MALAYSIA
Wife ladles away tiger
A woman in Perak state rescued her husband from a tiger attack by clubbing the beast on its head with a large wooden soup ladle and chasing it away, police said yesterday. The tiger pounced on Tambun Gediu while he was hunting squirrels on Saturday near his home in a jungle settlement of the Jahai tribe, a police official said. Tambun’s 55-year-old wife, Han Besau, rushed out when she heard his screams and struck the tiger on its head with a kitchen ladle, causing it to flee immediately, the official said. Tambun was receiving treatment at a hospital for lacerations on his face and legs. He told reporters that he first tried to escape by climbing a tree, but the tiger dragged him down. “I was terrified and I used all my strength to punch the animal in the face, but it would not budge,” the New Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying. “It would have clawed me to death if my wife had not arrived.”
JAPAN
Ozawa might be suspended
Executives of the ruling Democratic Party proposed suspending the party membership of powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, who has been indicted for a funding scandal, an official said yesterday, risking a split in the party. Ozawa’s scandal-tainted image, along with the Democratic Party’s flip-flops over costly campaign promises and diplomatic missteps, has helped slice support for Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government to below 20 percent, the lowest since he took office in June.
INDONESIA
Valentine’s Day okay
The top Islamic body softened its hardline stance toward Valentine’s Day yesterday, dropping fears over outbreaks of “free sex” and dismissing it instead as a harmless fad. In recent years it has become customary for the council to issue a fatwa condemning Valentine’s Day as a threat to Islamic values. It was equally customary for residents to ignore the clerics and send their loved ones Valentine’s Day cards, chocolates and flowers.
CHINA
Forums under clampdown
The government has called for a reduction in the number of international conferences and forums held in the country, apparently out of fear the proliferating meetings are squandering public funds. Officials have been asked to restrict the number of international meetings they host and stop holding events with no “substance,” the finance and foreign ministries said. Conferences with the same or similar themes must not be held at the same time or even at short intervals, the ministries said in a joint statement over the weekend. State media reports yesterday suggested the new restrictions took aim at the spiraling costs of some gatherings. Organizers should also refrain from inviting Chinese Communist Party officials or government leaders to their events, the statement said, without giving a reason for the new rules.
INDIA
Pakistani singer detained
Popular Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has been detained at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport carrying US$124,000, a much larger amount than is permissible under local law. The Press Trust of India news agency said Rahat and his 18-member troupe were detained at the airport on Sunday before they could fly to the United Arab Emirates. A Pakistani diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Khan’s detention yesterday and said Pakistani High Commission officials had taken up the matter with authorities in New Delhi.
GERMANY
Thousands in human chain
Thousands of people formed a human chain in Dresden to protest against a far-right march on Sunday on the 66th anniversary of the Allied bombing of the city in World War II. City authorities said that 17,000 people formed a chain around the rebuilt city center. News agency DAPD reported that they included the federal interior minister and Saxony’s state governor. Three waves of British and US bombers on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, 1945, destroyed Dresden’s centuries-old baroque city center. The total number of people killed has long been uncertain. In 2008, a panel commissioned by state officials found that the firebombing killed no more than 25,000 people — far fewer than academics’ previous estimates that ran as high as 135,000. The city remembers the victims while also recalling “nights and days in which Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry were earlier reduced to rubble by German bombers,” Dresden Deputy Mayor Detlef Sittel said. Far-right groups have long sought to exploit the bombing. A few thousand supporters marched later on Sunday from the city’s main station, carrying torches and banners with slogans such as “the victims were our families.”
UNITED STATES
Obama urges cooperation
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday urged the new Lebanese government to cooperate with a UN tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. “Ending the era of impunity for political assassinations is essential to realizing the justice and stability that the Lebanese people deserve, and any attempt to interfere with the Tribunal’s work or fuel tensions within Lebanon must not be tolerated,” Obama said in a statement issued on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the car bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others. The UN-backed tribunal is widely expected to accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the 2005 killing.
SOUTH AFRICA
Frigate to fight piracy
The government has deployed a frigate to the Mozambique Channel off east Africa to help fight the southward creep of piracy, public broadcaster SABC reported on Sunday. The deployment marks the first time the government has sent a ship to take part in anti-piracy operations and it follows international pressure on the key regional player to step up its role in the fight against piracy. The ship, the SAS Mendi, will join five other frigates and 18 smaller boats in the operation, SABC said.
RUSSIA
Volunteers take ‘space walk’
An international group of volunteers was scheduled yesterday to step out for a “space walk” on Mars in the culmination of an unprecedented experiment to study the effects of a mission to the Red Planet. Two volunteers from Italy and Russia were set to step onto a sandy mock-up of the Martian surface after a grueling eight-month journey — all without ever leaving a Moscow research center. Outfitted in white space suits, they will plant the flags of Russia, the European Space Agency and China in a mission that the Kremlin hopes to repeat for real by 2040. Yesterday’s space walk came about halfway through an experiment in which participants spend 520 days in isolation to test how humans would respond to the pressures of the long voyage to Mars. A team of six men from Europe, Russia and China has been locked up since June in a mock-up spaceship at the institute to test the psychological effects of an 18-month round trip in the experiment.
COLOMBIA
China may build ‘dry canal’
China is in talks to build a “dry canal” linking the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts by rail, President Juan Manuel Santos was quoted as saying on Sunday. The 220km project, dubbed as an alternative to the Panama Canal, is one of a series of Chinese proposals that would boost transport links with Asia and improve the country’s infrastructure, the Financial Times said, citing documents it has seen. “It’s a real proposal ... and it is quite advanced,” Santos told the newspaper in an interview published on its Web site.
CHILE
Series of quakes hit center
A series of underwater earthquakes have struck the center of the country, US monitors said, two days after a powerful temblor rattled residents in the quake-prone country. The latest quake measured 6.6 and occurred in the Pacific Ocean 97km west of Talca yesterday, according to the US Geological Survey. Earlier tremors were magnitude 6.0, 5.8 and 5.6, and happened on Sunday about 95km west of Chillan, in the Bio-Bio region. There were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunamis were anticipated. The quakes were among a series of at least two dozen aftershocks following Friday’s powerful magnitude 6.8 quake which struck the same region, though no casualties or damage were reported.
UNITED STATES
State Department in a twitter
The Department of State began sending Twitter messages in Farsi on Sunday in the hopes of reaching social media users in Iran. On the Twitter account, USA darFarsi, the department told Iranians, “We want to join in your conversation.” The second and third tweets were more pointed. The department accused Iran’s government of illegalizing dissent while praising Egyptian protesters for the same activities. The messages then called on Iran “to allow people to enjoy same universal rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate as in Cairo.” The Farsi Twitter account had 60 followers within two hours of its launch.
MEXICO
Seven die in road shootout
A state security official says a street shootout, possibly between local drug gangs, has killed seven people and injured one in suburban Mexico City. State security agency spokesman Edgar Sanchez says the shooting occurred early on Sunday morning in the northern part of Mexico State that borders Mexico City. He said the dead, six men and one woman, all suffered gunshot wounds and none have yet to be claimed by family. State Attorney General spokesman Alfredo Albiter said an investigation is under way on the cause of the killings, but he wouldn’t discount a dispute between local street dealers.
COLOMBIA
Drugs might be legalized
Conservative President Juan Manuel Santos said on Sunday that he could consider legalizing drugs as a way to reduce violence and crime in his country. “It is an alternative that we can discuss. I am not opposed to any formula that is effective,” Santos said in an interview with Semana, a news magazine. “And if the world decides to legalize and thinks that that is how we reduce violence and crime, I could go along with that.” Santos was one of a handful of prominent Latin American leaders who condemned a referendum held in California in November on legalizing marijuana, saying that if it passed it would make it harder to combat drug cartels in the region.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was