THAILAND
Prime minister hospitalized
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was hospitalized with a suspected case of food poisoning yesterday, an official said. A police officer responsible for her security said Yingluck went to Rama IX Hospital in Bangkok for treatment before dawn yesterday. Yingluck’s illness is “probably food poisoning,” the bodyguard said, but it was not clear what meal caused the illness. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Yingluck had been scheduled to chair the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning. She handed over the responsibility to Deputy Prime Minister Yongyuth Wichaidith.
HONG KONG
NZ man to be extradited
Authorities said a New Zealander who was arrested after going on the run following a bank mistake that gave him a multimillion-dollar line of credit would be extradited. Officials said on Monday that a New Zealand application for the extradition of Hui “Leo” Gao was approved by a judge on Oct. 27. They gave no more details, but the territory’s extradition cases also typically need to be approved by its leader. Police stopped Gao in September when he tried to enter the territory from mainland China. Gao and his then-partner Kara Hurring disappeared in 2009 after they mistakenly received a NZ$10 million (US$7.6 million) credit line — 100 times their approved limit.
JAPAN
Kebab of 100m cooked
Residents of a small island cooked up a late-night snack that could satisfy even the heartiest appetite — a kebab more than 100m long. Thousands of people on Ishigaki Island tucked into the 107.6m monster, the world’s longest, in an event to promote premium Ishigaki beef, local tourism agency official Shuntaro Kosasa said. Organizers had originally planned to make a beef kebab only 25m long, believing the world record was just 8.74m and set in Texas. “Just three days before the event, we were informed that people in Lebanon actually set a new record of 97.5m in August,” Kosasa said. “We had to hurriedly prepare four times more beef and cooking utensils and a skewer to make a kebab longer than 100m,” he said. About 15,000 people — one-third of the island’s population — later tucked into the kebab, he added.
JAPAN
Cake shop robber foiled
A 64-year-old man in a blond wig robbed a Tokyo cake shop of nearly US$10,000 before being brought down by store staff armed with laundry poles. The jobless man used a survival knife to force an 18-year-old member of staff to hand over the cash, Jiji Press said on Monday. The man ran off with ¥755,000 (US$9,700), but was floored by three shop workers who kept him on the ground with poles usually used to hang out washing until police arrived.
CHINA
Ads in TV dramas banned
The government is prohibiting TV stations from placing advertisements in the middle of TV dramas in a move meant to attract viewers and boost program quality. The ban, which was published on Monday and takes effect on Jan. 1, said no ads may appear in any drama series, of which episodes typically run 45 minutes. The order is the latest in a series since the Chinese Communist Party last month endorsed a program to raise the entertainment and ideological value of cultural offerings to better hold the attention of Chinese increasingly turning to the Internet for alternate viewpoints.
UNITED KINGDOM
Director Ken Russell dies
Ken Russell, the director of Women in Love and The Devils, has died at the age of 84. His widow, Elize, said the famously provocative filmmaker passed away peacefully in his sleep on Sunday afternoon. Russell began his directing career with the BBC and went on to make some of the most controversial and violent films of the 1960s and 1970s. Women in Love, a 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, became infamous for its nude wrestling scene between actors Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. The picture earned Russell an Oscar nomination for best director, and Glenda Jackson won a statuette for best actress. Russell was born in 1927 in the southern English town of Southampton, where he developed an early interest in film through frequent visits to the cinema with his mother. He briefly worked as a photographer before moving into television, where he began with a series of documentaries about leading musicians.
SPAIN
Drug smugglers caught
Police arrested a drug gang that used babies and small children to smuggle cocaine from South America through European airports, Spanish officials said on Monday. Police in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands arrested 20 suspects, including traffickers who arrived on flights with large amounts of cocaine hidden about them while traveling with children to avert suspicion. “They used minors as a cover so as not to raise suspicion and also to hide the drugs among their nappies” in their baggage, the statement said. “They were flying from South America with quantities of narcotics varying from one to five kilograms.” Police arrested 16 people at various airports in Spain, and two each in Belgium and the Netherlands and seized 11 kilograms of cocaine, the statement said.
PORTUGAL
Austerity cuts inspire ads
Taking a wry swipe at German-led austerity, the maker of the country’s traditional tipple plastered Lisbon with adverts on Monday depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a bottle and assurances that “Portugal is giving its best shot.” The campaign by Licor Beirao is designed to cheer up Portuguese and help struggling local producers by urging customers to “give something national as a Christmas present.” “Dear Angela, Portugal is giving its best shot. Season’s greetings!” says a message attached to the bottle held by Merkel. The message is a pun on the government’s efforts to convince Europe that the country is doing its best to meet painful fiscal goals under a 78 billion euro (US$104 billion) EU/IMF bailout. For international clients, the adverts feature an enticing glass of Beirao on the rocks, with the text: “Wondering why the IMF visits Portugal so often?” EU and IMF inspectors left Lisbon last week after a bailout performance review.
IRAN
US video game banned
The government has banned a popular computer game, Battlefield 3, depicting US armor and aircraft launching an assault on Tehran, an Iranian IT magazine reported. “All computer stores are prohibited from selling this illegal game,” an unnamed deputy with the security and intelligence division of Iran’s police said in a statement carried by the Asr-e Ertebat weekly. A Tehran-based IT union warned all shops to abide by the ban. Battlefield 3, made by US video game company Electronic Arts, is based on a fictional near future in which players take on the role of US Marines tackling shoot-’em-up missions in Paris, New York and Tehran.
UNITED STATES
Obama would beat Bush
Many Americans don’t use libraries, favor locally sourced food and would choose President Barack Obama over his predecessor George W. Bush if the two were vying in a presidential election. A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll showed Obama ahead of Bush by 40 percent to 31 percent in a hypothetical race, but 40 percent of the key independent voters, who are often said to decide elections, chose neither. Nearly 30 percent of 1,033 adults in the nationwide poll conducted last month said they tried to buy only locally sourced foods, while nearly half said they do so when convenient. Fewer than one-quarter termed it not a priority. However, libraries, apparently, are on the wane. Two-thirds of people said they never go to the library, or do so only once or twice a year. Religion is one area where Americans don’t seem to change much. The poll showed that only one in five people ever considered changing their religion and one in 10 actually did. When asked which animal could step up if the bald eagle was not the official national animal, 33 percent chose the grizzly bear, followed by the wild turkey, while 20 percent said just keep the eagle. However, 8 percent thought it should be the rattlesnake, and 6 percent chose the catfish.
UNITED STATES
Thief repays stolen cash
The manager of the Sears store in downtown Seattle says an elderly man has repaid — with interest — cash the man says he stole in the late 1940s. KING-TV reported that the man hand-delivered an envelope on Monday addressed to “Sears manager.” Inside were a note and a US$100 bill. The note said the man stole US$20 to US$30 from a cash register decades ago and wanted to pay back US$100. Store security cameras recorded the man, but Sears officials said they don’t know who he is and they won’t release the video. The store plans to put the money toward helping needy families in the holiday season.
UNITED STATES
Barney Frank to retire
Representative Barney Frank, a gay pioneer in Congress whose name and fingerprints are on last year’s sweeping bill regulating Wall Street, announced plans on Monday to retire at the end of his current term, his 16th in Congress. Frank’s career has traced an arc from early promise to near career-wrecking scandal to legislative triumph, accompanied by a quick-witted intelligence and an often partisan and frequently acerbic speaking style. Unusual for a politician, his appearance is routinely less-than impeccable and he once distributed posters as a candidate for the Massachusetts Legislature that said “Neatness isn’t everything. Re-elect Barney.” In Congress, Frank has fought to hold down what he viewed as excessive military spending and said one of his objectives for his final year in office is to make sure the Pentagon shares in any deficit-cutting measures that take place.
GUYANA
Election polls close
Polls closed on Monday in the country’s general elections, with the incumbent People’s Progressive Party-Civic, which has led the former British colony since 1992, expected to return to power. Although police said there were no reports of violence or arrests linked to voting across the country of 750,000, the elections commission announced it was probing some minor irregularities. The opposition A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance For Change parties complained of ghost voting stations, unofficial ballot boxes and delible ink.
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