AUSTRALIA
2Day FM making donation
The radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt. Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, yesterday said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$500,000 (US$525,000), to a memorial fund for Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Catherine. The company suspended advertising on the station in the wake of Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station starting tomorrow.
HONG KONG
Airline faces strike threat
Cathay Pacific flight crews may stop serving alcohol and smiling at passengers after voting in favor of industrial action during the Christmas holidays over a salary dispute. The Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union, which is demanding a 5 percent salary increase, said the “work-to-rule” measures could also throw flight schedules into chaos. “We will be selective in providing our services,” union general secretary Tsang Kwok-fung said. “This could include not smiling at passengers, not providing certain types of beverages — such as alcohol — or stop serving meals … In a nutshell it means passengers will still be able to reach their destinations except they are paying a five-star price to get a three-star service.”
INDONESIA
Escapee recaptured
Police say they have captured a convicted terrorist who escaped detention last month by disguising himself in a burqa. Roki Aprisdianto was sentenced to six years behind bars last year for masterminding a series of bombings. He escaped from the Jakarta Police detention center after a group of burqa-clad women came to visit their husbands. He is thought to have put on one of the burqas. A police spokesman said Aprisdianto was arrested him near a bus station in East Java.
JAPAN
Solar clothes a possibility
Clothes that could literally light up your life were unveiled yesterday by researchers who said their solar-cell fabric would eventually let wearers harvest energy on the go. The new fabric is made of wafer-thin solar cells woven together that could see people powering up their mobile phones and other electronics with their sweater or trousers. However, its creators conceded there was work to do before taking the fabric to market, such as coating for the conductive wires and improving the fabric’s durability. The fabric was developed at the Industrial Technology Center in Fukui Prefecture in cooperation with a Kyoto-based solar cell maker and other private firms.
JAPAN
Reactor at risk from fault
A team of geologists says a seismic fault running underneath the Tsuruga plant is likely to be active, which could force the scrapping of one of its two reactors. The five-member panel commissioned by the Nuclear Regulation Authority announced on Monday that the structure underneath the plant showed signs of seismic movement about 100,000 years ago, recent enough to still be active. Government guidelines prohibit nuclear facilities above active faults. Tsuruga’s No. 2 reactor sits directly above the fault and would have to be scrapped if the panel’s conclusion is officially accepted.
CANADA
IKEA monkey finds fame
A stylishly attired monkey became an instant Internet celebrity, and triggered an animal welfare investigation, when it was found wandering in a furniture store car park. The months-old rhesus macaque, named Darwin, spent the night at an animal shelter in Toronto after he was found wandering around an IKEA lot wearing a sheepskin coat on Sunday afternoon. Darwin apparently opened his crate and the door of his owner’s vehicle and went for a stroll. However, his adventure did not stop there. Snap-happy observers took photographs of the cute critter and posted them online and Darwin immediately became a viral sensation on social media. His image was pasted into mockups of the IKEA catalogue, atop Toronto’s CN Tower, in parliament seated next to the prime minister and elsewhere.
UNITED STATES
Clinton cancels trip
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has canceled her trip to Morocco this week for a meeting on the future of Syria’s opposition because of a stomach virus, the State Department said on Monday. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns will travel to the meeting in her place. “Since she’s still under the weather, we’ll be staying put this week instead of heading to North Africa and the Middle East as originally planned,” State Department spokesman Philippe Reines said in a statement.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Rioters battle police
Rioters in Belfast pelted police with gasoline bombs on Monday in the latest violence to flare up over a decision by the city’s council not to fly the British flag all year round. Officers were targeted on the Upper Newtownards Road near the offices of the east Belfast Member of Parliament Naomi Long, a member of the non-sectarian Alliance Party, who has been warned her life is under threat. Police said they were treating the attack as attempted murder.
RUSSIA
Putin wants Heroes of Labor
President Vladimir Putin on Monday suggested the country should revive the Hero of Labor title, a highly coveted Soviet-era award established in the early years of the USSR to mobilize workers and increase output. “Of course, I think that it would be good for us to revive the Hero of Labor title, only we need to think, we cannot completely copy the Soviet times,” Putin said at a meeting with his election campaign activists from this year’s presidential election. “We need to turn our attention to the man of labor wherever he works, who does his bit by using both his head and hands,” the 60-year-old president said. “There should be criteria, clear and understandable criteria, not simply for the number of years of work, but for the result, the contribution to the country’s development.” Thousands of Soviet workers earned the coveted title of Hero of Labor under the USSR, enjoying special privileges in society and special status. However the title was discontinued after the fall of the USSR.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion