■ HONG KONG
Drug may benefit Asians
The anti-clotting drug cilostazol may work better than aspirin in preventing secondary strokes in east Asian patients, a study in Japan has found. In a paper published yesterday in the Lancet Neurology, the researchers said cilostazol reduced by 26 percent the risk of recurrent strokes compared with aspirin. “Cilostazol ... might be superior to aspirin for prevention of stroke after an ischaemic stroke, and was associated with fewer haemorrhagic events,” wrote the researchers, led by Yukito Shinohara at Tachikawa Hospital in Tokyo.
■ MALAYSIA
Fire disrupts holiday
Motorists trying to get to Penang for the country’s busy holiday weekend yesterday were stuck in 4km tailbacks when its iconic bridge caught fire. State public works and transportation committee chairman Lim Hock Seng, said a power cable under the 13.5km bridge caught fire at 10:40am on the second day of the busy Eid ul-Fitr holiday. “There is a lot of black smoke coming from under the bridge as the cable is still burning and is not accessible from the top side so we are waiting for fireboats to arrive and put out the flames,” he said. There was no danger to the structure of the bridge and it was still safe for traffic.
■ TAJIKISTAN
Militants killed on border
At least 20 Islamist militants and one border guard were killed earlier this week in a firefight along the volatile border with Afghanistan officials said yesterday. “These Afghan anti-government fighters were hiding on an island in the river Pyandzh,” which forms the border between the two states, border guard spokesman Colonel Khushnud Rakhmatullayev said. “There was a clash with small arms fire which lasted nearly 24 hours,” he added. The country, shares a porous 1,300km border with Afghanistan.
■ CHINA
Activist’s release welcomed
A US lawmaker on Friday welcomed China’s release of an activist who exposed abuses in the one-child policy, but called on Beijing to ensure his health — and to address the concerns he raised. Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), a blind, self-taught lawyer, was freed on Thursday after four years in prison. He had accused officials in eastern Shandong province of forcing at least 7,000 women to be sterilized or undergo late-term abortions. Representative Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and outspoken critic of China’s one-child policy voiced concern that Chen remained under house arrest and needed medical attention.
■ UNITED NATIONS
Bachelet favorite for post
Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet is the front-runner to head a new UN agency to promote gender equality, several UN officials said. When the General Assembly voted unanimously on July 2 to merge four existing UN bodies dealing with the advancement of women, Bachelet was immediately tipped as a possible leader. However, Bachelet, who left the presidency in March initially told UN officials she didn’t want to lead the new entity, to be known as “UN Women,” because she wanted to remain active in Chilean politics, the officials said. In recent weeks, however, she apparently changed her mind and is now at the top of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s list, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks have been private.
■ FRANCE
Retirement age to be 62
Lawmakers on Friday approved government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018, a key item on French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s agenda to overhaul the costly pension system. The lower house of parliament later approved a proposal to gradually lift the age when pensions will be paid out in full from 65 to 67 regardless of the number of years retirees have contributed to the pension fund. The lower house vote on the entire pension bill has been scheduled for Wednesday before a Senate vote late this month. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Thursday, two days after over a million people took to the streets in protest, the pension reform was “reasonable” but not “definitive” and open to adjustments. He also warned that without an extension of the working life, pension schemes could not be balanced. Unions have called on workers to make Sept. 23 another “major day of strikes and demonstrations.”
■SPAIN
Theme park planned
Paramount Pictures said on Friday it had reached a deal to open its first theme park in Europe in Spain, the world’s third-most visited country, which will create thousands of jobs. In a statement, Paramount Licensing said it “will not be an investor in the project, but will license intellectual property from its vast library of films and provide conceptual master planning and design for the project.” The park will be located in the southeastern region of Murcia on the Mediterranean coast at a yet-to-be disclosed date, it added. Spanish media reported that Paramount’s planned theme park will create some 20,000 jobs and will attract nearly 3 million tourists each year.
■ FRANCE
Minister denies engagement
The foreign ministry on Friday denied reports that 70-year-old Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner plans to marry his long-term companion, journalist Christine Ockrent. “I can assure you on Bernard Kouchner’s behalf that these rumors are unfounded,” ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said by telephone from Brussels, where Kouchner was attending informal EU talks. On Wednesday, a source close to Kouchner told reporters that the minister planned to wed 66-year-old Ockrent in Rome at an unspecified future date.
■SERBIA
Weapons suspects jailed
France and Serbia have arrested 15 Serbs over the past two days accused of trafficking weapons from the Balkan country to France, a spokesman for the intelligence agency said on Friday. “They were involved in smuggling explosives and automatic weapons in a truck,” said Jovica Stojic, a spokesman for the Security Information Agency. “More arrests are possible, as the investigation is still ongoing.” Stojic said officials had arrested eight suspects in Serbia and seven in France. All 15 are Serbian citizens. He did not say who the weapons were destined for. Belgrade is stepping up efforts to crack down on organized crime as part of its efforts to join the EU.
■FRANCE
‘Father’ of 55 arrested
A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines for suspected paternity fraud and for helping to obtain residency under false pretenses, police said on Friday. The 54-year-old of African origin, whom authorities did not identify, was arrested in his two-room flat in Paris during a police raid which yielded documents showing more than 50 people were registered as living at that address.
■ UNITED STATES
‘Prince of Pot’ sentenced
Canada’s so-called Prince of Pot, who sold millions of marijuana seeds to customers before his 2005 arrest, has been sentenced to five years in prison after earlier pleading guilty to a drug charge. At his sentencing on Friday in District Court in Seattle, Marc Emery told the court that he “arrogantly violated US law.” Extradited from Vancouver, British Columbia, in May, the 52-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana. On his Web site, Emery claimed to have made about US$3 million a year selling seeds and to have sold more than 4 million seeds over the years.
■ CANADA
Sheen pickets at film festival
US actor Martin Sheen joined striking hotel workers on the picket line on Friday outside a downtown hotel while in Toronto for the film festival. Workers at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel launched a 24-hour strike as the film festival kicked off. Several celebrities, including Sheen, are staying at the hotel. “I’m a union member [and have been] all my life,” said Sheen, picking up a placard and walking the picket line. “I cannot not support a union now.” Unite Here Local 75, which represents 900 hotel staff upset over increased workloads and cutbacks, hope to pressure management to return to the bargaining table. Sheen is a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
■ CUBA
US denies visa to mother
The mother of freed dissident Nelson Molinet said on Friday she was denied a US entry visa, along with her daughter and grandson, despite her son’s desire to move to the US and leave Cuba permanently. “They didn’t give me any reason. The letter we were given says we’re not qualified to emigrate to the United States,” Caridad Espina, 68, told reporters after her interview with the US Interest Section in Havana. Molinet is one of 52 jailed dissidents the government agreed to release in July on request of the Roman Catholic Church. Thirty dissidents have since traveled to Spain.
■ UNITED STATES
Schwarzenegger, Palin jab
Flying over Alaska on his way to Asia, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t help but take a lighthearted jab at the state’s former governor. His Twitter message on Thursday night said he was “looking everywhere but can’t see Russia from here,” a reference to an infamous remark from Republican then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign. That prompted a tart response from Palin on Friday. The former Alaska governor says in her own Twitter message that “Arnold should have landed” so she could explain to him her state’s multibillion dollar budget surplus. California has a US$19 billion budget deficit.
■ UNITED STATES
Pets found in school freezer
School officials say a custodian cleaning up a trailer at an Oregon school found 17 dead pets in a freezer, including six cats. Portland Public Schools officials said the principal at Ockley Green School in Portland asked the custodian in July to help turn a little-used trailer behind the school into a classroom. The Oregonian reports that the custodian found the animals in garbage bags and frozen solid in an upright freezer. Besides the cats, there were two hamsters, two goldfish, two frogs, a guinea pig, a hedgehog, a parakeet, a lizard and a spider. A longtime volunteer says the animals were pets that had died of natural causes but it was too painful to part with them. Police say she wasn’t cited because the animals had not been abused.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema