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World News Quick Take

■JAPAN

Bigger military mulled

A draft of the new mid-term defense policy guidelines is calling for the reinforcement of military personnel and equipment in the face of growing regional tensions, Kyodo news agency said. The draft said the country must reverse its policy of reducing its defense budgets in light of North Korea’s missile launches and nuclear tests, as well as China’s rise to a major military power. The document urges the government to raise the number of Ground Self-Defense Forces troops by 5,000 to 160,000, Kyodo said. The new National Defense Program Guidelines, covering five years to March 2015, are scheduled to be adopted by the government by the end of the year.



■MALAYSIA

Thief abandons forklift

It was no speedy smash-and-grab when a thief, dressed like a Formula One driver, failed in his attempt to break open a Malaysian cash machine with a forklift, reports said yesterday. Closed-­circuit TV footage caught the helmet-wearing, white jumpsuit-clad thief in the act as he used the forklift to ram the cash machine booth for 10 minutes, district police chief Zainal Rashid Abu Bakar told the Star daily. The cash machine was located at a petrol station which was closed during the early morning robbery attempt, he said. “However, as soon as the alarm went off, the man panicked and left the forklift which was stuck in the panel” of the cash dispenser, Zainal told the daily.



■CHINA

Factory explosion kills 16

At least 16 people died and 43 were injured yesterday in a factory explosion in Anhui Province, a police source and state media said. The explosion occurred at 3:17am in the workshops of a privately owned factory that produces and processes quartz sand in the district of Fengyang, Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities. “At the moment we have 16 dead confirmed,” said a local policeman, who declined to give his name. “It happened in a mining area. We don’t know what caused the blast.” Most of those killed were factory workers, Xinhua said.



■NEW ZEALAND

Swine flu count rises

The country has 258 confirmed cases of swine flu and health authorities say 213 of those had been recorded in the past seven days. Public Health Director Mark Jacobs said in a statement yesterday that most cases have been mild to moderate, but the country would see a big increase in cases in coming months. The tally has risen by 42 since Friday. New Zealand was the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to announce a confirmed case of swine flu in late April. No deaths have been reported, but a 30-year-old woman remained in critical condition in Wellington. Jacobs said the country had another 728 suspected cases.



■INDONESIA

Fugitive businessman caught

The country’s powerful anti-graft body arrested a fugitive businessman in a major corruption case linked to several high-ranking officials, reports said yesterday. Hengky Samuel Daud had been on the run for three years after being named a suspect for his alleged role in getting regional administrations to illegally buy fire engines from his company Istana Sarana Karya, the Jakarta Post newspaper reported. He was arrested at his Jakarta home on Friday night and taken to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for questioning, it said. The involved was immediately detained at the Jakarta police headquarters,” KPK deputy chairman Chandra Hamzah said.



■FRANCE

Seven killed in crash

Seven people, including six employees of an amusement park, were killed when a helicopter crashed in a rural area in eastern France on Saturday night, local authorities said. The accident happened near the small town of Bregnier-Cordon, where people playing bowls alerted authorities after seeing the helicopter go down. “For the moment, there is no explanation. No one can say whether it was a technical issue or to do with the pilot,” Albert Dupuy, a regional official, told France Info radio.



■IRAQ

Hostages’ bodies returned

The bodies of two British hostages kidnapped in 2007 have been handed over to UK officials, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Saturday. He said the government feared three other Britons taken hostage with them were in grave danger. Miliband said in a televised statement that “late last night we received the bodies of two hostages.” Information technology consultant Peter Moore and his four bodyguards were kidnapped on May 29, 2007, by heavily armed men outside the Finance Ministry in Baghdad. Since then the hostages have been seen only on a few videos, and the British government has released little information about efforts to free them.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Tsvangirai booed in London

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was booed and shouted down by exiles during a speech in London on Saturday when he pleaded with them to return home to help rebuild the shattered country. Tsvangirai told a stormy audience of 1,000 people in Southwark Cathedral that “Zimbabweans must come home” — but they said that 85-year-old President Robert Mugabe must quit first. Failing to make himself heard above the boos and chants of “Mugabe must go,” Tsvangirai left the pulpit for two minutes before returning to face questions. He said, “I did not say ‘pack your bags tomorrow,’ I said ‘you should now start thinking about coming home.’”



■GERMANY

Police battle squatters

Police have turned out in force to thwart left-wing groups’ plans to occupy Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport. An alliance named “Squat Tempelhof” urged demonstrators to occupy the fenced-off grounds on Saturday in a campaign to open them to the public. Tempelhof — the hub of the 1948 to 1949 Berlin Airlift — shut for flights last October and the site is now closed. Berlin has a strong radical left-wing scene. In calling Saturday’s protest, organizers cited plans for part of the site to be used for private housing. Police say about 150 people tried to rip down the perimeter fence and threw stones at officers who moved in to stop them. Other groups tried to get through the fence but police posted officers about every 100m.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Thatcher recovering

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher is likely to remain in hospital for several more days following an operation on her broken arm, her son said on Saturday. The frail 83-year-old was taken to a London hospital last Friday after a fall at her nearby home. Following the operation to insert a pin into the upper arm on Friday, Mark Thatcher said his mother would not be released from hospital before Wednesday. After visiting her on Saturday at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, he said it was now likely to be longer before she would be allowed home.



■UNITED STATES

Dali works to go on show

Fifteen drawings Salvador Dali made for a doctor who treated him are going on exhibit for the first time in Buffalo. The University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery plans to display the works of the Spanish surrealist for two months this summer. The university says in a release that the artist gave the late dermatologist Edmund Klein the personalized drawings as payment for treatment over nearly a decade, beginning in 1972. The drawings were made on pages from sketchpads, art books and a paper Klein had written. Some depict angels and bear dedications to the doctor. Klein and his family stored the drawings in a bank vault. His widow, Martha, revealed their existence last summer. She says she wants to sell them.



■UNITED STATES

Ammonia leak kills one

An ammonia leak on Saturday at a poultry processing plant in North Carolina killed one worker and injured four others, authorities said. Sheriff Kenneth Sealey said the leak occurred at the Mountaire Farms plant in Robeson County in southern-central North Carolina, about 26km south of Fayetteville. Sealey identified the worker who died as Clifton Swain, 47. County Emergency Management Director Charles Britt told the Fayetteville Observer that the leak has been contained. The four injured workers, who were not identified, were taken to hospitals. The ammonia leak happened while workers were doing maintenance work on a piece of machinery at the plant, the sheriff’s department said in a news release. Investigators have ruled it was an accident and that no crime was involved. Authorities have said that 30 to 40 people were at the plant when the leak occurred. Sealey said all workers have been accounted for at the plant, which employs 2,500 people.



■BRAZIL

Polio program begins

Health authorities on Saturday started their annual polio vaccination program that this year will immunize 95 percent of the country’s children under age five. The 46 million real (US$24 million) campaign will give anti-polio injections to 14.7 million children, with the second stage of the program to take place on Aug. 22, the health ministry said in a statement. Brazil stamped out polio in the 1980s after repeated vaccination campaigns. “Now, the importance of the vaccine is to keep the country free of the virus that causes this illness. The shots don’t have side-effects,” the coordinator for the ministry’s national immunization program, Maria Arindelita Arruda, said. Poliomyelitis is a serious viral infection that in a minority of cases, particularly in children, can cause nerve damage and paralysis. “The fact that polio is stamped out in Brazil is no reason for complacency,” Arindelita said.



■UNITED STATES

Health care changes popular

The overwhelming majority of Americans support substantial changes to the country’s health care system, including a government-run health insurance option, a new opinion poll found. The survey by the New York Times and CBS News also indicated most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance. Eighty-five percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, according to the poll. In addition, the survey found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan that would compete for customers with private insurers.


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