AUSTRALIA
Yogurt a plant? poll
Most children in their last year of primary school think cotton socks come from animals, while one-quarter believe yogurt is from plants, a study warning of the growing gap between the city and country said yesterday. The Council for Educational Research survey of almost 1,000 students in grades six and 10 found widespread misconceptions about food processing and farming. An overwhelming majority knew where potato chips and coffee came from, but almost 20 percent of the younger-age group — aged between 10 and 12 years — thought pasta came from animals and scrambled eggs from plants. About 75 percent said cotton socks were an animal product and 27 percent believed yogurt was derived from plants. “Primary industry plays a vital role in Australian’s economy and society, but the gap between rural and urban communities is growing, contributing to a lack of understanding of where food and other basic necessities of life come from,” the study said.
CHINA
Mom, student immolate
A young mother and a student have become the latest people to set themselves on fire in protest against Beijing’s rule in Tibetan areas, the US government-backed Radio Free Asia said yesterday. More than 20 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in the past year, saying they are not allowed to freely practice their religion. The student set herself ablaze on Saturday at a vegetable market in Gansu Province’s Maqu County and died at the scene, the report said, without giving the girl’s name or age. Chinese market vendors threw stones at the girl’s burning body, the broadcaster said, citing an unidentified Tibetan exile with connections to the community in Maqu. It did not say why they attacked her. On Sunday, a 32-year-old woman identified only as Rinchen set herself on fire in front of a police station by the main gate to the Kirti Monastery in Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province.
MALAYSIA
Australian nabbed for drugs
An Australian truck driver faces a possible death sentence after he was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking, national police narcotics director Noor Rashid Ibrahim said yesterday. The 32-year-old from Perth was arrested last Thursday in Kuala Lumpur in possession of 225g of methamphetamine, Noor Rashid said. Officials have identified the man as Dominic Jude Christopher Bird. Australian diplomats said they were seeking access to the suspect to offer consular assistance. Noor Rashid said the Australian was arrested along with another accomplice and that three more people were subsequently detained. He declined to provide the nationalities of the other detainees.
VIETNAM
Bears to be released
Seven Asiatic black bears kept as pets in small cages will be prepared for a return to the wild after their owner decided they were too big for captivity, the Wildlife Rescue Center in Cat Tien National Park said yesterday. The animals, also known as moon bears owing to the distinctive yellow crescent-shaped mark on their chests, were given to the center. “It will take us lots of time and effort to prepare them for the wild as they have got used to an environment with human beings around,” center official Nguyen Van Cuong said, adding it was too soon to say just how long it would be before the animals are ready to be released. Asiatic or Himalayan black bears are classed as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
BELARUS
Lukashenko hits back
President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday criticized EU politicians who have threatened him with further sanctions, and in an apparent reposte to German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who branded him “Europe’s last dictator,” Lukashenko said: “Better to be a dictator than gay.” Westerwelle is Germany’s first openly gay minister. EU leaders at a summit in Brussels on Friday called for new measures to pressure Lukashenko, in power since 1994, over alleged human rights abuses. Lukashenko said the country would give a strong reaction to any sanctions, according to local news agency Belta. “This is absolute hysteria,” Belta reported him as saying. “And as you can see, at the forefront there are two types of politicians ... one lives in Warsaw, another in Berlin.” “Whoever was shouting about dictatorship there ... when I heard that, I thought: it’s better to be a dictator than gay.”
PAKISTAN
Missile test successful
The government yesterday said it had successfully test fired a short-range ballistic missile capable of carrying atomic warheads. The Hatf II (Abdali) has a range of 180km and carries nuclear as well as conventional warheads with “high accuracy,” the military said in a statement. “It provides an operational level capability to Pakistan’s strategic forces, additional to the strategic and tactical level capability which Pakistan already possesses,” the statement said.
JAPAN
Study sheds light on vitamin
Scientists say they have found a link between the consumption of vitamin E and the degenerative bone condition osteoporosis, in a study likely to shed new light on the use of supplements. Researchers found that giving mice increased doses of the vitamin to a level similar to that found in supplements caused the animals’ bones to thin. The mice developed osteoporosis after eight weeks on the diet, which had levels of vitamin E significantly higher than those found in a mouse’s natural diet, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Medicine. The team, led by Shu Takeda of Keio University, said vitamin E stimulates the generation of bone-degrading cells, which normally work with bone-forming cells to maintain bone strength. Osteoporosis is a disease that causes the thinning of bone tissue and loss of bone density over time.
CAMEROON
Book traces spread of HIV
Deep in the forests of southeastern Cameroon, circa 1900, a chimpanzee fell to the hunter’s gun. It was one more hunk of African bushmeat. It was also carrying a virus that would enter the hunter’s bloodstream and mutate into HIV. Before this, such outbreaks would have remained localized, a provocative new book says. However, by then the “scramble for Africa” was under way and thousands of porters were crossing through the area. So it was, the authors say, that colonization by European powers a century ago is responsible for unleashing HIV on the world. Piecing together new and established research, Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin, authors of Tinderbox, say that once the virus made the jump, a single infected person could have carried it down the Congo river into what is now Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In an excerpt published in the Washington Post last week, the authors conclude: “Without ‘the scramble for Africa,’ it’s hard to see how HIV could have made it out of southeastern Cameroon to eventually kill tens of millions of people.”
UNITED STATES
Flynt offers US$1m for dirt
Porn mogul Larry Flynt, in a full-page newspaper ad on Sunday, offered US$1 million for information about the sexual indiscretions of well-known US politicians or government officials. Flynt’s offer, appearing in the Washington Post, asked readers to phone their tips to his hotline, or to send an e-mail to a dedicated online address at his Hustler porn magazine. “Do you have information about infidelity, sexual impropriety or corruption concerning a current United States senator, congressperson or prominent government official?” the ad asks in large, bold type. “Can you provide documented evidence of your claims? Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine will pay you up to US$1 million if we choose to use your material and publish your verified story.” The ad said all correspondence would be kept “strictly confidential.”
UNITED STATES
Baby storm victim dies
A two-year-old girl who was found barely alive amid the bodies of her parents and siblings after horrific tornadoes hit the the Midwest, died on Sunday after a 48-hour fight for life. Angel Babcock was discovered in a field near her family’s home in New Pekin, southern Indiana after Friday’s horrific weather and was taken to a hospital in neighboring Kentucky where her condition was initially described as critical. The two-year-old, who became the 37th victim of the devastating weather that pummeled the country on Friday, had lost her parents, two-month old sister and three-year-old brother in the storms. However, relatives from her extended family chose to turn off the toddler’s life support system on Sunday afternoon, Kentucky Coroner Bob Jones told CNN. Emergency officials in Indiana confirmed the child’s death and said she was the state’s 13th fatality, revising down an earlier higher toll of 14.
UNITED STATES
Lava flays suburb’s last home
Officials say a flow of lava has destroyed the last home in a sparsely populated neighborhood in Hawaii’s Puna district, near Hilo. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports the neighborhood’s last resident, Jack Thompson, left his home about an hour before the lava flow came down the hill and burned the house to the ground on Friday evening. The destruction of Thompson’s home comes after years of lava flows from the Kilauea volcano. Over the years, the lava has destroyed other homes and cut off the neighborhood’s roads. The volcano has been continuously erupting since 1983, but Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists warned several weeks ago that the lava was becoming more active.
HAITI
Violent crime skyrocketing
A new study finds that the country has seen a dramatic increase in violent crime in its major cities over the past six months. The report authored by social scientists Athena Kolbe and Robert Muggah also shows that residents lost faith in the police department during the same period. The overall homicide rate in Port-au-Prince is low compared with other Caribbean cities. However, the capital saw an annual rate of 60.9 murders per 100,000 people, one of the highest recorded rates in recent years. The study comes amid heightened political tension. The prime minister resigned last month after infighting with President Michel Martelly and it is unclear when parliament will ratify a successor. The report was released Sunday.
‘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