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■LAOS

Flu makes a comeback

Health officials confirmed six new swine-flu infections in a southern province where residents are still suffering from the impact of Typhoon Ketsana, the Vientiane Times reported yesterday. The ministry said another 11 people in Attapeu province were suspected of suffering from the potentially deadly H1N1 virus, it said. The affected people were mostly students attending schools close to the Vietnamese and Cambodian borders, the Vientiane Times said. With the addition of the confirmed infections from Attapeu province, the country’s total number of swine flu cases edged up to 275 with two deaths, the ministry said.



■NEPAL

Official slaps civil servant

Deputy Agriculture Minister Karima Begam yesterday admitted slapping a senior civil servant in the face to teach him a lesson after he sent an old car to pick her up during an official visit. Begam said she grabbed Parsa Durga Prasad Bhandari, the chief district officer (CDO), by the collar and hit him repeatedly across the face after he failed to send the car she had requested. “I beat the CDO because he ignored my orders by sending an old vehicle,” Begam said. “When I asked him about the vehicle, he tried to argue with me and even pointed fingers at me. I slapped him four times in order to make him more aware of his duties and responsibilities,” she said. Bhandari said Begam “had asked for a Scorpio jeep which was not available at that time. I had sent a Mitsubishi jeep which was recently repaired and was in good condition but the minister did not like it.”



■MALAYSIA

Sedition trial halted

A court yesterday temporarily halted the trial of a prominent anti-government blogger accused of sedition because authorities could not track him down. Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin went into hiding in April, nearly a year after he was charged with sedition over an article he wrote that allegedly implied the prime minister was involved in the murder of a Mongolian woman. Raja Petra, who runs a popular news Web site called “Malaysia Today,” is believed to have fled abroad. Yesterday, he told The Associated Press via Skype from an unknown location that he would not resurface because he believed the authorities were determined to jail him.



■JAPAN

Ozawa criticizes Christianity

A powerful member of the ruling party criticized Christianity as an “exclusive” religion that is weighing down Western society. “Christianity and Islam are both exclusive. Civilizations based on exclusive Christianity are reflected in Western societies that have ground to a halt,” Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa said on Tuesday. He made the comments at a meeting with the chairman of the the Japan Buddhist Federation. Buddhism, he said, teaches individuals how they should exist within nature, and is the basis for the thinking and way of life of Japanese people.



■NEW ZEALAND

Kiwis won’t offer asylum

New Zealand does not want to offer a new home to 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers involved in a stand-off with Australian authorities, the government said on Tuesday. “We’re wary of rewarding actions that seek to jump the queue for entry to New Zealand. Sending the wrong message won’t help solve similar situations that may arise in the near future,” Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman said. “For that reason the New Zealand government would be unlikely to offer settlement to asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking.”



■UNITED KINGDOM

Veteran shuns ceremony

Britain’s last surviving World War I veteran shunned Remembrance Day commemorations yesterday because he was against the glorification of war, his family was reported as saying. Claude Choules, 108, lives in a nursing home in Perth, Australia, and in July became Britain’s sole survivor of the 1914 to 1918 war, following the death of fellow veteran Harry Patch, aged 111. Choules served on HMS Revenge during a 41-year naval career that spanned both world wars, witnessing the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918 and the scuttling of the fleet in Scapa Flow. But his daughter Daphne Edinger said Choules had been scarred by his experiences and chose not to celebrate the Armistice or other veterans’ days. “He didn’t think we should glorify war,” she said. He is one of just three World War I veterans still alive worldwide.



■IRELAND

Parking lot replaces home

Irish filmmaker Neville Presho was one of those fortunate to have a 19th century stone house on the ruggedly beautiful island of Tory — or so he thought. When he returned to the Atlantic island in 1994 after living in New Zealand for six years, he found his home missing — and a hotel parking lot in its place. Yesterday, Presho was awarded 60,000 euros (US$90,000) in compensation and costs for the loss of his home after the Dublin high court ruled he was entitled to a new house or its equivalent market value. Presho’s 1981 film Desecration tells how a group of islanders are incited to destroy a 14th-century castle so a valuable mining development can proceed.



■IRAN

Scholarship denounced

Tehran has denounced Oxford University after one of its colleges set up a scholarship in honor of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot dead during a protest after disputed elections, a report said yesterday. The regime accused the university in a letter of joining a “politically motivated” campaign that would “undermine your scientific credibility,” the Times newspaper said.



■UNITED KINGDOM

‘Drunk’ pilot charged

Police charged a United Airlines pilot late on Tuesday after his arrest on suspicion of being drunk as he was about to help fly a passenger plane from Heathrow Airport, a spokesman said. Erwin Vermont Washington, 51, was charged with “exceeding the proscribed alcohol limit” after his arrest at the world’s busiest airport on Monday, police said. The pilot was arrested on Monday afternoon before the plane carrying 124 passengers and 11 crew was due to depart for Chicago, the airline said.



■FRANCE

‘Second Best Job’ offered

A Paris-based Web site has launched a competition offering the winner a one-month tour of seven world cities with a shopping budget of 10,000 euros (US$15,000), business class travel and luxury accommodation. ­Letsbuyit.com said the winner of the “Second Best Job in the World” will keep a blog, find the best bargains and compare shopping cultures in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Milan, New York, Paris and Tokyo. In May, Briton Ben Southall won a “Best Job in the World” competition organized by a local tourism agency in Australia to work as a caretaker on an idyllic island. Candidates for the shopping competition have until Dec. 14 to submit a video and a resume explaining their suitability for the one-month job of “international shopping consultant,” which will include a 5,000 euro salary.



■CANADA

MacIntyre wins award

Linden MacIntyre, an investigative journalist who wrote a novel about sexual abuse by Catholic priests, has won the country’s richest and glitziest literary award. MacIntyre won the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for his book The Bishop’s Man on Tuesday night. The novel tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest who is tasked with stamping out sex abuse scandals before they go public. MacIntrye, a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, won US$47,000. In accepting the award he paid tribute to the “the priests and nuns who are struggling to do their jobs in spite of the failures of their leadership.”



■UNITED STATES

Mormons support gay reform

With an historic endorsement from the Mormon church, the Salt Lake City Council unanimously passed a pair of ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. Tuesday’s action was the first time the Utah-based church — which has been steadfast in its opposition to gay marriage — has publicly supported gay rights legislation. The vote bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The measures make it illegal to fire or evict someone because they are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender.



■UNITED STATES

Dropout wins poker jackpot

A 21-year-old college dropout won the World Series of Poker early on Tuesday, completing the biggest comeback in the tournament’s history to earn a US$8.5 million jackpot. Joe Cada, the youngest champion in the 40-year history of the game’s richest and most prestigious event, won with a pair of nines after about 90 hands head-to-head against second-place finisher Darvin Moon. Moon had a queen and jack, and none of the other cards drawn in the Texas Hold Em hand improved it. “I’d like to thank all my fans and my friends,” an emotional Cada told a raucous theater full of supporters in bright-yellow T-shirts bearing his name. Later he told reporters: “It’s really surreal right now.”



■UNITED STATES

Astronaut avoids prison

Former astronaut Lisa Nowak was sentenced on Tuesday to serve one year of probation for a 2007 attack on her former lover’s girlfriend. The 46-year-old navy captain entered pleas of guilty to charges of felony burglary of a vehicle and misdemeanor battery. She had faced more serious allegations, including kidnapping-related charges, in the pepper-spray attack on the woman in a parking lot in Orlando, Florida. Nowak, who flew on a 2006 space shuttle mission to the orbiting International Space Station, had been seeing fellow US astronaut Bill Oefelein.



■UNITED STATES

Senator co-sponsors vet bill

A Hawaiian senator is co-sponsoring legislation that would allow the children of Filipino World War II veterans living in the US to become permanent US residents. The Military Families Act was introduced on Monday by Senator Daniel Inouye and five fellow Democratic senators. The Filipino soldiers were offered US citizenship in exchange for fighting alongside US troops more than 60 years ago. But it took Washington 45 years after the war to offer the veterans a proper chance to obtain citizenship and the Immigration Act of 1990 only allowed each veteran to bring one immediate family member to the US. The shortcomings of that law have left the sons and daughters of the veterans with little choice but to get in line for immigration visas along with everyone else, if they wanted to live in the US. On average, it took 20 years.
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