Print

Mail

wiki links

World News Quick Take

■HONG KONG

Mainland preggies banned

Hong Kong hospitals on Thursday began turning away women from the mainland arriving to give birth to ensure the territory can cope with an expected 20 percent surge in local births in the next three months. A similar ban was imposed last year as part of an ongoing series of measures to reduce the number of mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong. Last year, almost 10,500 — or one quarter — of the 41,000 births in public hospitals were to non-local women. Giving birth in Hong Kong not only guarantees them world-class health care but in many cases secures residency for their children.



■SRI LANKA

Nation hit by power outage

A power blackout plunged the country into darkness for a few hours early yesterday, said Harsha Abeykoon, spokesman for the power and energy ministry. Abeykoon said engineers found that the blackout was caused by a technical fault at the main distribution center and a burnt cable connected to the national grid. He said power had already been restored in some parts.



■HONG KONG

Bottom stalker in jail

A stalker with a fetish for big bottoms was behind bars yesterday after spreading fears of syringe attacks by poking women in the buttocks with toothpicks. The attacks by 43-year-old Vietnamese worker Pham Van Diep early this month triggered fears of random syringe attacks similar to incidents reported in Xinjiang last month. The hunt for the attacker drew wide publicity after two women told how they had been followed and felt stabbing pains in their buttocks. One returned home and found a painful red dot on her backside. At a court hearing on Thursday, however, Diep said he followed women and poked their bottoms with toothpicks because he “could not resist their big buttocks.” He pleaded guilty to two assaults and was remanded in custody.



■CHINA

Nerve gas detected: report

China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said yesterday. The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military. The Chinese special operations forces found 0.015-0.03 micrograms of the gas per cubic meter when they were conducting regular surveys while there were winds from the direction of North Korea, the report said.



■NEW ZEALAND

Kadeer given visa

The government has issued a visitor’s visa to exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, but Auckland University has banned her from speaking on campus, news reports said yesterday. Kadeer is due to arrive on Monday for a four-day visit to talk about the plight of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Auckland University said it had banned Kadeer from speaking on Tuesday because “the university is not in a position to provide the appropriate levels of support and security for the range of people expected to attend” the meeting. Keith Locke, a Green Party member of parliament who is sponsoring Kadeer’s visit, claimed that the university had barred Kadeer for fear of offending the Chinese government, the New Zealand Herald reported.



■POLAND

Polanski exhibition opens

An exhibition exploring the career of Franco-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski opened on Thursday in a film museum in Lodz, the city where the embattled director studied cinema. The museum features photographs from Polanski’s private collection and from his friends. It also includes 200 posters of his movies from around the world and will have a retrospective of his movies. The museum denied that the exhibition was linked to Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland, where he was detained last month on a US warrant over a 1977 child sex case.



■UNITED STATES

Quarter of world is Muslim

Muslims constitute nearly a quarter of the world population, numbering 1.6 billion, according to a survey of 232 countries by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released on Thursday. The Washington-based think tank found 60 percent of the world’s Muslims live in Asia and 20 percent live in the Middle East and Africa. Between 87 and 90 percent are Sunni Muslims and 10 to 13 percent are Shiite Muslims, with the majority in Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq. The largest Muslim population is in Indonesia, whose 203 million Muslims constitute 13 percent of the religion’s adherents. It was followed by Pakistan (174 million), India (161 million), Bangladesh (145 million) and Egypt (79 million). About 80 percent live in countries with Muslim majorities, but 317 million are members of a religious minority in their home countries. Countries with the largest Muslim minorities are India, Ethiopia (28 million) and China (22 million).



■ITALY

Party aims to ban burqa

The anti-immigration Northern League party is pushing for legislation to prosecute women who cover their faces with burqas and veils, prompting a new debate on Muslims’ religious freedom in the Catholic country. The Northern League, allies of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, wants to amend a 1975 law, introduced amid worries over homegrown guerrilla groups, which punishes with hefty fines and up to two years in jail people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police. The proposal aims to include “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation,” and remove the expression “justified cause,” which has prompted some courts to allow them on religious grounds.



■GAZA

Women on bikes banned

Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip say safety concerns and social traditions, not Islamic religious values, are the main reason behind a decision to ban women from riding motorbikes and scooters. The Interior Ministry said on Thursday it was banning women from riding two-wheelers or being pillion passengers to limit accidents and to “protect community values.” Spokesman Ehab Al-Ghsain said the decision was taken after they found that women riding behind their husbands or male relatives were a prime reason for accidents in recent weeks.



■LEBANON

Clashes erupt in Tripoli

Clashes erupted on Wednesday evening in the northern port city of Tripoli between followers of the parliamentary majority and others loyal to the Hezbollah-led opposition, leaving eight people wounded, police said. The violence started when a rocket-propelled grenade hit al-Ashkar cafe in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, followed by a hand grenade that was tossed near al-Nassri mosque in Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabaneh, the police said.



■UNITED STATES

Palin connection poses nude

Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild, plans to pose for an online nude magazine, lending new meaning to the term “media overexposure.” The 19-year-old former high school hockey star and one-time beau of Palin’s daughter Bristol has already penned a tell-all article and given dozens of television interviews bashing last year’s Republican vice-presidential candidate. But soon Alaska’s most famous teen will pose for Playgirl, an online magazine featuring photos of nude men that enjoys a devoted following among women and gay men. To prepare, Johnston has been hitting the gym with a competitive bodybuilder, and is on a low-carb, high protein diet.



■MEXICO

Weed hidden in bananas

First bricks of cocaine were found stashed in statues of the Virgin Mary, then in a frozen shark. Now, authorities have seized a load of “over-ripe” bananas bearing 2.6 tonnes of marijuana. The defense ministry said on Wednesday the cargo was found hidden inside a truck by soldiers who caught a whiff of pot when they stopped the vehicle at a US border checkpoint, around 100km south of Tucson, Arizona. The soldiers “realized that the product [bananas] was over-ripe” and decided to poke around under the fruit, where they discovered 508 packages of marijuana weighing some 2,650kg, the ministry said in a statement.



■UNITED STATES

Military targets lesbians

Pentagon statistics obtained by University of California researchers show that women are far more likely than men to be kicked out of the military under the “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” banning openly gay service members. Every military branch dismissed a disproportionate number of women last year under the policy. But the discrepancy was particularly marked in the Air Force, where women were a majority of those let go under the policy, even though they made up only 20 percent of personnel. Across the military, women represented about one-third of the 619 people discharged based on sexual orientation. They account for just 15 percent of service members.



■CANADA

Fruity cigarettes banned

Ottawa has banned the manufacture, importation and sale of most flavored cigarettes and small cigars, which have been slammed as little more than an enticement to get children to start smoking. The law, which came into effect on Thursday, was backed by both government and opposition lawmakers. It also bans tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines, closing a loophole that had allowed ads in publications that claimed they were read only by adults. Anti-smoking groups said fruit-flavored cigarettes were marketed like candy to lure young smokers.



■UNITED STATES

Karaoke singer attacked

Police say a woman singing karaoke in a sports bar was attacked by six other women who didn’t like her performance. The Advocate newspaper says five of the women were arraigned on assault and other charges on Wednesday in Stamford Superior Court. The other woman appeared in court on Monday on the same charges. Police say the Sept. 23 attack on the 25-year-old woman happened during karaoke night at Bobby Valentine’s Sports Gallery Cafe in Stamford. Authorities say the six women, all under the legal drinking age of 21, knocked the singer to the floor, punched her and pulled her hair.


This story has been viewed 709 times.