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World News Quick Take

■NEW ZEALAND

Search for toddler continues

As the search for a missing two-year-old New Zealand girl moved into its sixth day yesterday, police, who are convinced that she was abducted, appealed to the kidnapper to leave her at a hospital. Police boosted the squad looking for Aisling Symes, who was last seen on Monday afternoon, to 60 and continued house-to-house inquiries in suburban Henderson, 16km from central Auckland. The girl disappeared as her parents, Alan and Angela Symes, worked on her dead grandparents’ home, which they are selling. Police, who found no trace of the girl in an extensive search of the neighborhood, are convinced that she was abducted but have no clues, apart from a mystery Asian woman walking a dog who two witnesses said they saw talking to the girl. Chinese-born member of parliament Pansy Wong told Radio New Zealand that about 20 people who spoke Punjabi, Korean, Mandarin or Cantonese had knocked on doors in eight local streets without obtaining any information about the woman.



■JAPAN

Anti-flu suit launched

A menswear company has begun selling an “anti-swine flu” business suit that it says can reduce the risk of catching the virus. The wool suit is coated with titanium dioxide, which breaks down the virus molecules on contact under ultraviolet light, Haruyama Trading Co said. The material, which can also reduce odors such as cigarette smoke, will keep its anti-virus properties even after being dry cleaned more than 20 times, the company said. The company had initially aimed to develop a dirt and odor-resistant suit, “but laboratory experiments proved that molecules of viruses were actually dissolved three hours after they adhered to the fabric,” company spokesman Ryugo Yamamoto said said.



■AUSTRALIA

Refugee boat intercepted

Authorities intercepted a boat carrying 52 suspected asylum seekers in the Indian Ocean, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said. O’Connor said Border Protection Command agents detained the boat on Friday morning near Ashmore Island off the north coast. He said the 52 passengers and three crew on board were being taken to an immigration detention center on remote Christmas Island. Officials will assess their health and reasons for travel.



■THAILAND

ASEAN security will be tight

The government has assigned 18,298 security personnel to keep the peace at this month’s ASEAN summit, news reports said yesterday. The decision to deploy the army and police personnel was made on Friday at a meeting of the Internal Security Operations Command, chaired by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the state-run Thai News Agency said. The country is to host the 15th ASEAN summit from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25 in Prachuab Khiri Khan Province, 130km southwest of Bangkok. Much of the province, including its two main beach resorts, Hua Hin and Cha-am, will be placed under the Internal Security Act from tomorrow to Oct. 27, allowing authorities to crack down with impunity on any protests or any signs of violent intent. The tight security measures follow an embarrassing incident in April, when protesters stormed the venue of a summit ASEAN planned to hold with China, Japan and South Korea in Pattaya, 100km southeast of Bangkok, forcing Abhisit to cancel the event.



■SOUTH KOREA

Balloon launch delayed

Activists said yesterday they had postponed a plan to fly 300 radios into North Korea attached to balloons because of unfavorable winds, as the North held communist anniversary commemorations. The release had been timed for the North’s official celebrations of the 64th anniversary of the Communist Party. The activists planned to send the radios and some 100,000 anti-regime leaflets attached to 10 large balloons. The balloons were to be released at Imjingak, just south of the western part of the border. “Today, the wind is not blowing right,” said Park Sang-hak, leader of the group, which has sent leaflets into the North by balloon before. The group tested the radios’ ability to withstand crashes by sending up 25 of the palm-sized sets attached to balloons designed to burst at about 500m from the ground, he said. Wrapped in layers of padding and air bags, all the radios survived. North Korean radios and TV sets come pre-tuned to government stations.



■IRAN

Islamic mini-Barbie planned

Iran has renewed its effort to fight Barbie dolls with an Islamic model and hence avoid a “cultural invasion,” local media reported on Friday. In 1996, Iran branded the highly popular Barbie dolls a “cultural invasion” against Iranian children and proclaimed the production of an Islamic toy to counter the threat. The Islamic “Barbie” dolls known as Sara and her brother, Dara, arrived on the market in 1999 with little success. Ten years later, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IDCYA) started another effort by producing a smaller, lighter and cheaper version of the Islamic dolls to hit the market next month.



■RUSSIA

Rights activist to stay

Human rights activist and journalist Alexander Podrabinek, who has gone into hiding after death threats, vowed on Friday not to leave the country. The journalist said at a press conference that he had received a “colossal number of threats,” but also many messages of support, after publishing an article that criticized the Soviet regime on a news Web site on Sept. 21. Podrabinek wrote the article after Moscow city officials pressured a kebab restaurant to change its name from “AntiSoviet” to “Soviet” following a complaint from a veterans’ organization. The article prompted a large-scale campaign by pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, which has held regular pickets outside the author’s apartment block. Asked if he would consider leaving Russia to escape the campaign, Podrabinek said: “I definitely wouldn’t leave under this kind of pressure. I wouldn’t like to make such a gift to Nashi.” Advisers to President Dmitry Medvedev have criticized Nashi’s campaign.



■RUSSIA

Bomb kills officer

A policeman was killed in a bomb attack in the Chechen capital, Grozny, late on Friday that also injured 14 other people, a local law enforcement official said. The deadly explosion at about 10:30pm was detonated by remote control about 10 minutes after police and civilians gathered at the site of another blast. A surge in bombings and shootings in Chechnya and the neighboring territories of Dagestan and Ingushetia has raised questions about the Kremlin’s ability to keep control of the mainly Muslim region.



■SOUTH AFRICA

Gandhi house sold

Mahatma Gandhi’s former home in South Africa has been sold to a French tour agency that wants to turn it into a museum and guest house, the former owner and the company said on Friday. Voyageurs du Monde has bought the house that India’s spiritual and political icon formerly called home, the former owner Nancy Ball said. The company said it was ready to hand the house over to India if the government expressed an interest.



■FRANCE

CERN physicist arrested

One of two men arrested in France on suspicion of belonging to the terrorist network al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was working at the nuclear research center CERN, the institute said on Friday. The man, arrested on Thursday, “is a physicist who has been working on analysis projects with the LHCb [Large Hadron Collider beauty] experiment at CERN since 2003,” the research center said. The collider project aims to discover what happened right after the Big Bang. “His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism,” CERN’s statement read, adding that “none of our research has potential for military application.”



■CANADA

Financier gets 13 years

A financier was sentenced on Friday to 13 years in prison for bilking clients out of more than C$100 million (US$95 million). Quebec Superior Court Justice Richard Wagner handed down the sentence to ex-Norbourg Financial Services boss Vincent Lacroix. Lacroix was arrested on charges of pilfering C$100 million from some 9,200 investors in 2005. He pleaded guilty to 200 fraud-related charges last month. Lacroix begged for forgiveness when he appeared at his sentencing hearing a few weeks ago, saying he “infinitely” regretted his actions.



■JAMAICA

Would-be hijacker jailed

A schizophrenic man who tried to hijack a Canadian jet, taking 182 people hostage, was on Thursday handed an 83-year prison term, but will serve 20 years because of concurrent sentencing. Stephen Fray, 21, was sentenced to three 20-year terms for a variety of charges including shooting with intent and robbery, and an 18-year term for illegal possession of a firearm. The April 19 incident that gripped Montego Bay international airport began when he tried to take over a chartered CanJet Boeing 737, and ended with police storming the airliner and capturing Fray without firing a shot. Fray was alleged to have sneaked past security onto Flight 918 during its layover stop in Montego Bay using an identity card that belonged to a family member. Armed with a .38 revolver, he held up the passengers and crew, demanding money and valuables and is also reported to have demanded to be flown to neighboring Cuba.



■UNITED STATES

Majority supports gay rights

An increasing majority of Americans favors allowing same-sex couples to obtain most of the same rights as married straight couples, but only 39 percent support legalization of same-sex marriage, a poll released on Friday showed. The Pew Research Center said support for civil unions had risen to 57 percent, up from 54 percent a year ago and 45 percent when the question was first asked by Pew in 2003. Views on legalizing same-sex marriage remained almost unchanged from last year, with 53 percent opposed and 39 percent in favor, the center said.



■UNITED STATES

Two die in ‘sweat dome’

Two people died and 19 were treated in hospital after falling ill in a sauna-like “sweat dome” at a retreat in northern Arizona, authorities said on Friday. Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn said 64 people were in a sweat dome at the Angel Valley Retreat Center near Sedona for up to two hours on Thursday. Twenty-one people were taken for treatment at the nearby Flagstaff Medical Center and Verde Valley Medical Center, where two of them were pronounced dead. Participants had paid up to US$9,000 to take part in the sweat dome, which was warmed by heated rocks brought inside.



■PERU

Missing lung recovered

Organizers of a traveling exhibition about the human body breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday after an anonymous telephone tip off led to the recovery of a stolen lung. The caller, who did not claim the posted US$2,000 reward, directed staff at “Bodies Revealed” to a car park, where the organ was found in a plastic bag. The lung was stolen on Monday, but organizers said there was little concern it may rot or otherwise spoil, thanks to chemical treatment.


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