■ China
Miss Ugly under knife
The winner of a Miss Ugly contest in Shanghai staged a week before China hosts Miss World has begun an extensive course of plastic surgery, a news report said yesterday. Translator Zhang Di, 26, beat 50 competitors to the prize of 100,000 yuan (US$13,000) worth of treatment, after being named the woman who would most benefit from plastic surgery. She will spend the next three weeks undergoing operations to make her more beautiful, the South China Morning Post said. Plastic surgery has boomed in popularity in China in recent years.
■ Indonesia
Bali bomber threatens Bush
In a bizarre courtroom outburst, an Indonesian sentenced to death for masterminding last year's Bali nightclub bombings boasted yesterday that an army of holy warriors would soon destroy US President George W. Bush. Imam Samudra claimed to have sent "5,000 troops from the sky" to India, Iraq and Turkey to fight against the US president. "God willing, Allah's army will win," he yelled before being bustled from the court by police. It was unclear what he meant by his reference to the sky. Samudra had been summoned as a witness yesterday in the trial of Heri Hafidin, a minor suspect in the Oct. 12 bombings.
■ Cambodia
PM offers share of power
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday outlined a power-sharing agenda aimed at ending Cambodia's political stalemate, saying he would remain at the helm for the next five years if his rivals refused to accept it. The formula would have Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party occupy 60 percent of the ministerial posts and split the rest evenly between the royalist Funcinpec party and the Sam Rainsy Party, he said, as party representatives prepared for a fresh round of talks. "Anything different from this means no deal -- take it," Hun Sen told a crowd of 5,000 in a speech during a school inauguration.
■ Japan
Diplomats' bodies returned
The bodies of two Japanese diplomats slain in Iraq last weekend arrived in Japan yesterday, accompanied by relatives and met by a guard of honor, as media said Tokyo would soon approve the dispatch of troops to help rebuild that troubled country. Katsuhiko Oku, 45, and Masamori Inoue, 30, were the first Japanese to be killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March when they were gunned down on Saturday in an ambush near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Oku, who had gone to Iraq in April and was Japan's representative at the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, had served as Tokyo's eyes and ears in Iraq.
■ Japan
Panda `upbeat' after trip
Giant panda Shuan Shuan, recovering from a 20-hour journey from Mexico, appeared "very upbeat" and was getting ready to meet her lovematch, a zoo official said yesterday. The 16-year-old female had dined on bamboo leaves, boiled carrots and a fruit-and-vegetable milkshake -- made from a Mexican recipe -- following her arrival at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo late Wednesday, zoo spokesman Masanori Ono said. "She appears very upbeat despite the long journey," Ono said. "She had a big appetite last night." Officials hope she will mate with 18-year-old Ling Ling during this stay -- a suitor she has met previously on Ling Ling's three past trips to Mexico City's Chapultepec Zoo.
■ Saudi Arabia
Police find vast arsenal
A vast arsenal, including surface-to-air missiles, has been found in the hands of a suspect in the bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh on Nov. 8, which killed 17 people, the official Saudi News Agency reported on Wednesday, quoting an unidentified Interior Ministry official. The suspect, who was not named, was arrested on Nov. 27, but the announce-ment was withheld because of the search for other members of the cell, the ministry said. Armaments found included 100 SAM-7 missiles, 200 hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, thousands of pounds of explosives, 80 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and 168,000 rounds of ammunition, officials said.
■ Nigeria
Queen arrives in Nigeria
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrived in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Wednesday for the first time since the west African country won its independence from the British Empire. The Queen, accompanied by her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, is on the first stage of a state visit which will include the opening of the Commonwealth summit. The Queen was greeted at the airport by President Olusegun Obasanjo and by a 21-gun salute from Nigerian Army artillery.
■ United States
Detainee to get lawyer
An Australian being held without charge at a US camp at Guantanamo Bay has become the first foreign terrorist suspect to be given a US military lawyer, the Pentagon announced. David Hicks will be represented by Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, the Defense Depart-ment said in a statement on Wednesday. Hicks also will be given access to an Australian lawyer to act as a legal adviser, said Pentagon spokesman Major Michael Shavers. Hicks is one of six prisoners at the US Navy base whom President George W. Bush named as possible candidates for trial by a special military tribunal for terrorism suspects. The US and Australia announced last week they had reached an agreement on how Hicks would be tried before a US military tribunal.
■ United States
Custody death ruled murder
Nathaniel Jones, a black man whose death in police custody has incited new racial tensions in Cincinnati, Ohio, died primarily because of his violent struggle with the police, a coroner said on Wednesday. But he cautioned that his ruling did not imply wrong-doing or excessive use of force by the police. Dr. Carl Parrot, the Hamilton County coroner, also said that heart disease, illegal drugs and obesity were major contri-buting factors. Parrott ruled the death a homicide, mean-ing it was the direct conse-quence of Jones' struggle with the police on Sunday. In the confrontation, which was captured on a police videotape, Jones charged a police officer outside a restaurant, then was tackled and beaten by baton-wielding officers for several minutes.
■ Russia
Bear kills two workers
A performing bear mauled two Moscow theater workers to death and wounded another after he broke out of his cage on Wednesday, police said. The bear, a star attraction in the famed animal theatre "Ugolok Durova," became enraged and attacked 33-year-old Umar Zakirov, the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted officials as saying. He then set upon Shedov Timur, 32. A third worker was bitten on the wrist.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
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