■THAILAND
Senators slug it out
Two senators fought it out on Monday in front of parliament, but this was no political grudge match — they wanted to promote Thai kickboxing. “It’s good that I can still stand,” 59-year-old Payap Tongchuen joked after going two rounds with Direk Tungfang, 64, in a boxing ring set up in front of the parliament building in Bangkok. The referee declared the fighters — both former professional boxers — joint victors.
■CHINA
Crackdown targets officials
A corruption crackdown in northern China found that nearly 300 local officials spend working hours relaxing in massage parlors, bathhouses and karaoke bars, state press said yesterday. Of the 296 officials busted in Shanxi Province, 79 have been demoted or fired, while the rest also face punishment, Xinhua news agency said. A senior policeman who was found getting a massage in a bathhouse and a leading administrator of a top Shanxi hospital caught playing mahjong in a tea house were among those exposed, it said. “At present, our team of officials in Shanxi Province is basically good, but we still have some problems with the manner in which they work,” Xinhua cited Yuan Chunqing (袁純清), the top provincial party official, as saying. “The biggest problems come up in their leisure, eating and entertainment activities,” he said.
■THAILAND
Drill sends hundreds fleeing
The government apologized yesterday to a region where thousands died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami after a botched warning drill caused hundreds to flee their homes. Villagers in Phang Nga Province fled to higher ground on Monday after warning sirens went off intermittently, 30 minutes after a scheduled drill was completed in Ban Nam Khem, a village devastated by the 2004 tsunami. Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said faulty equipment was to blame. “I want to apologize to the people. I understand they were angry because the alarm sent everyone running but no one should be replaced, it’s not that serious,” he said.
■PHILIPPINES
Aquino invokes legacy
President Benigno Aquino III yesterday invoked his parents’ democratic legacy as he sought to reassert his leadership after a hostage fiasco that left eight tourists dead. Speaking before the police forces, Aquino sought to portray last month’s hijacking of a tourist bus as a momentary fumble and insisted that his reform and anti-corruption policies were on track. Amid widespread criticism of his government’s handling of the Aug. 23 incident, Aquino said: “In the name of my parents I will not allow our country to sink no matter how heavy the challenges that may come.” Aquino’s father, a leader of the opposition against Ferdinand Marcos, was shot dead at Manila airport as he returned from exile in 1983. His mother led the revolution that ousted the dictator. “Stop doubting your police forces and your government. After six years I assure you the sole legacy of my administration will be honest service — not corruption, not greed, not any shadow of a past tragedy,” he said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Plane makes mercy dash
An air force plane made a rare wintertime landing on an ice runway in Antarctica on a mercy mission yesterday to evacuate an American worker in serious medical condition, officials said. Blizzard conditions eased to allow the Orion aircraft to land at the US McMurdo Station science base before refueling and returning to New Zealand.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ryanair chief angers pilots
Captain Morgan Fischer for budget carrier Ryanair came up with a new money-saving idea yesterday after the firm suggested axing the number of pilots on flights — replace the airline’s boss with a flight attendant. The Irish airline’s outspoken chief executive Michael O’Leary has generated headlines with a string of ideas that have cemented Ryanair’s reputation as the leading no-frills carrier, from “fat taxes” to coin-operated toilets. However, news that he is trying to persuade authorities to let his aircraft fly with just one pilot — claiming that a flight attendant could do the job of a co-pilot if needed — appears to have gone too far for some.
■ITALY
Libya strafes Sicilian boat
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says a Libyan patrol boat with an Italian border police observer aboard strafed a Sicilian fishing vessel in the Mediterranean, but no one was hurt. Frattini said on Monday that Libya apologized for the machine gun shooting. Frattini told Italian state TV that the Italian paramilitary border police officer was aboard on Sunday as part of Italian-Libyan efforts to crack down on smugglers’ boats trafficking in illegal migrants. Bulletholes pocked the boat, which returned safely to port in Sicily. Frattini said the Libyans had given an order to shoot in the air, but somehow hit the fishing boat on Sunday.
■ISRAEL
Soldiers not investigated
The military has failed to investigate its forces for killing dozens of Palestinian civilians in recent years, spawning a climate of impunity for soldiers, a human rights group said yesterday. “Soldiers who kill Palestinians in the occupied territories are almost never held accountable, even if the circumstances raise a grave suspicion that they acted criminally,” the Israeli group B’Tselem said. B’Tselem said that from 2006 to last year the military had opened investigations into just 23 of 148 cases in which 288 civilians were killed. During the period in question Israeli troops killed 1,510 Palestinians, including 617 civilians, the group said.
■SENEGAL
Deadly sand to be cleaned
Authorities are planning to send lead waste in sand to China for treatment after the waste killed 20 children in Dakar in 2008, a senior official said on Monday. “The ministry is trying to come up with 200 million CFA francs [US$395,000] to transport the sand to China where it will be treated,” said Cheikh Ndiaye Sylla, the head of the Senegalese environment and protected sites office. Villagers have demanded the removal of the waste which was dumped at the end of June and early in July near their land after killing 20 children in the capital Dakar in 2008. The pollution came from attempts to recover the lead while recycling motor batteries on the black market.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Hunger costs US$450 billion
The effects of hunger could be costing developing countries US$450 billion a year, aid agency ActionAid warned yesterday, ahead of a UN summit on development. Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Lesotho came out worst in their efforts to cut rates of hunger, according to ActionAid’s analysis. Countries that topped the campaign group’s rankings were Brazil, China, Ghana, Malawi and Vietnam, which had slashed hunger by increasing investment in small farms and introducing social protection schemes.
■UNITED STATES
Rushdie pro Islamic center
The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie is not a great fan of organized worship but believes an Islamic center and mosque should be permitted two blocks from Ground Zero. Rushdie’s satirical novel led in the 1980s to worldwide riots by Muslims and calls for his death. He said in an interview on Monday that he understands the “sensitivities” of building the site close to where thousands were killed during on Sept. 11, 2001. However, he says that the constitutional right to freedom of speech and religion should be honored.
■CANADA
Army denies drug charges
The armed forces on Monday denied British press reports that troops stationed in Afghanistan were being investigated for smuggling heroin. The Sunday Times this weekend reported that British military police were investigating the alleged involvement of both British and Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan in a drug smuggling ring. In a statement, Provost Marshal Colonel Tim Grubb denied an investigation was even under way. “Media reports this past weekend suggesting that Canadian Forces personnel have been implicated in a British-led investigation into heroin smuggling by military personnel in Afghanistan are unfounded,” Grubb said.
■UNITED STATES
Vote due on gays in military
The Senate could vote early next week on a bill that permits the Pentagon to end a ban on gays serving openly in the military a top lawmaker said on Monday. Senators will take up an annual military spending blueprint, which includes language on the 1993 policy, “at the end of this week, maybe next week,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, told reporters. “It does not repeal ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ — I wish it did, but it doesn’t. It simply authorizes the ending of the policy if there’s a certification that doing so will not undermine the morale of our troops,” Levin said.
■MEXICO
Flood fatalities increasing
At least 25 people have died since the end of last month due to heavy rains and flooding which have affected almost one million people in south and eastern Mexico, according to the latest toll on Monday. Two teenagers were crushed by a wall and a man was swept away in a river in the latest deaths at the weekend in the southern state of Oaxaca, according to regional civil protection authorities. A total of 15 deaths have been reported in Oaxaca and at least 10 in the eastern state of Veracruz since last week. The governor of neighboring Tabasco, where no deaths have been reported, has warned of worse to come next month and in November. President Felipe Calderon last week said Mexico was experiencing its worst rainy season on record.
■HAITI
UN acts against sex crimes
The UN is launching a campaign against a wave of rapes in Haitian camps for people still displaced by this year’s devastating earthquake. The UN’s top official in the country told the Security Council on Monday that police and soldiers in the UN’s peacekeeping force are being trained on how to handle rape and other sexual violence. Edmund Mulet, who heads the UN stabilization mission in the country, says a public relations campaign is under way to teach people how to prevent and respond to rape and other sexual attacks. More than 1.3 million people were displaced by the January quake and many remain homeless, living in camps where women and children are vulnerable.
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