■CHINA
Drinking water limited
Beijing said yesterday that more than 24 million people were short of drinking water because of a crippling drought, the worst to hit the country in a century. Most of those affected live in the southwest where meteorologists say the situation will not improve until the rainy season, which should begin after May 20, Vice Minister of Water Resources Liu Ning (劉寧) told reporters. Authorities have set aside 6.3 billion yuan (US$923 million) to help mitigate the immediate effects of the drought and bring drinking water to the affected population. Liu insisted food supplies would not be affected by the dry spell, which has spread across Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, the Guangxi region and Chongqing.
■PHILIPPINES
Manila says airlines safe
Aviation authorities yesterday insisted Philippine airlines were safe after the nation’s carriers were banned from flying into the EU. “Our aircraft meet the international standards in safety,” Civil Aviation Authority head Alfonso Cusi said. He was reacting to a notice from the European Commission made public on Tuesday that said authorities in Manila had failed to address safety deficiencies raised by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
■INDONESIA
Australian charged for drugs
Prosecutors have charged an Australian man with drug smuggling and are seeking a 15-year prison sentence after a small amount of marijuana was found in his luggage as he arrived on the resort island of Bali. Customs officials say 48-year-old Robert Paul McJannett of Perth had 1.7g of cannabis hidden in socks inside his suitcase when he arrived at Bali’s Denpasar airport in December. Prosecutors said they will not seek the death penalty because of the small amount. McJannett admitted to the charges but argues the drugs were for medical purposes.
■PHILIPPINES
Beauty ejected from pageant
The Philippines’ entry for the Miss Universe beauty pageant has been disqualified after local organizers discovered she was born overseas and out of wedlock, a contest official said yesterday. Maria Venus Raj, 21, was to represent her country in August and begin charity work after winning the Miss Philippines-Universe competition early this month. However, the journalism graduate was stripped of her title on Monday after the foundation that runs the local competition discovered she had been born in Qatar to an Indian man who was not married to her Filipina mother. Her birth certificate stated she was born in the Philippines to married Filipinos. She was stripped of her position not due to citizenship issues but because her birth certificate contained false information, officials said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Disabled woman starves
A disabled woman who sparked a debate over the right for people to commit suicide has died after refusing to eat for 16 days, her carers confirmed. Margaret Page, a 60-year-old who used to love scuba diving, kayaking and teaching karate to children, had been severely disabled since suffering a brain hemorrhage in 1991. Page, who lived in the capital, Wellington, needed help to eat and shower and had moved into a care center in 2001. She told the Dominion Post newspaper a week ago she no longer wanted to live and had refused food since the middle of this month, taking only occasional sips of water.
■EGYPT
Door to afterlife found
Archeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a senior official near Karnak temple in Luxor, the antiquities authority said on Monday. These recessed niches found in nearly all ancient Egyptian tombs were meant to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld. The nearly 1.75m slab of pink granite was covered with religious texts. The door came from the tomb of User, the chief minister of Queen Hatshepsut, a 15th-century BC queen from the New Kingdom with a famous mortuary temple near Luxor. User had his own tomb in Luxor and a chapel dedicated to him has also been discovered further south near Aswan. The stone itself was long way from its tomb and had apparently been removed from the grave and then incorporated into the wall of a Roman-era building, more than a thousand years later.
■EGYPT
Illegal migrants shot
Border guards have fatally shot two African migrants and wounded eight trying to cross illegally into Israel. The guards first fired warning shots to stop the migrants from crossing the border south of Rafah on Saturday, a security official said. The wounded were taken to a hospital, and three were in critical condition, while another migrant, a security official said. Many migrants seeking political asylum and jobs try to cross into Israel with the help of Bedouin traffickers.
■UNITED STATES
Prosecutors want Polanski
California prosecutors have angrily denied claims by Roman Polanski’s lawyers that they tried to conceal evidence in his 32-year-old sex case, and they have renewed demands that an appeals court order him to return to the US for sentencing. A 26-page brief filed on Tuesday says allowing Polanski to avoid extradition from Switzerland hurts the integrity of the judicial system more than revelations of alleged misconduct by a now deceased judge. They also claim there has been a misinterpretation of an extradition treaty with Switzerland and that Polanski should be returned for a court hearing in Los Angeles.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Blizzards batter north
Strong storms battered Scotland and Northern Ireland yesterday, leaving thousands of people without power and causing havoc on roads. Scottish police said a group of teenagers on a school trip were injured after their bus veered off a road and crashed into water near Biggar, 80km southwest of Glasgow. Four were seriously injured. The national weather agency said high winds, snow in drifts up to 50cm and blizzards were expected yesterday, with the worst conditions forecast for the Scottish highlands.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Breast tests save lives
Regular mammographic screening for breast cancer saves the lives of two women for every one who is given unnecessary treatment, scientists said yesterday, in a study that adds to a global row over screening programs. The British researchers said their work, which contradicts some recent studies on screening programs but confirms others, showed the benefits outweigh the harm screening can cause by picking up tumors that would not have presented a problem. “Unfortunately, we haven’t yet got a flawless screening test, and some cases that are picked up wouldn’t have needed treatment,” said Stephen Duffy of Queen Mary, University of London, who led the study.
■UNITED STATES
Bobcat uses front door
A homeower in Port Ludlow, Washington, said he left his front door open for his own cats over the weekend — and he wasn’t expecting a 16kg bobcat to walk in. The man told animal control officers he watched the wild cat jump over a couch, climb over a big screen TV and then jump up to a loft, where it made itself at home. Washington Fish and Wildlife Officer Win Miller says the bobcat apparently felt safe upstairs. The officers shot the cat with a tranquilizer gun and removed it from the home last weekend. The bobcat was released back into the wild about 10km from the home.
■UNITED STATES
Motorist flees into prison
Police say a motorist fleeing officers in Cleveland, Ohio, abandoned his car and jumped a fence — landing in what turned out to be a yard of a state women’s prison. The car chase started in Garfield Heights early on Monday over a traffic violation and reached speeds of 145kph. After a race through several communities, the driver and a passenger bolted from the car and headed for a fence, not realizing they were outside a prison. They were arrested along with two other passengers who also tried to flee.
■UNITED STATES
‘Material Girl’ launched
Madonna and her 13-year-old daughter, Lourdes, have collaborated on a fashion line for juniors to be launched in July. The “Material Girl” collection will be available at Macys and macys.com from late July in time for the new school year, a statement on Madonna’s Web site said. The 51-year-old singer said she had really enjoyed designing a fashion collection for Swedish fashion chain H&M three years ago, but it was Lourdes who really wanted to do this collection. Madonna said her daughter’s style was “inspired by kids she sees in hip-hop and ballet classes, European influences, bands she listens to.”
■UNITED STATES
Drive-by shooting kills four
A drive-by shooting killed four people and wounded six in Washington on Tuesday night, and three people were in custody, officials said. A gunman sprayed bullets “into a crowd,” police chief Cathy Lanier said. The shootings occurred bout 7:30pm in southeastern Washington, a police spokesman said. Fire department spokesman Pete Piringer said all the victims were in their 20s and 30s, except for one teenager. One victim died at the scene, one was dead on arrival at the hospital and two others died in hospital, a spokeswoman for Washington Hospital Center said. Three people were arrested and a weapon was recovered, police said.
■UNITED STATES
Inspirational teacher dies
Jaime Escalante, the math teacher who transformed a tough East Los Angeles high school and inspired the movie Stand and Deliver, died on Tuesday. The 79-year-old Escalante died at his son’s home near Sacramento, after battling bladder cancer for several years, a family friend said. The Bolivian immigrant transformed Garfield High School by motivating struggling students to excel at advanced math and science. The school had more advanced placement calculus students than all but four other public high schools in the country. Edward James Olmos played Escalante in the 1988 film based on his story. Escalante was a teacher in La Paz before he emigrated to the US, where he had to study English at night for years to get his California teaching credentials and return to the classroom.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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