■AFGHANISTAN
NATO soldier killed
One NATO soldier and several insurgents have been killed in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan, the US military said yesterday, as Taliban-linked violence spirals weeks before elections. Troops with the coalition International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) came under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades as they tried to search a house on Friday in the east of the country, the military said. “It was during this exchange that one ISAF soldier was killed,” the statement released early yesterday said, without revealing the nationality of the dead soldier or the exact location of the clash.
■PAPUA NEW GUINEA
6.2 quake strikes offshore
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 struck off Papua New Guinea’s island of Bougainville yesterday, but there were no immediate reports of damage, seismologists said. The tremor, which struck at 11:42am, was about 80km west of Arawa city at a depth of 65km, according to the US Geological Survey.
■JAPAN
Floods, landslides kill four
At least four people died and five were reported missing after a new spell of torrential rain unleashed floods and landslides in Japan overnight, police said yesterday. The weekend tragedy came after a series of landslides and floods earlier this week killed 15 people. A 73-year-old man was found dead after a mudslide struck his home late on Friday in Fukuoka prefecture, located in Kyushu, a police official said. A 54-year-old woman was found dead after her car was swept into an irrigation channel, while a 60-year-old man died after falling in a street ditch, the Fukuoka police said. A 67-year-old man also died in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, local police said.
■CHINA
CCTV starts Arabic channel
Beijing launched an international Arabic-language TV channel yesterday as part of an ambitious program to promote the country’s views abroad. State-run CCTV said the new service would broadcast news, entertainment and education programs 24 hours a day to a potential audience of about 300 million people in 22 countries. CCTV vice president Zhang Changming (張長明) said in a statement the channel “would serve as an important bridge to strengthen communication and understanding between China and the Arab countries.” The network, which already broadcasts in English, French and Spanish, also has plans for a Russian-language service.
■CHINA
Rockfall kills three
Three people were killed and 12 injured yesterday when a rockfall hit a bridge in Wenchuan, the epicenter of the devastating earthquake last year, state media reported. The rocks fell from a mountain on to the Chediguan bridge, sending vehicles plunging into the Minjiang River, the Xinhua news agency said, quoting a local official. The bridge played an important role in the reconstruction of Wenchuan and reopened in May, one year after the catastrophe which left 87,000 dead or missing in Sichuan Province. More than 10,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day, Xinhua said. In related news, At least four people were killed and 50 missing after a landslide on Thursday in Kangding, Sichuan.
■NORTH KOREA
Beat the heat with dog meat
The government is promoting the virtue of dog meat as a way to beat the summer heat and says customers are packing Pyongyang restaurants that serve the traditional dish. The North has been hosting dog meat food contests to help develop the traditional cuisine, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said yesterday. Dog meat is called dangogi, or “sweet meat,” a euphemism coined by Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder, in the early 1980s. Dangogi-jang is dog meat soup. “Our ancestors believed hot dangogi soup consumed during the dog days of summer helped prevent diseases from malnutrition and bolster stamina,” KCNA said, citing a 17th century book on herbal medicine. “Dangogi-jang is becoming popular even among Koreans living abroad and foreigners as well,” KCNA said.
■HONG KONG
Pig thief sent to prison
A meat supplier who stole a pig a day for two years and pocketed more than HK$3 million (US$384,600) from his employer was jailed for three years, a newspaper reported yesterday. Lai Yiu-wa, 45, who pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and a charge of fraud, said he made HK$40,000 to HK$50,000 a month for stealing the pigs from Forever Profits Development and selling them to other suppliers, the South China Morning Post said. Lai also made up to HK$700,000 from the sale of pig entrails in a systematic theft spanning nearly four years from November 2003 to June 2007.
■AUSTRALIA
Police seize pot and pig
Steroids, an excavator, kilograms of cannabis and a stolen pig were among items seized by police in a series of drug raids, reports said yesterday. The 75kg stash of cannabis was worth almost A$500,000 (US$410,000), police said, with the pig and other seized assets estimated to have a similar value. Seven people were arrested during the raids south of Melbourne, which police said were part of a crackdown on cannabis cultivation and trafficking of amphetamines.
■ITALY
Mafia boss speaks out
Jailed Cosa Nostra supremo Toto Riina gave testimony on Friday on the 1992 killings of two anti-Mafia prosecutors for which he was convicted but has always proclaimed his innocence. Magistrates in Caltanissetta, Sicily, reopened the case earlier this year after new testimony from a former Mafia member raised new questions, in particular about the car bomb slaying of judge Paolo Borsellino. They left the Milan prison where Riina testified for three hours on Friday without speaking to reporters, the ANSA news agency reported. Riina, nicknamed “The Beast” for his cruelty, broke his silence yesterday, the eve of the 17th anniversary of the murder in the Sicilian capital Palermo. Speaking through his lawyer Luca Cianferoni in remarks published by the daily La Repubblica, Riina said he was “tired of being the scapegoat” in Borsellino’s murder and that of Giovanni Falcone two months earlier along with his wife and three bodyguards. Riina pointed his finger at the Italian secret services, saying “they killed [Borsellino]. I’m tired of being the scapegoat.”
■RUSSIA
Warship shells apartment
A warship preparing for a holiday celebration accidentally fired a dummy artillery shell into the courtyard of an apartment building in Vladivostok on Friday, officials said. Nobody was hurt but the shell’s impact broke windows and left a small crater outside the nine-story apartment building in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific Ocean coast close to China and Japan. Local police said in a statement that the impact shattered the windows of several apartments and scattered fragments of rock and glass on nearby cars, but added that there were no injuries. The warship that fired the shell was taking part in rehearsals for today’s planned celebrations of the annual Navy Day holiday, which traditionally includes a ceremonial procession of warships and mock naval battles.
■SYRIA
Hamas holds mass wedding
The militant Palestinian group Hamas sponsored a mass wedding of 382 Palestinian couples in a refugee camp in Damascus. Hamas has held such weddings in the past in the country, where the group’s exiled leadership is based, but Friday’s ceremony at the Yarmouk refugee camp was by far the largest. The mass weddings aim to help young people who often put off marriage because they can’t afford the costs. The brides and grooms were separated during the wedding party, which was attended by 10,000 people, since observant Muslims are not supposed to mix in public.
■FRANCE
Wild fires scorch Corsica
Fires that have consumed more than 4,200 hectares of brush and woodland on the Mediterranean island of Corsica continued to burn on Friday, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said. Only one of the three blazes that broke out on Thursday has been brought under control. Hundreds of firefighters continued to fight the other two blazes, which were being fueled by record-high temperatures and summer winds. One of the fires was about 30km from the city of Ajaccio, the other 70km to the south near Sartene. By Friday afternoon the fires had destroyed 15 homes and 60 cars as well as trees more than 100 years old. Five firefighters have been slightly injured. The online edition of the weekly Le Point reported that local officials said arsonists were to blame for some of the blazes.
■UNITED STATES
Bush eyed troops in Buffalo
Top officials from the administration of former president George W. Bush mulled sending troops to suburban Buffalo to arrest men suspected of plotting with al-Qaeda, the New York Times reported late on Friday. Citing former administration officials, the newspaper said some of the advisers to Bush, including vice president Dick Cheney, argued in 2002 that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
■UNITED STATES
Colonel loves his cake
Forty years later, Henry Moak Jr still loves his pound cake. The Army colonel popped open a military-issued can of pound cake from 1969 at his retirement ceremony and dug in. Moak got the drab olive can as a Marine helicopter pilot off the Vietnamese coast in 1973. He vowed to hang on to it until the day he retired, storing it in a box with other mementos. After a formal retirement ceremony, dozens of friends and relatives joined Moak in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes as he opened the can to cheers. It let off a whooshing sound as the pressure seal broke. “It smells good,” Moak said as he put a handful in his mouth. He jokingly staggered back and loudly cleared his throat, while one person yelled out: “Eeww, gross!” Moak pronounced the cake “good.”
■UNITED STATES
Jackson brings in cash
The special administrators of Michael Jackson’s estate said they recovered US$5.5 million from a financial adviser to the late pop singer and are working on deals that will bring in “tens of millions of dollars.” The special administrators, lawyer John Branca and music executive John McClain, are also executors of Jackson’s will. They made the disclosures as part of a court filing requesting permission to pay Jackson’s mother, Katherine, and his three children an allowance.
■UNITED STATES
Toucan’s bill a cool feature
The toucan’s large, colorful bill turns out to be a radiator the rain forest dweller uses to lose body heat. The bill of the Toco Toucan makes up about one-third of its body length and ornithologists have long wondered about the purpose for the appendage. Could it be a sexual signal, some ask? Maybe a special adaptation to peel fruit, suggest food experts. Perhaps, the defense-minded say, a weapon. Or, at least, a visual warning to other toucans. Researchers led by Glenn Tattersall of Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada, wondered if the big beak might have yet another use — cooling. After all, elephants use their ears for cooling. The researchers photographed the birds with heat-sensing cameras. They found that “the toucan’s bill is capable of acting as a thermal radiator of body heat,” Tattersall said.
■UNITED STATES
Evangelist in sex trial
Jurors have resumed deliberating the child-sex charges against jailed evangelist Tony Alamo for a second day. They arrived on Friday morning at the Texarkana, Arkansas, federal courthouse where they have already spent eight hours discussing the 10-count federal indictment against the 74-year-old Alamo. Jurors have paused twice to ask the judge questions. Prosecutors allege Alamo took five underage girls across state lines for sex as far back as 1994. They claim one was as young as nine and was “married” to the evangelist. Defense attorneys say the girls traveled on legitimate business for Alamo’s ministry, which espouses an apocalyptic form of Christianity.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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