see what had happened but the couple had vanished. The children are a baby of about six months, a toddler of about two years, and a child of about six.
■UNITED STATES
Missing monkey captured
He spent six weeks on the lam from the circus, but Reggie the spider monkey has been captured with the help of junk food. Reggie had performed for the Liebel Family Circus for years, but he escaped on March 13 when the troupe did a show at a central Florida flea market. He was spotted a few weeks ago in a nearby neighborhood, but a dog frightened him away before residents could attract him with some food. On Monday, Reggie was seen hanging from a tree at a mobile home park. Neighbors fed him soda and potato chips until circus owner Tom Liebel came to grab him.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing