AUSTRALIA
Dame Edna on final tour
Dame Edna Everage, the Tony Award-winning drag act known for her purple hair and oversized rhinestone eyeglasses, will soon open her final stage show tour. It comes 57 years after her debut. Publicist Kerry O’Brien yesterday said that Barry Humphries — the actor and satirist who created the nation’s self-proclaimed housewife-superstar — wants to take the farewell show Eat Pray Laugh! to Britain and New York after the two-month local tour that begins in June. At 78, Humphries said the time had come to retire all his various alter egos from the stage. Dame Edna was a staple of television and stage in the country and in Britain before Humphries won a Tony Award in 2000 for his Broadway show, Dame Edna, The Royal Tour.
CHINA
Bo suspected of nepotism
News reports say one of the nation’s most powerful politicians interfered in an investigation involving a family member before he was fired last week. Bo Xilai’s (薄熙來) removal as Communist Party boss of Chongqing City marked the nation’s highest-profile dismissal in years. His sudden departure on Thursday followed a visit to the US consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu by Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun (王立軍) in what was believed to have been an attempt to seek political asylum. The reports on numerous online news sites said Bo transferred Wang after the police chief informed him of an investigation into one of Bo’s relatives. Party spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests to verify the reports, carried on Web sites inside and outside China.
PHILIPPINES
Health worker kidnapped
Officials say suspected militants have abducted a Filipino health worker after stopping an ambulance in the southern island of Jolo. Police Director Felicisimo Khu yesterday said that Abu Sayyaf militants were believed responsible for the abduction. The rebels are also holding five foreigners for ransom, including an Australian and two Europeans. In another southern province, police say gunmen believed to be members of a kidnapping gang seized two local teachers in a remote mountain village near the city of Iligan. Senior Inspector Arnel Polo suspects extortion as the motive. The proliferation of weapons and the presence of criminals and rebels have caused unrest in parts of the south for decades.
VIETNAM
People smugglers arrested
Police have arrested six people for allegedly running a human-trafficking ring smuggling young women to China to work in brothels, the communist party mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper said yesterday. The Vietnamese suspects, led by a 22-year-old former trafficking victim, smuggled about 21 young women to China to work in the sex industry over the past three years, the report said. Twenty of the victims have been rescued from China and brought back to Vietnam, although the whereabouts of one other remains unknown, the report said, quoting a source in northern Nam Dinh Province. Provincial police refused to comment when contacted by reporters. Victims were sold to brothels in China for about 10 million dong (up to US$500) each, according to the English-language Vietnam News daily. Early this month, 29 people linked to a human-trafficking ring that sent teenage sex slaves to China were jailed.
POLAND
Fake Treasury bonds seized
Authorities say they have seized US$100 million in fake US Treasury bonds and arrested eight people suspected of involvement in the scam. The Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, a state agency, said the suspects were arrested on Sunday afternoon in regions around Krakow and Lublin. Among them are three Poles, two Italians, two Ukrainians and a Moldovan woman. A spokesman for the bureau, Jacek Dobrzynski, said the suspects were taken by surprise in Sunday’s raid. He said the value of the fake bonds was a record seizure for the bureau. The suspects were to be questioned by prosecutors in Lublin on Monday. No other details were immediately available.
SOUTH AFRICA
Citizens jailed for smuggling
Two-thirds of the almost 1,000 South Africans jailed abroad are locked up for drug crimes, the foreign ministry said on Monday, after a Durban headmistress was jailed in Britain on cocaine charges. “Of 985 South Africans in custody in overseas prisons, 67 percent were arrested for drug-related offences,” foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela said. The country has seen a series of high-profile drug mule cases, ranging from flight attendants on the flag carrier South African Airways to the wife of the minister for state security. In the most recent case, 45-year-old Durban headmistress Annabella Momple, who also holds Irish citizenship, was sentenced last week in Britain to almost five years in prison for trying to smuggle cocaine worth £350,000 (US$556,000) through Heathrow Airport. In May last year, Sheryl Cwele, the wife of Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for drug trafficking after she was convicted of recruiting mules to bring in narcotics from Latin America. South African Airways in 2009 was forced to introduce tough anti-drug measures after 30 of its crew members were arrested for drug smuggling.
ISRAEL
Underweight models banned
A new law is trying to fight the spread of eating disorders by banning underweight models from local advertising. The legislation also requires publications to disclose when they use altered images to make people look thinner. The ban appears to be the first time a government has used legislation to take on a fashion industry accused of abetting eating disorders by idealizing extreme thinness. It could be a model for other countries grappling with the spread of anorexia and bulimia, particularly among young women. Legislators passed the law late on Monday. The law’s sponsor, Rachel Adato, compares the battle against eating disorders to the struggle against smoking. Critics say the legislation should have focused on models’ health, not weight.
ISRAEL
Einstein’s archives uploaded
All 80,000 items in Albert Einstein’s archives, including personal correspondence with half a dozen lovers and a poignant postcard to his ailing mother, are going online. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which owns the Einstein collection, is slowly uploading high-resolution photographs of scientific papers, letters on social issues including nuclear disarmament and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and other texts. Archivists said Monday’s launch of the online repository will give academics around the world direct access to Einstein’s papers. Most have been locked in storage at the university and only half of the collection appears online. The university has also published a complete inventory of all 80,000 items in the Einstein collection.
UNITED STATES
Obama raises US$45 million
President Barack Obama raised US$45 million for his re-election campaign, the Democratic Party and other campaign funds last month, bringing his total to about US$300 million for this election cycle. Obama announced his monthly total on Monday on Twitter. The president has increased fundraising in recent weeks, holding events last month in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, and in Chicago and Atlanta last week. The Obama campaign says in a video that nearly 350,000 people contributed during the month. It says the average donation is about US$59 for the entire election cycle and nearly 98 percent of the donations were US$250 or less.
SYRIA
Photos show settlements
An archeologist has used satellite images and a computer program to uncover thousands of ancient human settlements in Syria, according to a research study published on Monday. Software developed jointly by Harvard University professor Jason Ur and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers can identify the remains of homes from the satellite images. The software hones in on discolorations and mounds of soil characteristic of collapsed mud brick houses. The area examined in the project covered about 23,000km2 in northeastern Syria. The software identified about 9,000 potential archeological sites, which far exceeds discoveries so far, Ur said. “I could do this on the ground, but it would probably take me the rest of my life to survey an area this size,” Ur said. “With these computer science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an enormous map which is methodologically very interesting, but which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over the last 7,000 or 8,000 years.”
UNITED STATES
SWAT team catches gorilla
A 181kg gorilla escaped from his cage at the Buffalo Zoo on Monday and bit a zookeeper before the 24-year-old silverback was tranquilized and recaptured. Zoo officials said the gorilla, called Koga, took advantage of an unlocked cage door and slipped out into an area used by zoo personnel, but closed to the public. A female keeper who has cared for Koga since he arrived in Buffalo in 2007 was bitten on her hand and calf. Police sent in a SWAT team to secure the area, while a veterinarian used a handheld blow pipe to sedate Koga through a porthole and then he was dragged back to his cage by zoo staff. “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my career,” SWAT team captain Mark Maraschiello said. Visitors were moved indoors during the 45 minute ordeal. A zoo official said the keeper’s injuries were not serious and the bite was an act of excitement, rather than aggression. “He was probably just as surprised coming face to face with her as she was with him,” zoo president Donna Fernandes said. Koga is a West Lowland gorilla that come from West Africa and the Congo River Basin.
HONDURAS
Pool players shot dead
Seven people were killed on Sunday night in the Caribbean port city of La Ceiba when gunmen burst into a pool hall and opened fire with high-caliber weapons, police said. Maynor Mena, the local police chief, told the news media the attack was a “personal vendetta.” The assailants were described as about 30 unknown people who pulled up to the pool hall in several vehicles. After killing six people who had been playing pool, the attackers entered an adjacent apartment where they killed a 15-year-old. They also threw a grenade into the pool hall, but it failed to explode.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was