SPORTS
Key wants rugby to go on
Prime Minister John Key said yesterday he wanted Rugby World Cup games to proceed in Christchurch this year, but local rugby officials had reservations following Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. Key said there had been no formal discussions on shifting games from Christchurch, but he believed holding them there would be a powerful symbol of the city’s resilience after two major earthquakes in the past six months. However, Canterbury Rugby Union chief executive Hamish Riach told Television New Zealand he had doubts about whether Christchurch would be able to host the matches during the September to October tournament. “Right now it doesn’t feel like we could host very much at all,” Riach said, but added that it was too early to make any decision.
INSURANCE
Quake to cost NZ$11.5bn
The devastating earthquake that hit Christchurch could cost the insurance industry up to NZ$11.5 billion (US$8.6 billion), disaster modeling firm AIR Worldwide said yesterday. The US-based firm, which specializes in forecasting the cost of natural disasters and terror attacks, said widespread quake damage had largely shut the city’s business center and infrastructure had also been hit hard. It said the structural integrity of surviving buildings in Christchurch’s central business district would need to be carefully assessed after the city’s second major earthquake in six months. Roads and bridges in Christchurch had been damaged by liquefaction, when seismic tremors turn earth fluid, AIR said, adding that suburbs and surrounding towns had also been affected.
RUSSIA
Posters cause red faces
Hundreds of posters decorating streets for a military holiday accidentally replaced Russian planes with Chinese fighter jets, an official admitted on Tuesday. Posters displayed in Saint Petersburg showed a plane against a national flag. However, instead of a Russian jet, it was in fact a Chinese Chengdu J-10. The slip, reproduced in around 250 posters, was an error by the designer, who was unfamiliar with military planes, said the head of the city’s media committee, Alexander Korennikov. “It was the designer’s fault. If you are not a specialist in military hardware, it is an easy thing to do,” he said. “The problem was that the images were printed and put up before being checked and agreed with the media committee.” The mistake was spotted at the end of last week and the posters were due to be removed by the end of Tuesday, on the eve of the holiday, Korennikov said.
SAUDI ARABIA
King boosts benefits
King Abdullah yesterday ordered billions poured into a development fund that helps Saudis buy homes, get married and start businesses, state TV reported. The measure was one of several announced by the monarch, who returned home yesterday after a three-month absence during which he underwent medical treatment in the US. Abdullah ordered that 40 billion riyals (US$10.7 billion) be injected into the country’s development fund, Saudi television said. That nearly doubles the original budget of 47 billion riyals. Other new measures include a 15 percent cost of living adjustment for government workers and a year of unemployment assistance for youth.
INDIA
Big fat weddings face axe
The government is considering proposals to limit the number of guests allowed at weddings to reduce food wastage, an official said on Tuesday. Indian weddings are famous for their extravagance and a wave of new money in the country has led to ever more lavish marriage celebrations, often involving multi-cuisine buffets and hundreds, or even thousands, of guests. “We are looking into the possibility of reintroducing the executive guest control order created in the early 1960s,” an official at the ministry of food and consumer affairs in New Delhi said. The rules limited the number of guests at weddings and other functions to deal with the scarcity of food, he said. “Today the issue is not scarcity, but food is still being wasted and maximum amount of food is wasted at weddings,” said the official, who declined to be named. Food minister K.V. Thomas calculated nearly 15 percent of all grain and vegetables in India was wasted through weddings and other social events, the Mail Today newspaper reported.
SOUTH KOREA
Groups slam live burials
Religious groups criticized the government yesterday for burying some animals alive to curb the country’s worst outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Under government guidelines, animals should be either killed or anesthetized before being buried. However, such rules have been frequently ignored with animals buried alive in many places as the disease swept much of the country, 35 Christian, Buddhist and other religious groups said in a joint statement. They released a video clip showing 1,900 pigs being buried alive near Seoul. The groups urged the government to cull animals more humanely and vowed to hold a joint memorial service for the beasts next week.
BRAZIL
Lula under investigation
Prosecutors said on Tuesday they were opening a case against former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for administrative misconduct and were seeking to block his assets. Federal prosecutors asked a federal court to try Lula and former Social Security minister Amir Lando for allegedly using public assets for personal benefit from October to December 2004. Lula and Lando allegedly sent 10 million letters to older Brazilians to urge them to seek low-interest loans. Prosecutors, who claimed a loss of about 9.5 million reais (US$6 million) for the state in sending the letters, said there was no public interest in the scheme that amounted to political self-promotion by Lula and Lando. The deal also allegedly benefited a private bank offering the loans that was linked to a corruption scandal involving bribes to ruling party lawmakers that rocked Lula’s government in 2005 and 2006, prosecutors said.
UNITED STATES
Snake owner told to pay
A woman whose 90cm long snake slithered away from her in a Boston subway car and hid there for nearly a month has gotten a hefty cleaning bill. Transit officials want Allston, Massachusetts, resident Melissa Moorhouse to pay US$650 to cover the costs of disinfecting and sanitizing the Red Line train to protect passengers from germs such as salmonella that may have been left by a boa constrictor named Penelope. Moorhouse had traveled with the snake around her neck and lost it between stations on Jan. 6. The snake was spotted on the train earlier this month by a commuter. Moorhouse said she’d pay more attention the next time she takes the snake out in public.
UNITED STATES
Mobster gets new wardrobe
A New York mafia don will be dressed to kill when his long delayed death-penalty murder trial starts — thanks to a sartorially sympathetic judge. Vincent Basciano, a Cosa Nostra wise guy known for his impeccable haircuts, can look forward to an entire new wardrobe in the tradition of famously well-turned-out killers like “Dapper Don” John Gotti. Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis signed the unusual court order that: “five sets of clothing, including but not limited to, undershirts, socks, shoes, dress shirts, suit pants and suit jackets, be made available to Basciano prior to each court date in this case.” Basciano, known as “Vinny Gorgeous,” will want to avoid the fashion disaster at his last murder trial in 2007, when, the New York Post reported, he ran out of clean clothes and had to borrow a shirt from the judge. The former boss of the Bonanno crime family, Basciano was convicted in that trial and sentenced to life in prison. He faces execution in the new trial, where he is accused of murdering another mobster.
HONDURAS
Dog snatchers shoot pastor
An evangelical pastor walking his two schnauzers was shot to death by a gunman who tried to steal the dogs, authorities said on Tuesday. Witnesses told police that the assailant got out of a car and tried to snatch the two schnauzer puppies from pastor Carlos Marroquin in the northern city of San Pedro Sula on Monday, Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said. Marroquin refused to hand over the dogs, and the gunman opened fire. Neighbors said the dogs then ran across the street to their home and the shooter fled in the vehicle. Police were looking for the gunman and a second person who drove the car. Schnauzers can sell for about US$500 in the country, where the minimum monthly salary is US$311.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of