■Nepal
Peace talks continue
Maoist rebel leaders and government ministers will meet again tomorrow to continue peace talks aimed at ending a seven-year insurgency in Nepal, state-run Radio Nepal said yesterday. It will be the second round of talks between the two sides since they agreed to a ceasefire in January. The government is expected to seek clarification of rebel demands made during the first meeting, including that jailed rebel supporters be released and their cases dismissed. The rebels are also seeking formation of an interim government and election of a special assembly to draft a new Constitution within the next six months.
■ Japan
New ship for stricken school
Hundreds cheered at a port in southwestern Japan yesterday as students of a fisheries school whose training ship was sunk by a US Navy submarine in a fatal accident two years ago took its replacement to sea for the first time. The 499-ton Ehime Maru left the port of Uwajima, about 680 km southwest of Tokyo, for a two-month cruise to Hawaii carrying a crew of 36 teachers and students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School, said vice-principal Hiroshi Miyaoka. It was launched by the school in December as a replacement for a training vessel of the same name that was sunk in a collision with the nuclear-powered submarine USS Greeneville off Oahu in February 2001. Nine people died in the accident.
■ Malaysia
Father jailed for raping girl
A Malaysian contractor with 50 children from four wives has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for raping his 11-year-old daughter last year. Tengku Ismail Tengku Ibrahim, 56, was found guilty of the offence by a court in the northeastern state of Kelantan but was spared an additional punishment of caning as he was above 50. "This thing should not have happened because you look like a religious and pious man. On top of that, you already have four wives to satisfy your desires," Judge Azman Abdullah said before passing sentence. Seven witnesses, including the victim now 12, her elder brother and mother who is Tengku Ismail's fourth wife, testified against him.
■ Australia
Dope phones cause a buzz
Marijuana-scented cell phone covers caused such a buzz in Australia that the company selling them had to pull them out of an technology fair in Sydney yesterday. Local authorities and New South Wales state Premier, Bob Carr, slammed the green, marijuana-motif covers as promoting drug use to young people. "A big over-reaction," said Robert Punch, owner, chief executive and founder of Corporate Phone Covers. "It's a novelty." Made in China and arrayed next to chocolate, strawberry, blueberry, cherry and rose-scented snap-on covers, the marijuana version sold well, though only to the over 18s.
■ Australia
New course is a real drag
An Australian college has introduced a drag queen make-up course to meet rising demand for the skill to hide beard shadows and to enter the glitzy glamour of the drag world. The short course, targeted at occasional drag queens, cross dressers and make-up students, has also sparked wider community interest from those who want to know the basics about the thick, theatrical style make-up. Students will have the opportunity to don wigs and their favourite dresses at the end of the make-up course as they take on their complete drag queen persona.
■Canada
Chretien considers US' NMD
Canada will likely decide next week whether to talk to Washington about joining a controversial US program to build a missile defense shield, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said on Tuesday. After a weekly Cabinet meeting which was dominated by discussions on the US national missile defense (NMD) program, Chretien faced a barrage of questions on the matter in parliament. "It is a different concept from the Star Wars of President Reagan," said Chretien, "and it is why we are looking at a position for Canada when the time comes for us to look into that." Analysts believe there may be deep divisions within Chretien's cabinet over NMD.
■ United Kingdom
Lords discuss can danger
British parliamentarians grappled Tuesday with an enduring household challenge -- the peel-back openings on cans of corned beef. During debate in the House of Lords, Labor peer Lord Harrison called for pressure on food makers to redesign what he called the "inherently unsafe" cans to save thousands of people from injuries each year. "There is a real problem about corned beef cans," agreed junior industry minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville. But he said the number of injuries from corned beef cans was declining, from 8,720 accidents before 1997 to about 3,000 a year today. Sainsbury said the public could not be protected from all household risks: 55 accidents a year were caused by putty, 73 by toothpaste and 823 by letters.
■ Belgium
Surreal painting aids airline
A painting by the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte commissioned in 1965 by his country's national airline, Sabena, has proved of real benefit to the now bankrupt company's 12,000 former employees. The picture, appropriately of a sky bird -- L'Oiseau de Ciel -- has sold at auction for Euros 3.4 million (US$3.8 million) to help the staff that the line was forced to pay off when it went into bankruptcy in November 2001. It is not known how much Sabena paid Magritte, who died two years later, but he was famously reported to have said that it was enough for him to "put butter on my spinach."
■ United States
Tides could provide energy
The powerful ocean tides that surge daily beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge may be tapped to generate electricity. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors have voted unanimously to launch a US$2 million pilot project to study harnessing wave energy to generate enough electricity to light more than 750 homes in this city of 790,000 residents. The tides that ebb and flow through the narrow Golden Gate would be channelled through an underwater concrete passageway with no moving parts, building up pressure and creating a suction effect to spin on-shore generators.
■ South Africa
Man beheads himself
A 31-year-old South African man walked into a supermarket, picked up a saw and decapitated himself in front of shocked shoppers. The incident happened early Tuesday in the port town of Richards Bay. Eyewitnesses said the man had appeared calm as he marched up to the meat counter, where he switched on a meat saw and placed his head under it. Staff and shoppers had no time to react. The man did not leave a suicide note and according to his family he was not suffering from depression.
■Liberia
Warlord dies in shootout
Sam Bockarie, a notorious West African warlord indicted for atrocities in Sierra Leone by a UN-backed court, was killed on Tuesday in a shootout with Liberian soldiers, the government said. The former hairdresser, diamond-miner and disco dance champion had recently been leading fighters helping rebels in Ivory Coast -- the latest war in a regional cycle of bloodletting that found Bockarie in his element. Bockarie, 40, had been indicted by a special court for alleged crimes against humanity in his homeland of Sierra Leone, including mass murder, widespread rape and hacking off the limbs of civilians including even small children.
■ Iraq
Baath commander held
Allied forces are holding a leading Baath Party and militia commander for central Iraq, the US Central Command (Centcom) said yesterday as the hunt for the most wanted Iraqis steps up. Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi was Baath Party Regional Command chairman and Baath militia leader for Wasit governorate, centered on the city of Al-Kut, about 150km south of Baghdad, a statement said. Ubaydi, "now in custody," according to Centcom, was number 32 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis and the two of hearts in the pack of cards issued to assist US troops.
■ Cuba
Dissidents held in solitary
Cuba has placed in solitary confinement most of the 75 people imprisoned in a recent crackdown on dissent that drew international condemnation, a human rights organization said on Tuesday. "The immense majority, 60 in all, are in solitary confinement in the punishment wards of the country's maximum security prisons," said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the illegal, but tolerated, Cuban Human Rights Commission. The dissidents were rounded up in late March, charged with working with the US to overthrow the communist government and sentenced to an average of 19 years in prison after one-day trials closed to foreign diplomats and journalists.
■ Israel
Explosion kills fugutive
A senior Hamas fugitive was killed in a mysterious explosion in the West Bank yesterday, and the Islamic militant group accused Israeli troops of setting off the blast. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. The blast went off at about 8:30am in an apartment in the village of Zawata near the Palestinian city of Nablus. The fugitive, Amin Fadel, 28, was killed. Fadel had rented the apartment four days earlier. He had been wanted by Israel for two years on suspicion of involvement in attacks on Israelis.
■ United Kingdom
MP in limbo over Iraq ties
The British Labour Party suspended controversial anti-war member of parliament George Galloway on Tuesday, a move that may bar him in the autumn from winning the Labour nomination for its safest parliamentary seat in Glasgow. The party's general secretary, David Triesman, suspended an outraged Galloway pending an internal party investigation into whether he has brought the party into disrepute by urging British troops not to fight in an illegal war against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Galloway is facing separate inquiries into his pro-Iraq fund, the Mariam Appeal, by the charity commission and by the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
Agencies
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS