AUSTRALIA
Chinese snap up baby milk
Supermarkets and pharmacies were running out of popular baby formula yesterday after unprecedented sales reportedly due to Chinese customers trying to secure supplies. Nutricia, supplier of top-selling formula brand Karicare, said there had been a sudden surge in demand for its products, which had seen stocks plummet and left shelves empty. Major supermarket Coles said it was trying to arrange extra shipments of infant formula. Some pharmacies were rationing sales across brands to a few cans per customer. Media reports said Chinese residents or tourists in Australia were buying formula in bulk and shipping it back to their native country for family or sometimes sale online. “Chinese visitors buy as many cans as they can fit into their luggage to take back to China,” one manager of a pharmacy near a major international hotel in central Sydney told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Many Chinese are suspicious of domestically produced milk following a major food safety scandal in 2008, in which six children died and 300,000 fell ill after drinking milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.
INDIA
Cold snap kills over 100
Police say more than 100 people have died of exposure in the north because of historically cold temperatures. Police spokesman Surendra Srivastava yesterday said that at least 114 people have died from the cold in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At least 23 of those died in the past 24 hours. Srivastava said many of the dead were poor people whose bodies were found on sidewalks or in parks. The weather department said temperatures in the state were 4°C to 10°C below normal.
INDIA
Drug trials ‘causing havoc’
The Supreme Court yesterday said that unregulated clinical trials of new drugs were causing “havoc to human life” in the country as it ordered the health ministry to monitor any new applications for tests. The comments were made during a hearing on a petition detailing deaths and health problems caused by clinical trials carried out on Indians, often without their knowledge or consent. “There are so many legal and ethical issues involved with clinical trials and the government has not done anything so far,” Justice R.M. Lodha said. Low costs, weak laws and inadequate enforcement and penalties have made India an attractive destination for the tests, activists say. The petitioners in the public interest litigation case — a group of doctors and a voluntary organization — claim several patients seeking medical help in the central state of Madhya Pradesh were used in drug tests.
SWITZERLAND
Man kills three, injures two
A man shot and killed three people and wounded two in the village of Daillon, and was then arrested by officers who shot and injured him, police said yesterday. Police in the southern state of Valais said they were alerted to the shooting just before 9pm on Wednesday. Three of the victims died at the scene and the two injured people were taken to hospitals. A police statement early yesterday gave no detail on their injuries. When officers arrived at the scene, “the shooter pointed his weapon at our colleagues, so they had to open fire to neutralize him, to avoid being injured themselves,” police spokesman Jean-Marie Bornet told Swiss radio. He said the shooter lived in Daillon. His possible motives “are not clear at all,” Bornet said.
CYPRUS
Minister sorry for boot row
The government apologized to the Egyptian ambassador on Wednesday after a fracas with police over security screening at the island’s main airport. Egyptian ambassador Menha Mahrous Bakhoum was involved in an argument with police when she was asked to undergo security checks to enter a departure terminal on Saturday, where she was seeing off members of her family. Local media reported the ambassador agreed to undergo security screening, but objected to removing her boots. In a heated debate that followed, media reported, a police officer was slapped and the ambassador was manhandled by police. An apology released on Wednesday lauded the country’s “brotherly relations” with Egypt.
UNITED STATES
Ship stable: coast guard
A coast guard official who flew over a petroleum drilling ship grounded on a remote Alaskan island says there are still no signs of any fuel sheen or environmental impact and the rig appears to be stable. The drill ship Kulluk ran aground in a fierce North Pacific storm on Monday off an uninhabited island near Kodiak. Calmer weather conditions on Wednesday also allowed a team of five salvage experts to be lowered by helicopter to the rig to conduct a structural assessment. Officials say their information will be used to formulate salvage plans. Also taken to the Kulluk was a state-owned emergency towing system for use in the operation.
FRANCE
Woman stuck in supermarket
While others were celebrating the start of the year, an elderly woman spent New Year’s Eve trapped in a supermarket after being locked inside, officials said. The 73-year-old was stuck inside the supermarket in the northern city of Roubaix after emerging from the toilet to find the shop closed and the doors locked, local firefighters said. She set off the alarms several times throughout the night, but there was no answer. She was only discovered the morning of New Year’s Day around 10:30am.
UNITED STATES
Sperm donor fights request
A man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple is fighting efforts by Kansas state authorities to force him to pay child support for the now three-year-old girl, arguing that he and the women signed an agreement waiving all of his parental rights. The state argues that because William Marotta did not work through a clinic or doctor, as required by state law, he can be held responsible for about US$6,000 that the child’s biological mother received through public assistance — as well as future child support. Marotta answered an ad in 2009 from a local couple. The three signed an agreement relieving Marotta of any financial or paternal responsibility. However, instead of working with a doctor, Marotta agreed to drop off a container with his sperm at the couple’s home and the women successfully handled the insemination themselves.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mantel wins book award
Writer and two-time Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel has been named novelist of the year at Britain’s Costa Book Awards for Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel’s achievement for her blood-soaked Tudor saga makes her the first author to win both the Costa novel award and Booker Prize in the same year. Other winners included Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie for The Overhaul and Francesca Segal for her first novel, The Innocents. Severely dyslexic writer and illustrator Sally Gardner won the children’s book prize for her fifth novel, Maggot Moon.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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