■CHINA
Earthquake kills seven
A magnitude 3.4 earthquake on Sunday claimed seven lives in Guizhou Province, state media reported yesterday. The earthquake struck near Anshun City in the southwest of the poor and remote province, the China Earthquake Administration said on its Web site. Aside from the seven deaths, China National Radio added that two people were injured and one was still missing. It gave no details on how the seven died. The quake had caused at least two landslides, one of which hit a boat on a river, Xinhua news agency reported.
■CHINA
‘Dirty’ phone texts targeted
Mobile users in Shanghai caught sending dirty short messages, photos or videos by cellphone could have their numbers canceled as part of a crackdown on pornography, state media reported yesterday. An employee at the Shanghai subsidiary of China Mobile, the world’s biggest phone operator by market value, said the company would search for keywords and then forward the offending messages to the police to investigate. “We will first block the user from sending and receiving messages … and the police station will then evaluate it,” the unidentified employee was quoted in the Global Times as saying. If police found the message contained “dirty words,” the phone number would be canceled, the report said.
■CHINA
Smoking rules tightened
Health advocates and officials are campaigning to expand and enforce smoking bans in seven major cities, the latest sign that awareness of the risks of smoking are rising in the world’s biggest tobacco-consuming nation. The campaign organized by the government’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention seeks to enforce a ban on indoor smoking in public places and close loopholes in the law. Cities targeted include some of the biggest commercial centers — such as Tianjin on the northern coast and the mega-city of Chongqing in the south — where smoking and breathing in secondhand smoke are just two of the threats facing residents confronted with heavy traffic, industrial waste and polluted air and water.
■AFGHANISTAN
Taliban kidnap four Chinese
The Taliban have kidnapped two Chinese engineers and four Afghans accompanying them in the north of the country, a local official and the Taliban said on Sunday. Local government spokesman Jawaed Bidar said the engineers were helping to build a road. Taliban spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi said that “our mujahidin have taken two Chinese engineers, their two drivers and their two guards.” Ahmadi said the Taliban’s Islamic court would decide on their fate.
■SOUTH KOREA
Cheating lecturer arrested
Police said yesterday they have arrested a lecturer who allegedly helped two students cheat on a US test by exploiting the time difference between Southeast Asia and the US. They said the man obtained a copy of the US-based Scholastic Aptitude Test from a Thai student who took the exam in Bangkok in January last year. He then allegedly sent the test paper and answer sheets by e-mail to two students, who took the same test 12 hours later in Connecticut. Police in Seoul’s Suseo district said the 37-year-old lecturer, identified only as Kim, would be charged with interfering with the US-based Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam for applicants to US colleges.
■IRAN
Drug smugglers kill officers
Suspected drug traffickers shot dead three policemen in the volatile southeast near Pakistan, media reported yesterday. The semi-official Fars news agency said the shootings occurred on Sunday. State English-language Press TV said on its Web site that traffic police ordered a car to stop after it raised their suspicions by driving at high speed on a road between the cities of Zahedan and Khash, “After the police ordered the car to stop, its passengers began firing at the police, which resulted in the death of three officers,” police official Mohammad Arab was quoted as saying. Press TV did not give any further details.
■IRAQ
Ex-deputy PM in hospital
Tarez Aziz, former deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, has suffered a stroke and been moved from jail to a US military hospital, his lawyer said on Sunday. “He suffered a stroke on Friday and was transferred to a hospital in the US base at Balad,” lawyer Badie Aref said. “His condition is serious and they will decide today whether he stays in hospital or should be returned to Camp Cropper,” a US-run prison in Baghdad, where he has been detained. “His condition is improving and he is still being closely monitored,” Lieutenant Colonel Patricia Johnson said. “As with every detainee, we provide them with the best of care, and the same level of care as US military members.”
■FRANCE
UMP wants full-veil ban
The head of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party said on Sunday he wanted a law to ensure that Muslim women who wear face-covering veils do not acquire French nationality. Xavier Bertrand, head of the conservative UMP party, said the full veil “is simply a prison for women who wear it” and “will make no one believe” a woman wearing it wants to integrate. The nation is moving closer to banning such veils. A top UMP lawmaker already filed legislation to ban it and a parliamentary committee studying the issue turns in its report on the veil by month’s end.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Shops offer divorce gift lists
A chain of high-street shops yesterday launched a divorce gift list service amid a surge of married couples saying “I don’t” after the Christmas holidays. “Divorcing can be an expensive time and registering for a Divorce Gift List means that family and friends can help the newly separated begin their new life,” said Peter Moore, head of Debenham’s retail services. A “divorce means that one partner will be leaving the marital home and therefore be left without any essentials in their new house,” he said. Debenhams said management took the decision at a time when “congratulations on your divorce” greeting cards and divorce parties were growing in popularity.
■ISRAEL
PM’s wife accused of abuse
A former housekeeper has filed a lawsuit accusing the prime minister’s wife of abusing her. Lillian Peretz, who worked as the housekeeper of Benjamin Netanyahu’s family in their beachside home in the town of Caesaria for six years, claims Sara Netanyahu verbally abused her and forced her to change clothes and shower several times a day to keep a “sterile” environment. It also alleges she was paid less than minimum wage and forced to work on the Jewish Sabbath. The prime minister’s office called the lawsuit “false and full of lies and defamation” in a statement on Sunday, alleging the housekeeper was part of a media-orchestrated political conspiracy.
■UNITED STATES
JFK breach ‘an accident’
A man who returned to New York from Haiti and walked through a restricted door at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and set off a security alarm simply went the wrong way, his attorney said on Sunday. Jules Paul Bouloute 57, was arraigned on Sunday on charges including first-degree criminal tampering and third-degree criminal trespass, said Helen Peterson, a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney. The security breach on Saturday afternoon delayed dozens of flights and caused headaches for hundreds of travelers who had to exit the terminal and wait for hours while police swept the building.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez rails at PlayStation
Sony’s PlayStation video game console is “poison” and leads children down the capitalist “road to hell,” President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday in his weekly radio-TV show. He called on manufacturers to make “educational” toys and dolls with indigenous peoples’ features to replace capitalistic counterparts like the Barbie doll that “have nothing to do with our culture.”
■MEXICO
Head found next to tomb
A severed human head and a flower were found in front of the tomb of drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva. Prosecutors in Sinaloa state said on Sunday the man’s headless body was found in a plastic bag atop the tomb of another drug trafficker in the Jardines del Humaya Cemetery in Culiacan. The severed head had a flower tucked behind one ear and had been carefully placed in front of the entrance gate to Beltran Leyva’s elaborate crypt. Beltran Leyva was killed in a Dec. 16 shootout.
■VENEZUELA
Agents nab drug lord
Intelligence agents have captured a senior member of one of Colombia’s most notorious drug cartels, and will extradite him to the US, officials said on Sunday. Salomon Camacho, 65, is said to be a leader in the Norte del Valle cocaine cartel. He was arrested in Valencia, Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami said. Camacho had been the target of a US$5 million reward, issued by the US government. “[He] is wanted by Interpol ... on illicit drug trafficking charges, conspiracy to commit a crime and laundering money from drug trafficking,” El Aissami said. The 65-year-old was indicted in Florida for conspiracy to distribute cocaine in 1991.
■CANADA
Soldier killed by bomb
The military said a soldier died after stepping on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. Canadian Brigadier-General Daniel Menard said on Saturday that Sergeant John Faught, 44, died near the town of Nakhoney in Kandahar Province. Menard said Faught was a father figure to his much younger battalion members. Faught is the 139th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. His death comes two weeks after four Canadian soldiers and a journalist were killed when their armored vehicle hit a roadside bomb.
■MEXICO
Soldiers sent to Tijuana
The government is stepping up its fight against drug cartels in Tijuana, sending 860 more soldiers. Soldiers will work with local police and other law enforcement to man checkpoints and set up anonymous complaint centers, designed to allow residents to report crimes without fear of retaliation, the defense secretary’s office said in a press release on Saturday. Nearly 200 people have been killed in the city since Dec. 1.
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
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
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not