■PAKISTAN
YouTube partially blocked
Islamabad has partially unblocked the popular video sharing website YouTube, but links to “sacrilegious or profane material” will remain restricted, a top government official said yesterday. State authorities blocked YouTube last week to contain content deemed blasphemous, a day after it cut off access to social networking site Facebook indefinitely because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed. “We have lifted the ban on only that part which is not displaying any sacrilegious or profane material,” Secretary of Information Technology and Telecom Naguibullah Malik said. However, while many of the videos connected with the competition were blocked, others remained accessible yesterday morning.
■MALAYSIA
Refugees on hunger strike
Dozens of Sri Lankan asylum seekers have gone on a hunger strike at a detention center, a month after authorities forced them off a leaking boat, officials said yesterday. Sixty-one people have refused to eat since Tuesday and plan to continue their hunger strike until they are recognized as refugees and get access to international rights groups, said Nalini Elumalai, a representative of human rights group Suaram. The authorities detained 75 ethnic Tamils last month from a fishing trawler, which police say was supposed to smuggle them into Australia. They have since been held at a detention center near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
■CHINA
Sexagenarian gives birth
A 60-year-old retiree has become the oldest woman in the country to give birth, bearing twins after becoming pregnant via in-vitro fertilization, state media reported yesterday. The woman, whose real name was not given, gave birth to the two baby girls prematurely on Tuesday in Hefei, Anhui Province, the China Daily said. The births came 34 weeks after she became impregnated to ease the pain caused by the death of her 28-year-old daughter, Tingting, who died in a “gas poisoning” incident early last year along with her husband, it said. “Their cry resembles my late daughter,” she was quoted as saying after the birth were born via Cesarean section.
■NEPAL
Teen survives Mount Everest
The 13-year-old American boy who became the youngest person to scale Mount Everest made it off the mountain safely on Wednesday, saying reaching the highest point in the world was the time of his life. Jordan Romero, from Big Bear, California, reached the 8,850m summit on Saturday with his father, Paul Romero, his father’s girlfriend, Karen Lundgren, and three Sherpa guides. “It was a feeling like no other,” he told reporters in a brief interview after entering the country from Tibet. “We were having a time of our lives. It was the best view you could get anywhere in the world.” He broke the record set by Temba Tsheri of Nepal, who reached the peak at age 16.
■HONG KONG
British woman bit by rat
A rat bit a British woman visiting an upmarket shopping district, local newspapers reported yesterday, raising fears the attack could damage the region’s reputation. The 34-year-old tourist was visiting a shoe-repair stall in Central district’s Pedder Street at lunchtime when she was bitten on the heel. “She felt she had been stung in the left leg. She then found blood on her left ankle and discovered a rat and ran,” the South China Morning Post reported.
■FRANCE
Fugitive doctor arrested
Police have arrested a doctor suspected of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and wanted by Interpol, authorities in the town of Sannois, near Paris, said on Wednesday. Eugene Rwamucyo was arrested while attending the funeral of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, a former Rwandan official who had died in prison while serving a sentence for taking part in the organized massacres, the office of the mayor of Sannois said. The arrest was made under a 2006 warrant issued at the request of Rwanda.
■GERMANY
Officials confident on dikes
Officials say they are confident reinforced dikes will hold as flooding on the Oder River along the border with Poland approaches its peak. Flooding from southwestern Poland has been advancing downstream to the border region. Brandenburg State Interior Minister Rainer Speer said flood defenses had been bolstered by thousands of sandbags. Speer told ARD television yesterday that he expected the water level to remain high for two or three days, before falling and he expected the dikes could handle it.
■UKRAINE
White camel poisoned
A white camel has died at Kiev zoo a month after the death of its only elephant, administrators said on Wednesday, adding the animals may have been poisoned by a disgruntled former employee. The four-year-old female camel died on Tuesday, the zoo’s press office in the Ukraine capital said in a statement. “There are strong reasons to believe it was a premeditated poisoning,” it said. A man believed to be in his 40s who had spent a lot of time at the camels’ enclosure is suspected of passing the camel poisoned food, it said. On the day of his visit, zoo staff had found in the enclosure “boiled potatoes that do not form part of the rations of these animals,” the statement said.
■GREECE
Engineers cut off PM’s phone
Telecoms engineers cut off the telephone line to the prime minister’s house while attempting to disconnect a customer who was behind with their payments, the telephone company said on Wednesday. The Athens phone number of the customer in arrears was the same as that of Prime Minister George Papandreou’s home number, save for one digit, telecoms company OTE said in a statement. OTE’s chairman wrote a letter to Papandreou to explain the error and engineers went to the prime minister’s house after they were informed of the problem.
■GREECE
Frogs close highway
Officials say a horde of frogs has forced the closure of a key northern highway for two hours. Thessaloniki traffic police chief Giorgos Thanoglou says “millions” of the amphibians covered the tarmac on Wednesday near the town of Langadas. “There was a carpet of frogs,” he said. Authorities closed the highway after three car drivers skidded off the road trying to dodge the frogs.
■FRANCE
Gaultier to leave Hermes
Couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier is stepping down as artistic director of the luxury ready-to-wear brand Hermes after seven years to concentrate on his own projects, the group announced yesterday. From autumn-winter next year, Gaultier will be replaced by French designer Christophe Lemaire. Gaultier’s last collection for Hermes for spring-summer next year will be presented in October, the group added.
■CANADA
Inuit seek oil moratorium
Northern peoples on Wednesday called for a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic until safeguards are in place to avoid a spill like the one soiling the US Gulf Coast. “Against the backdrop of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Inuit are seeking an immediate pause on drilling in the Beaufort Sea in order to take stock,” Inuit leader Mary Simon told the Economic Club of Canada, a leading business forum. The US Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds some 90 billion barrels of oil and 44 billion barrels of natural gas, or 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves. In a letter to Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, Simon called for a “time-out” on drilling in the Beaufort Sea until strict environmental safeguards are in place.
■UNITED STATES
Activist pleads guilty
A conservative activist famous for obtaining embarrassing footage of a prominent community action group has pleaded guilty in a bizarre caper targeting a Democratic senator. James O’Keefe, who famously posed as a pimp in undercover videos to expose the left-wing community group Acorn, was arrested in January with three other men. Two of the men dressed up as telephone repairmen and tried to gain access to the telephone system of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, the plea agreement said on Wednesday. O’Keefe was ordered to pay a US$1,500 fine and placed on three years probation with 100 hours of community service to be served in the first year, after pleading guilty to the misdemeanor crime of entering a federal building under false pretenses.
■UNITED STATES
GM sued over Einstein
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which holds rights to Albert Einstein’s image, is asking General Motors Co to pay for using the physics pioneer in a magazine ad. The Detroit automaker grafted the Nobel Prize-winning German scientist’s head onto the body of a buff, shirtless man in a Nov. 30 ad in People magazine. The ad had the slogan “Ideas Are Sexy Too.” The school filed suit against GM earlier this month in federal court in California. The suit quotes Forbes magazine in 2008 as saying Einstein earned US$18 million a year, fourth among deceased celebrities. Einstein died in 1955.
■ARGENTINA
Model arrested for drugs
A former beauty queen and lingerie model has been arrested in Buenos Aires on international drug trafficking charges after months on the run from police, officials said. Colombian model Angie Sanclemente Valencia, 30, was expected in court yesterday accused of heading a smuggling operation that used fellow models to smuggle cocaine to Europe, a police source said. She had been on the run since December, when a warrant was issued for her arrest. Judicial officials previously rejected a plea by her lawyer Guillermo Tiscornia for special treatment, saying she had not turned herself in because she was “afraid of being raped” in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Sleeper left on airplane
Officials are trying to figure out how a sleeping passenger was found onboard a flight four hours after it landed in Philadelphia. Police and the Transportation Security Administration say the passenger didn’t wake up when her United Express flight from Washington landed shortly after midnight on Tuesday. About four hours later, a cleaning crew found her, KYW-TV reported. United Airlines says they’re working to determine why the plane wasn’t cleared upon landing.
‘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