NEW ZEALAND
Jobless offered cash to move
The unemployed are being offered cash by the government to move to the earthquake-damaged city of Christchurch and join in the rebuilding effort. The government announced yesterday it would pay welfare recipients NZ$3,000 (US$2,600) to move to the city if they found any kind of fulltime work there. Christchurch has been slowly rebuilding after a 2011 earthquake killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city’s downtown. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the city’s reconstruction is creating thousands of jobs, but some unemployed people do not have the resources to move to Christchurch. She said the money would help pay for moving expenses, accommodation, tools and other equipment. The scheme is initially limited to 1,000 people.
AUSTRALIA
Fiery debris halts flights
An explosive engine failure on a Vietnamese airliner showered fiery debris across a runway at the nation’s second-busiest airport yesterday, preventing planes landing and taking off for 40 minutes, an official said. The malfunction happened as Vietnam Airlines flight 780 was taxiing to take off on a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Melbourne Airport spokeswoman Anna Gillett said. The twin-engine Airbus A330 came to rest at the intersection of the airport’s two runways, blocking all traffic for 40 minutes until 11:30am, she said. No one was injured. “The issue also resulted in some debris from the plane causing some spot fires on the runaway and surrounding area,” Gillett said. “There are some rumors that the aircraft itself was ablaze with fire — that’s not the case.” A passenger, who identified himself only as Peter, told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio that the jet’s nose had begun lifting for takeoff when the engine failed, forcing the pilots to abort the flight.
ANTARCTICA
New strain of flu detected
A new kind of avian influenza has been detected for the first time in Adelie penguins, though the virus does not seem to make them sick, researchers said yesterday. The virus is unlike any other bird flu known to science, said the report in mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “It raises a lot of unanswered questions,” said study author Aeron Hurt, senior research scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia. The findings show that “avian influenza viruses can get down to Antarctica and be maintained in penguin populations,” he said. The study is the first to report on live avian flu in penguins, though previous research has found evidence of flu antibodies in penguin blood.
BELGIUM
Jobless mom drowns sons
An unemployed woman whose husband had just lost his job drowned her two sons, aged two and six, in the bathtub due to distress over their future, a prosecutor said. “She was upset by the dire financial situation and said it was the only solution she could find to avoid her children being unhappy when they grew up,” Philippe Dulieu, public prosecutor in the city of Namur, told Belga news agency. The woman, who was born in 1987, gave the two boys sleeping pills once her husband had left the house on Saturday, before drowning them and putting them to bed, the prosecutor said. When the husband returned “she told him the children were already in bed. They spent the evening together, watching TV.” Her husband discovered they were dead on Sunday. She was charged on Monday and placed in custody.
UNITED STATES
Plane crashes into house
A small plane smashed into a Colorado home on Monday, but the pilot was able to walk away and no one else was injured, authorities said. The plane crashed into a residence “after experiencing trouble while towing a banner over Northglenn, Colorado,” a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. “The pilot escaped from the aircraft and parachuted safely to the ground before the aircraft went down,” he said. Nobody was home at the time of the crash, district firefighters said, and the pilot was transported to hospital, but was not thought to be badly hurt.
UNITED STATES
Naked man hit by car, killed
A naked man who had been running and doing push-ups in a Portland street was struck by a car and killed early on Sunday, police said. Portland police said they received two telephone calls about the man in a street in an industrial area of north Portland, but the man was killed before they arrived at the scene.
EL SALVADOR
Ex-president fled: authorities
The government suspects former president Francisco Flores has left the country, where he faces charges of embezzlement, illegal enrichment and disobedience. Public Safety Minister Ricardo Perdomo yesterday said that Flores is thought to have gone by boat or plane and illegally entered Panama. A judge has not issued an arrest warrant for Flores, who was charged last week with embezzling US$5.3 million while he was president from 1999 to 2004. He is also charged with mismanaging US$10 million that was donated a decade ago by Taiwan’s government during his presidency. Flores has denied wrongdoing. He says he turned the money over to the intended state projects, but has offered no proof of the handover. Perdomo would not say what proof authorities have that Flores left El Salvador.
GUATEMALA
US$2.3m cash man nabbed
Authorities have arrested a man found with nearly US$2.3 million in cash hidden in a compartment in his van, officials said on Monday. Flavio Rojas, 48, was picked up on Sunday night on a highway 10km north of the capital. An estimated half of the country’s population is below the national poverty line. Police are investigating whether Rojas was transporting the money for an organized crime group. Mexican drug organizations like the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel have expanded their trafficking and money laundering operations in the country in recent years, sometimes in combination with local groups.
VENEZUELA
Newspapers slim down
A leading newspaper is cutting the size of its daily editions because of a newsprint shortage. El Universal says it will publish 16 pages a day as of Monday, down from its regular 24 pages. It says it can keep that up for two more weeks. Several other papers have already slimmed or shut down, blaming government currency controls. El Universal says it has had paper sitting in a port since January, but needs US dollars to release it from bond. It blames government delays in allowing it to exchange the local currency for US dollars. The government sells hard currency at low prices, but importers complain it can take months for officials to approve the exchanges, leading to shortages of imports, which result in reduced production for many goods.
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