■CHINA
Hostages released
Cameroonian forces earlier this week freed seven Chinese hostages held by an armed gang off the southwest Bakassi region, the president’s office said on Friday. “The defense and security forces on March 17 freed seven Chinese nationals taken hostage in Cameroon’s territorial waters ... by individuals [who have] not yet been identified,” the presidency chief of staff Laurent Esso, said in a statement. The operation was carried out on orders from Cameroonian President Paul Biya, the statement read on state radio said without any details about how it was conducted or whether there were any victims. The seven fishermen were working for a private Chinese company when they were kidnapped on March 12 off the Bakassi peninsula, which is rich in fish stocks and believed to have substantial oil reserves.
■JAPAN
Super-elastic iron introduced
Researchers in Japan have designed a super-elastic iron alloy that they hope can be used in sophisticated heart and brain surgeries and even buildings in earthquake zones. In a paper published on Friday in the journal Science, the researchers said the metal’s super-elasticity allows it to return to its original form and gives it additional properties, such as ductility and a change in magnetization. The iron alloy’s stress level is about twice that of nickel titanium and it can be used to deliver stents, which are tubes placed in blood vessels to stop them from collapsing. One of the researchers, T. Omori, at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering said: “Currently, heart stents are delivered into the body using nickel titanium but the diameter of the wire is too thick to go into the brain, so iron alloy will be the answer.”
■SERBIA
Tadic skips conference
President Boris Tadic will miss a regional conference in Slovenia, his office said on Friday, highlighting deep divisions among Balkan states that could complicate their plans to join the EU. Slovenia, the only ex-Yugoslav republic that is already an EU member, organized yesterday’s conference along with Croatia to boost cooperation and help mend ties among the Balkan states that all want to join the 27-nation bloc. However, Serbia, the region’s biggest country, said it would not take part unless its former province of Kosovo attends as a UN run-protectorate, rather than as an independent state. “Unfortunately the organizers did not follow this principle and that prevents the Serb president from attending the conference,” Tadic’s office said in a statement.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Book returned 45 years late
It’s common to return a library book late — but not by half a century. Staff at a library say they were surprised and puzzled when they received a book that was 45 years overdue through their mailbox. Alison Lawrie, the principal assistant at Dinnington Library, near northern England’s Sheffield, says the Penguin first edition copy of Quartermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale was due back on Oct. 15, 1965. She says the borrower remains a mystery because the library records don’t go back that far, and the sender didn’t attach a letter or note with the book. Lawrie said on Friday the sender need not worry about a hefty fine. She says: “If the person who returned the book wants to come forward, we’d love to know the story behind it.”
■TURKEY
Chatham House honors Gul
President Abdullah Gul has won this year’s prestigious Chatham House prize for improving international relations, the British foreign policy think tank announced on Friday. Gul was named for his work in deepening Turkey’s traditional ties with the Middle East, his efforts to mediate between fractious groups in Iraq and for bringing together the Afghan and Pakistan leaderships last year. The think tank also praised his efforts to reunify the divided island of Cyprus, his role in beginning the process of reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia and his work in bringing Turkey closer to the EU.
■FRANCE
Special sex toy up for sale
A Paris jeweler is selling a 40,000 euro (US$55,000) 18-carat diamond ring mounted in a sex toy that it claims is the world’s most expensive erotic novelty. “This sex toy was designed for rich people who want to declare their love in a special way,” said Jean-Francois Tokars, a manager at Maison Victor on Paris’ posh place Vendome. The luxury sex toy is a white gold dildo that comes in various sizes and comes apart to release the ring studded with 117 diamonds. Maison Victor has already sold several sex toys that Tokars described as a “very high end product.”
■GREECE
Pakistani’s home bombed
A bomb exploded early yesterday outside the home of a Pakistani community leader in Athens without injuring anyone, police said. Anonymous warnings made by telephone to a Greek television station and a newspaper 15 minutes before the explosion enabled police to seal off the area. Media reports said the bomb had targeted the home of the chairman of the Greek-Pakistan friendship association. A bomb squad was examining the remains of the device for clues.
■UNITED STATES
Arrest made over race slur
Police say they have made an arrest in the case of a racial comment being made over the public-address system at a Walmart store in the state of New Jersey. The Washington Township Police Department said on its Web site early yesterday that an arrest has been made in a “bias incident” at the retail store. A male voice came over the Walmart public address system last Sunday evening and calmly announced: “Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now.” The announcement provoked an immediate apology from the store manager. Officials for Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc said the announcement was “unacceptable.”
■CANADA
Another avalanche kills one
Police were searching late on Friday for more people feared trapped under the second massive avalanche in a week to strike back-country snowmobilers in the Columbia Mountains in eastern British Columbia. One person was confirmed dead and another injured in a major slide, police said. Police said rescue teams with dogs were traveling to the area. The avalanche hit on Friday afternoon on Eagle Pass Mountain near Revelstoke, 566km northeast of Vancouver. A week ago two men died and 30 were injured after about 200 snowmobilers were caught in the path of another major slide on nearby Boulder Mountain.
■UNITED STATES
Biologist fired over jaguar
Arizona has fired an employee based on results of an internal investigation into the capture and death of what was the only known wild jaguar in the US. The Arizona Game and Fish Department said on Friday that 40-year-old Thornton Smith was a field biologist and had been with the agency for 12 years. He was involved in the placement and monitoring of traps used in a black bear and mountain lion research project that resulted in the initial capture on Feb. 18 last year of the jaguar called “Macho B.” It was recaptured because of health problems and euthanized less than two weeks later. Game and Fish officials said Smith acknowledged that he misled federal investigators regarding facts surrounding the jaguar’s original capture.
■VENEZUELA
Former governor charged
Prosecutors charged a government opponent with conspiracy and other crimes on Friday after he said on a television program that the country has become a haven for drug trafficking. Former Zulia state governor Oswaldo Alvarez Paz is accused of spreading false information and publicly inciting violation of the law. “Venezuela has turned into a center of operations that facilitates the business of drug trafficking,” Alvarez said on a television talk show last month, adding on Friday that he stands by his remark and has broken no laws.
■UNITED STATES
Horse roundup causes stir
Activists in the southwest are questioning the rising death toll from a government roundup of wild horses in the state of Nevada. US Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman JoLynn Worley says 77 mustangs involved in the Calico Mountains Complex gather have died so far — 70 at a Fallon facility where they were taken and the rest at the roundup site. That’s nearly double the 39 horses that had died when the roundup of 1,922 horses concluded on Feb. 5. Worley attributes the deaths mostly to the poor body condition of mares that were sent to Fallon, where the animals are being prepared for adoption or transfer to pastures in the Midwest.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in