■CHINA
Sculptor ‘rams’ Madoff
A sculptor has created a critical commentary on capitalism in the wake of the global financial crisis in a work that shows a springing, farting bull ramming a horned Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff against a wall. The work by Chen Wenling (陳文令) entitled What You See May Not Be Real is on display in the 798 Art District of Beijing. The muscle-bound bull, symbolizing Wall Street, appears to be rocket-propelled as clouds billow out behind it.
■MYANMAR
Suu Kyi meets junta official
Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi held talks yesterday with a junta official, the second such meeting within a week following her call for a new era of cooperation, official sources said. The unannounced meeting between Suu Kyi and Relations Minister Aung Kyi was taking place at a government guest house near her lakeside home in Yangon, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Details of the talks were not immediately known. The meetings follow a letter Suu Kyi sent late last month to junta chief Senior General Than Shwe. In it, she said she is willing to cooperate with the junta in having international sanctions lifted and proposed that she meet with Western diplomats to discuss the measures, her National League for Democracy party said.
■NORTH KOREA
Kim Jong-un takes post
The youngest son of leader Kim Jong-il, 67, has been given a post in the ruling Communist Party in preparation for his eventual takeover of the leadership, a South Korean lawmaker said on Tuesday. Kim Jong-un is expected to be officially named as successor to his father some time between next year and 2012, Legislator Yoon Sang-Hyun of the ruling Grand National Party said. “The son has taken on a deputy director-level position in the Workers Party of Korea,” he said, citing a confidential report he received from South Korean government officials. The elder Kim is widely thought to be grooming his third son Jong-un as successor, but the secretive state has disclosed no information on Jong-un or any succession plan.
■THAILAND
Groups call for climate deal
Killer typhoons and floods in Asia over the past week have provided a timely “wake-up call” for world leaders to push through a new climate deal in December in Copenhagen, international humanitarian relief agencies said on Tuesday. “In the past week, the world has witnessed again how vulnerable, poor families in the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and India are bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Richard Rumsey, World Vision’s director of disaster risk reduction and community resilience. UN statistics show nearly nine of every 10 natural disasters are now weather-related, and their frequency and intensity are on the rise. “We’ve seen an increase in weather-related disasters from 200 [per annum] in the 1990s to 350 since the year 2000,” said Madeleen Helmer, head of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center. Rumsey said research conducted by the UN indicated that every US$1 spent on disaster risk reduction saves nearly US$7 in emergency response funds.
■GERMANY
Farm wins coffee pot record
A German farm declared victory on Monday in a bizarre race to acquire the world’s largest collection of old china coffee pots, saying the Guinness Book of World Records had certified it as the winner with 13,267. Karl’s Farm, which offers fields of pick-your-own strawberries, restaurants and children’s playgrounds, had appealed to visitors to search their attics for old china sets and to donate the pots. The porcelain is now arrayed on every available wall at the visitor attraction in the small town of Roevershagen near Rostock. Karl’s said the previous top collection in the Records Book numbered 5,014. None of the pots are allowed to be duplicates. The collection was begun by the strawberry farm owner, who ran out of home space when the collection became too large. A Karl’s spokesman said donors would be invited to a free coffee party to celebrate.
■SAUDI ARABIA
King sacks senior cleric
King Abdullah on Monday sacked a senior cleric who caused a controversy by criticizing the country’s first mixed-sex university. In a rare move, a royal decree removed Sheikh Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri from the most senior council of religious scholars, or ulema. The sacking came just days after he appeared on the Qatar-based al-Majd satellite channel and criticized the US$7 billion university near Jeddah. The university, which opened last month, is the first in the kingdom to allow mixing of sexes. “We are looking at some of the sciences that have included some irregular and alien ideologies, like evolution and such other ideologies,” Sheikh Saad was quoted as having said. “The recommendation is to set up Shariah committees at this university to oversee these studies and look into what violates the Shariah,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Draper most influential
Readers of AskMen.com, a Web site devoted to men and their lifestyles, looked back in time and at their own TVs to find this year’s most influential man, the character Don Draper of the Emmy-winning drama Mad Men. The annual poll turned up some surprising choices. Track star Usain Bolt was the No. 2 most influential man, President Barack Obama was third and behind him was Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Draper, played in the hit TV series by actor Jon Hamm, is a creative executive at an advertising agency. He is a family man, but has had his share of affairs. He is not perfect, but he tries to do right. More important, he exemplifies a “traditional man” that AskMen.com editor-in-chief James Bassil said readers have come to respect.
■UNITED STATES
Fatty food good for pilots
Running a marathon, grab a carbohydrate bar. Lifting weights, gulp a protein shake. But climbing into a fighter jet? Butter-soaked lobster might help. That was the surprising finding of a new military-funded study that sought to figure out what types of foods were best for pilots when missions restricted when or what they could eat. University of North Dakota researchers found that pilots who ate the fattiest foods such as butter or gravy had the quickest response times in mental tests and made fewer mistakes when flying in tricky cloud conditions. High-carb diets trumped high-protein in performance tests. Military experts hope the research will eventually help improve pilot performance. National Transportation Safety Board statistics showed 80 percent of civil and military accidents were caused by human error.
■SPACE
New Saturn ring discovered
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn. Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Tuesday that the ring lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet’s main ring plane. The ring is made of a thin array of ice and dust particles. JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring was very diffuse and did not reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it. Although the ring dust is very cold, it shines with thermal radiation.
■UNITED STATES
Petraeus treated for cancer
General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year, but underwent “successful” treatment for the illness, his office said on Tuesday. Petraeus, 56, chose not to go public with his condition at first because he considered it a personal matter and because it did not interfere with his performance of his duties, the general’s spokesman at Central Command, Colonel Erik Gunhus, said in a statement. “General Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer in February” and had two months of radiation treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, he said.
■UNITED STATES
EPA sets rules for airlines
Government regulators on Tuesday issued final rules requiring airlines to test and disinfect the tap water served to passengers and used in plane lavatories, an attempt to remedy bacteria contamination found in onboard water. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules set out schedules for how frequently airlines must flush and disinfect the water systems on planes and test for coliform bacteria. Coliform are usually not harmful, but they are considered an indicator of the presence of disease-causing germs. The schedules vary: Airlines that test water quality frequently don not have to disinfect and flush as often; those that test less often must disinfect and flush more frequently.
■UNITED STATES
Taylor heads for hospital
Elizabeth Taylor said she was headed to the hospital for a heart procedure. The 77-year-old actress told her followers on Twitter that she is to undergo a “very new” procedure to improve heart function that “involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device” rather than open-heart surgery. “Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate,” Taylor wrote on Tuesday, adding that she plans to inform her 157,389 Twitter followers when the procedure is complete. She did not say when or where she is having treatment.
■UNITED STATES
‘Robin Hood’ gets jail
A Michigan bank manager who insists she gave the US$340,000 she stole over eight years to needy customers was sentenced on Tuesday to a year and a day in prison by a judge who declared that her “Robin Hood days are long over.” Patricia Keezer, 53, said the embezzling began in 2000, when she would give needy people US$2,000 at a time for car repairs, mortgage payments and taxes. Keezer commonly reversed bounced-check charges and other fees when she was a manager of Citizens Bank, formerly known as Republic Bank, in Manchester, 112km southwest of Detroit. “I would take other people’s problems and make them my problems,” Keezer told the judge. “I do have a problem with giving things away.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was