■ Australia
Counter-terror drill held
A spate of simulated car bombings and the mock takeover by armed militants of an oil rig far off northern Australia marked the start of its biggest counter-terrorism exercise yesterday. The five-day maneuvers, code-named Mercury 04, involve hun-dreds of police, soldiers and officials in four states. The maneuvers began with emergency services being rushed to the port of Mel-bourne where the mangled wrecks of a blown-up bus and van and scattered mannequin parts were all that was left of a simulated hijack attempt and bombing of a visiting foreign prime minister and his entourage.
■ Thailand
Three killed in south
Two police officers and a village leader were killed yesterday and a school was set on fire in Muslim-dominated southern Thai-land, where a wave of vio-lence has left more than 50 people dead this year, police said. On Sunday, another village leader who is in police custody, accused two ruling-party lawmakers and a senator of plotting a Jan. 4 raid on an army arsenal that set off the recent upsurge in violence, which Prime Mini-ster Thaksin Shinawatra's government has blamed on Islamic separa-tists. One of the lawmakers yesterday denied any involvement in the attack, in which four soldiers were killed and hundreds of weapons stolen.
■ Thailand
`Snake man' fatally bit
A man who was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for spending the longest time with snakes has died after being bitten by one of his 30 pet snakes, doctors said yesterday. Boonreung Bauchan, known as the "Snake Man," died on Friday, a day after suffering a venomous bite by a mamba, said Dr. Wipha Praituen of Praibung hospital in Si Sa Ket province. She said Boonreung was bitten on the right elbow, and "the poison had spread through-out his body when he arrived at the hospital." Boonreung, 34, won a mention in the Guinness book after spending seven days in an enclosure with snakes in 1998 to set a new world record.
■ Australia
PETA to boycott Tasmania
Animal-rights campaigners are to announce a boycott of the Tasmania, threatening the island's A$1 billion tourism industry. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) boycott is to protest at the felling of native forests, which has been described as an ecolo-gical disaster. PETA will call on its 800,000 members to boycott Tasmanian products and refuse to travel to the state, nearly a quarter of the economy of which is dependent on tourism and food exports. Tasmania's forests contain some of the largest trees in the world. More than 160km2 of native forest was logged in the state last year, with the majority turned into woodchips which are exported to Japan to be turned into paper and tissue.
■ China
Herbalist seeks record
A Chinese herbalist has begun a 49-day fast in a glass box halfway up a mountain in a bid to beat the 44-day record set last year by US magician David Blaine, state media reported. Chen Jianmin, 50, began his fast on Saturday in a box on stilts in a mountain resort in Yaan, Sichuan Province. He will live in the 15m2 cell for 15 days consuming only water and no food, supervised by seven notaries, the China Daily said. Chen said his fast would "attest to the regimen of traditional Chinese medical science."
■ Saudi Arabia
Minister promises elections
Saudi Arabia's powerful defense minister on Sunday did not rule out elections to the appointed Shura (Consultative) Council, saying they would eventually be held if the Saudi people so wished. "Where elections [to the Shura Council] are concerned, if their time comes and the Saudi people deem they are warranted, we will not fail" to hold a vote, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz said. Saudi leaders promised in October last year to organize the first ever polls in the conservative kingdom within a year to elect half the members of new municipal councils. The municipal elections would be held "in the coming months," Prince Sultan told reporters.
■ Canada
Pharmacies to sell pot
Canada plans to make government-certified marijuana available in local pharmacies, a move that would make Canada the second country in the world after the Netherlands to allow the direct sale of medical marijuana. Officials are organizing a pilot project in British Columbia, modeled on a year-old program in the Netherlands. Currently, there are 78 medical users in Canada permitted to buy government marijuana, which is grown in Flin Flon, Manitoba. A 30g bag of dried buds sells for US$113 (C$150), and is sent by courier directly to patients or their doctors. A notice of the change is expected to be made public this spring.
■ Mexico
Mexicans celebrate equinox
Decked out in eagle feathers, amulets and lucky charms, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans converged on the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, near Mexico City, on Sunday to tap into what they believe is the site's energy on the spring equinox. Arriving before dawn, visitors queued in snaking lines to climb the steeply raked steps of the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, in an annual rite marking the first day of spring. Teotihuacan, which lies in a highland valley 50km northeast of the capital, was built some 2,000 years ago by a nameless civilization. The site has become one of Mexico's top tourist attractions and a magnet for indigenous priests and new-age enthusiasts alike.
■ United Kingdom
Antarctic sea ice melting
Sea ice around Antarctica may have decreased by as much as 20 per cent since 1950, new findings suggest. This is the first clear evidence of Antarctic sea ice melting due to global warming. The findings showed that sea ice in the coastal Law Dome region of Antarctica was stable from 1840 to 1950, but had declined sharply since then. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said there had been a 20 percent reduction in sea ice since 1950.
■ United Kingdom
Iraqi-born architect honored
The Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid has been selected to receive this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2004, considered the profession's highest honor. She is the first woman to receive it. The prize, which carries a grant of US$100,000, is to be awarded at a ceremony on May 31 at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Movement, curvature, porosity, extreme horizontal elongation: These are some of the aesthetic properties that helped to establish Hadid, 53, as a major influence in her field well before she began to build. Hadid was born in Baghdad in 1950. She is now based in London and is a British citizen.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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