FINLAND
Niinistoe cruises to victory
Conservative pro-European Sauli Niinistoe won the nation’s presidential election on Sunday, easily defeating Green liberal challenger Pekka Haavisto as had been widely expected. “It looks like Niinistoe has won,” Haavisto said to public television YLE. “More than 1 million people have supported me and I’m quite satisfied with that,” he added. Niinistoe was credited with 62.6 percent of voter sympathies, while Haavisto took just 37.4 percent, the justice ministry said after all votes had been counted. The definitive results will be confirmed by election officials tomorrow, but the numbers released were in line with what opinion polls had predicted. A no-nonsense career politician, Niinistoe’s victory ends a 30-year spell of Social Democratic presidents in the small Nordic country.
NORTH KOREA
Accordion cover goes viral
A group of accordion players is proving to be an unlikely hit on YouTube, attracting nearly 320,000 viewings in five days with their spirited version of a 1980s pop song. Five students of Pyongyang’s Kum Song School of Music are seen performing the mid-1980s hit Take on Me by Norwegian group a-ha, a rare performance of popular Western music in the reclusive state. The performance in December last year was filmed by visiting Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, who posted the clip on the video-sharing Web site on Wednesday. He has invited the three men and two women to play a mixture of Korean and international hits during the Festival Barents Spektakel, a cultural event to be held in Norway. It could not immediately be confirmed that the accordion players had accepted the invitation.
CROATIA
‘Snow White’ born in village
A baby born in a village cut off by a blizzard is to be called “Snow White,” the Sata Internet news site reported on Sunday. Her mother, Marta Glavota, 30, called emergency services for help to deliver the baby, but snow, which has been falling since Thursday, closed off all access to her southern village of Vitusa. Emergency services got to within 4km of the village before being forced back. A doctor then called the pregnant woman and gave advice over the telephone to two neighbors, who assisted in Sunday’s birth of the black-haired girl Snjezana, meaning snow-white in Croatian. Both mother and daughter were doing well, Sata said.
HONK KONG
Turbaned Torpedo runs 10km
A 100-year-old British Indian man who claims to be the world’s oldest marathoner was all smiles after completing a 10km run at the Hong Kong Marathon on Sunday. Born in 1911 and affectionately nicknamed the “Turbaned Torpedo,” Fauja Singh finished the race in just over 1 hour, 34 minutes, organizers said, raising HK$200,000 (US$25,800) for the charity Seeing Is Believing. “The weather was very pleasant, I enjoyed the race very much,” he was quoted by local media as saying, as he crossed the finishing line, arms in the air. The centenarian attributed his physical fitness to his healthy lifestyle, including abstaining from smoking and alcohol and to following a vegetarian diet, according to local reports. Singh claimed to be the first centenarian to complete a marathon after finishing the Toronto Waterfront event in October last year. A 26-year-old male runner collapsed after crossing the finishing line of the half-marathon race and was certified dead after being sent to hospital.
UNITED STATES
Blast kills man, two sons
Days after a judge ruled against him in a child custody hearing, a father and his two young sons were killed in Graham, Washington State, on Sunday when police said he appeared to intentionally blow up a house with all three inside — a tragic ending to a bizarre case that began more than two years ago when the man’s wife went mysteriously missing in Utah. A social worker brought the two boys to Josh Powell’s home for what was to be a supervised visit, and Powell let his sons inside — but then blocked the social worker from entering, Graham Fire and Rescue Chief Gary Franz said. The social worker called her supervisors to report that she could smell gas, and moments later the home exploded. Sergeant Ed Troyer, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman, said e-mails that Powell sent authorities seemed to confirm that Powell planned the deadly blast.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Survivors of capsize found
Rescuers scouring the white-capped waters off the coast have found 17 bodies and 13 survivors from a boat overloaded with migrants that capsized almost two days ago, officials said. The boat carrying about 70 migrants from the Dominican Republic to the US territory of Puerto Rico capsized before dawn on Saturday morning and rescuers said hopes were fading for finding more survivors as search efforts were suspended because of darkness late on Sunday. “Tomorrow, the sea will start to return the bodies,” said Jeffrey Pimentel, head of firefighters at Sabana del Mar, 150km northeast of Santo Domingo. Navy Intelligence Director Luis Castro said the bodies of 12 men and five women have been found.
MEXICO
Female candidate chosen
A major political party has chosen a female presidential candidate for the first time, as the ruling party bet that a charismatic former congresswoman will help it erode the lead held by its powerful rival. After easily winning the National Action Party’s primary on Sunday night, Josefina Vazquez Mota vowed to unite a party battered by a bloody drug war and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000. “I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history,” Vazquez Mota, 51, told cheering supporters. The party’s vote for Vazquez Mota over two other candidates sets the race for the July 1 presidential election. The two other major parties had already selected their candidates. Vazquez Mota faces an uphill climb against former Mexico State governor Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the polls who could return the Institutional Revolutionary Party to power after a 12-year hiatus.
VENEZUELA
ALBA bloc makes deposit
Leaders of the eight-nation ALBA bloc have agreed to deposit 1 percent of their international reserves into a jointly administered bank as they seek to deepen economic cooperation. Officials announced the decision as President Hugo Chavez hosted leaders of the Bolivarian Alliance group, or ALBA, at a meeting in Caracas. The countries that have agreed to make such a deposit in the ALBA Bank includes members Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is unclear how much in total the countries plan to deposit in the fledgling bank.
‘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
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
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