BELGIUM
No apology from Merkel
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had apologized for her behavior at an EU summit, where she allegedly exchanged a knowing smirk over Berlusconi with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. However, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert denied she said she was sorry. “No apology from the Chancellor because there was nothing to apologize for. Berlusconi + Merkel have good, open talks among friends,” Seibert said on Twitter. The Italian press this week slammed Europe’s power couple for ridiculing Italy during a press conference in Brussels on Sunday. During a brief interruption at a new round of summit talks, Berlusconi called a friend at the RAI television network and said: “Merkel came to excuse herself for last Sunday,” adding: “She told me she hadn’t wanted to denigrate Italy.” Berlusconi said that Sarkozy’s failure to greet him at the summit was because he “did not have the opportunity.”
FRANCE
Arab Spring activists win
Five Arab Spring activists have won the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize awarded to campaigners for freedom, a parliamentary source said yesterday. The winners are: Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia, awarded posthumously, Egyptian militant Asmaa Mahfouz, Libyan dissident Ahmed al-Zubair Ahmed al-Sanusi, Syrian lawyer Razan Zeitouneh and Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat, the source said. The Arab Spring revolutions were sparked by Bouazizi, who set himself alight on Dec. 17 and died in hospital two weeks later. His actions led to a popular uprising in Tunisia that brought down the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and spread through the Arab world. Mahfouz founded the April 6 youth movement that inspired thousands of Egyptians to protest in Cairo, leading to the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak. Al-Sanusi, 77, spent 31 years behind bars for opposing Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. The prize also honors two Syrians who are part of the current uprising: Zeitouneh, a 34-year-old lawyer leading the groups coordinating the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, and Farzat, a caricaturist who was badly beaten in August.
ISRAEL
Air force raids over Gaza
The air force carried out three raids early yesterday on the Gaza Strip after a rocket was launched from the Hamas-controlled territory at southern Israel, witnesses said. The raids targeted areas east and west of Khan Yunes in the south of the Strip, and a base of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades was hit, they said. An army spokesman confirmed that aircraft had “attacked three terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip, as well as an arms factory in the south of the territory.” A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip late on Wednesday at an area near Ashdod in southern Israel, without causing any casualties, a military spokeswoman said earlier.
ITALY
Car hit with whopping fine
Police in Sicily issued a fine of 32,000 euros (US$44,500) for an illegally parked car after totting up 2,000 years of interest by mistake, la Repubblica newspaper said on Wednesday. The interest due was calculated from the year 208 after a policeman dated the fine back to the year 208 instead of 2008. “When she opened the envelope with the parking fine, the owner of the vehicle had a dizzy turn and had to be taken to hospital,” the paper said on its Web site. Police acknowledged the error and the woman’s husband paid the 102 euros actually due.
VENEZUELA
Chavez denies he is dying
Hugo Chavez, who had a cancerous tumor removed in June, but is secretive about the details of his ailment, has said a doctor who claims the Venezuelan president has only two years to live is a “liar.” Salvador Navarrete, a Venezuelan doctor who said he was part of Chavez’s medical team until 2002, told Mexico’s Milenio magazine that Chavez has only two years to live because he has an aggressive type of cancer known as sarcoma. Navarrete fled Venezuela soon after his comments, fearing for his safety. “He’s a big fat liar. I hope he shows his face,” Chavez said on Wednesday.
NETHERLANDS
IVF treatment, tumors linked
Women who were given hormone treatment for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) ran twice the risk of ovarian malignancies compared with counterparts who did not undergo IVF, a study said yesterday. Doctors in the country compared the long-term health of more than 19,000 women who had received at least one IVF ovarian stimulation treatment with about 6,000 similarly infertile counterparts who had not been treated for IVF. After taking into account factors that could skew the results, the researchers found a two-fold increase in the risk of ovarian malignancies in the IVF group.
UNITED STATES
Man reports date as burglar
Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, say a man’s girlfriend unexpectedly came home just before another woman was due to visit, so he called police to report his new acquaintance as a burglar. The Gazette reports that 24-year-old Kevin Gaylor was cited with a misdemeanor of false reporting to authorities. Police say Gaylor had invited a woman he met online to come to his home after 3am on Wednesday so they could get better acquainted, but his girlfriend came home first. Police say that when the other woman arrived, Gaylor called police and falsely reported an intrusion.
UNITED STATES
Artist gives birth in gallery
A performance artist who said giving birth was the “highest form of art” has delivered a baby boy — inside a New York City art gallery. The Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn said Marni Kotak gave birth to a healthy infant, weighing 4.14kg. The 36-year-old artist had set up a home-birth center at the gallery, turning the space into a brightly decorated bedroom with ocean blue walls and photo-imprinted pillows. The gallery said in a statement that “Baby X” was born at 10:17am on Tuesday. It did not say how many people witnessed the birth or give any other detail. The gallery said a video of the birth would be added to its exhibition.
UNITED STATES
Blackbeard’s cannon raised
Archeologists raised another cannon on Wednesday from the sunken wreck of pirate Blackbeard’s legendary ship off the coast of North Carolina. The 2.4m cannon, which had rested at the bottom of Beaufort Inlet since the ship Queen Anne’s Revenge sank in 1718, was covered in a cement-like shell of sand, salt and sea life. “It’s like Christmas,” project director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said in a statement. Blackbeard captured a French slave ship in 1717 and renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge. Blackbeard eventually received a pardon, but some experts say he grew bored and returned to piracy. He was killed by volunteers from the British Royal Navy in November 1718, five months after the ship sank. Researchers have spent the fall recovering artifacts from the shipwreck site, located in 1996 by Florida-based Intersal Inc.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in