■CHINA
Tourists snub France
Chinese tourists are avoiding France because of President Nicolas Sarkozy and his country’s attitude toward Tibet, a senior Chinese tourism official said on the weekend. “Chinese tourism to France has reduced a lot because they [Chinese tourists] don’t like what Sarkozy did before the Olympics and afterwards,” Chamber of Tourism vice president Ji Xiao Dong said on the sidelines of a global tourism conference in Brazil. Ji said he was referring to pro-Tibet protests in France in the lead-up to the Olympic Games last year and to talks last December in Poland between Sarkozy and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
■CHINA
Third swine flu case found
An 18-year-old student in Beijing who recently returned from a US university has swine flu, the country’s third confirmed case, the Health Ministry said. The woman, a native of Beijing identified only by her surname, Liu, arrived in the city May 11 on a Continental Airlines flight and went to a hospital three days later with a fever, headache, cough, sore muscles and other symptoms, the ministry said late on Saturday. The hospital suspected Liu had swine flu and transferred her to the Beijing’s infectious diseases hospital late last week, the ministry said. Lab tests by the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the diagnosis on Saturday.
■HONG KONG
Acid attack injures 30
Thirty people were injured in one of the territory’s busiest shopping districts when two bottles of acid were hurled down a street, a police spokesman said yesterday. The bottles were tossed into a crowd on Saturday in Mongkok district in Sai Yeung Choi street — the same street where 46 people were injured in a similar attack in December. The injured — mostly young people who suffered burns to their faces, limbs and shoulders — were admitted to hospital. All had been released by yesterday except a 16-year-old girl, a government spokeswoman said. Police said they had not ruled out the possibility that the same person or people carried out both attacks.
■AUSTRALIA
Tall people earn more
The taller you are, the more you earn, but being fat doesn’t affect your pay, researchers said yesterday. Being 5cm above average can increase a worker’s pay by an average of 1.5 percent, Andrew Leigh from the Australian National University and Michael Kortt from Sydney University found. “We see this effect both for men and women, but it’s strongest for men,” Leigh said. There was no obvious explanation for the effect of height on earnings, they said of the study that found no correlation between weight and wages. “This is in contrast with previous studies that used older data from the United States and Germany and found that people with higher BMI [body mass index] scores earned lower wages,” Leigh said.
■VIETNAM
Six killed by lightning
Lightning killed six farmers harvesting their rice paddy fields, police said yesterday. The lightning on Saturday also injured 10 others in three different communes in central Nghe An Province, a policeman in Yen Thanh district said. “Rain was not heavy when the accident happened,” he said, refusing to be named. The victims, aged between 16 and 53, all died instantly, officials said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
McCanns to sue former cop
The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann said on Saturday they will sue the former Portuguese police officer who handled the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance. Kate and Gerry McCann are to take action for defamation over comments made in the media by Goncalo Amaral. In a statement, the McCanns said: “We, together with our three children Madeleine, Sean and Amelie, are taking this legal action against Goncalo Amaral over his entirely unfounded and grossly defamatory claims — made in all types of media, both within Portugal and beyond — that Madeleine is not only dead, but that we, her parents, were somehow involved in concealing her body.” Portuguese police named Kate and Gerry McCann as “arguidos,” or formal suspects, in their daughter’s disappearance in September 2007, but prosecutors announced last July that they were no longer suspects.
■IRAQ
Two police officers arrested
Security forces have arrested two police officers on charges of plotting attacks that killed 28 people, a newspaper report quoting a senior Interior Ministry official said yesterday. The first officer was assigned to protect “vital installations” by the Ministry of Commerce, General Ahmed Abu Raghif, director of home affairs and security in the Interior Ministry, told Baghdad’s al-Sabbah newspaper. The officer “turned out to be the so-called ‘Emir’ of the Islamic Army in Iraq,” a primarily Sunni militant group, Abu Raghif said. A second officer, assigned to protect the Ministry of Industry, was also arrested, the general said. The two are accused of helping to plan and execute attacks that killed 28 people.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Padel wins bitter election
Ruth Padel became the first ever woman Professor of Poetry at Oxford University after beating an Indian poet in an election on Saturday that ended an often bitter contest. Padel, a distant relative of Charles Darwin, was elected with 297 votes cast by graduates and academic staff of the prestigious university. Her fellow nominee, Indian poet Arvind Mehrotra, received 129 votes. Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott pulled out of the race on Tuesday, reportedly amid allegations of sexual harassment dating back to the early 1980s. Walcott told a newspaper he did not want to be part of the race “if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination.”
■IRAN
Three hanged in prison
Three men convicted of murder and drug trafficking have been hanged in a prison in the central city of Isfahan, the Etemad newspaper reported yesterday. The murderer, identified only by his first name Mahmoud, was convicted of killing a man a year ago and hanged on Saturday, the report said. Ali Reza and another unidentified man were hanged after they were found guilty of drug trafficking two years ago, the report added.
■EGYPT
Police find weapons cache
Police yesterday found half a tonne of explosives and a weapons cache near the border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a security official said. “Police found around 500kg of TNT explosives in Sheikh Zweid town in north Sinai,” the official said. Security forces also discovered a “hideout stashed with weapons, including large amounts of rockets and mines from which smugglers extract the explosive material which is then smuggled to Gaza,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Teen eats evidence
Police say a North Carolina teen who was thwarted as he tried to rob a store with a banana ate it before they could arrive. Winston-Salem authorities say 17-year-old John Szwalla held the banana under his shirt when he entered the store on Thursday, saying he had a gun and demanded money, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. Owner Bobby Ray Mabe says he and a customer jumped Szwalla, holding him until deputies arrived. While they waited, Mabe says the teen ate the banana. Mabe says deputies took pictures of the banana peel. Szwalla faces a charge of attempted armed robbery.
■PERU
Insurgency call recinded
Indigenous groups protesting laws opening the Amazon to oil and natural resource development withdrew their call for an insurgency against the government on Saturday, but vowed to press ahead with their protests. Indian leader Alberto Pizango said the government misinterpreted the use of the term insurgency in the declaration by his group — the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of Peru’s Jungle — on Friday, and “for that reason we are withdrawing it … But the mobilization of the Amazon people will continue within the rule of law.” The government had warned that anyone participating in an uprising could be charged with sedition. On Saturday, it authorized the armed forces to support police in quelling protests and guaranteeing services in five Amazon provinces.
■UNITED STATES
Hospital mulls windowpane
A Catholic hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, is trying to figure out what to do with a window in which some Catholics claim to see an image of the Virgin Mary. Hundreds of people gathered to view the second-story office window at Mercy Medical Center last October. They wept and prayed. The hospital removed the window after the crush of visitors caused traffic problems. It’s storing the window at a secret location. Hospital spokesman Mark Fulco told the Republican newspaper he’s waiting for a report from experts to determine if the window is worthy of veneration. Engineers say the image appeared when a failed rubber seal allowed mineral deposits between panes of glass.
■UNITED STATES
Boy’s death still a mystery
A preliminary autopsy failed to determine the cause of death of a young boy whose body was found buried in sand in a public playground in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “There were no obvious signs or cause of death,” police spokesman John Walsh said on Saturday after receiving the autopsy result. Blood and toxicology tests were still pending, as were other advanced techniques that could yield clues as to how the unidentified boy died. It wasn’t clear when they would be complete. The body of the three-to-five-year-old boy was discovered on Friday by a woman who had taken her children to the city’s Alvarado Park and spotted a shoe sticking out of the sand.
■MEXICO
Two more flu deaths cited
The government says tests have confirmed two more deaths from swine flu, bringing the nation’s toll to 68. The Health Department says one person died on Tuesday in Baja California state and the other died in Mexico City on May 2. The department says tests confirmed 207 more cases for a total of 3,102, including the deaths. The numbers jumped because officials were able to process more backlogged cases.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not