Wed, Apr 07, 2004 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Japan
  Tokyo gets tough on N Korea

  Japan's ruling parties submitted a bill to parliament yesterday that would allow Tokyo to ban North Korean ships from Japanese ports, a move intended to put pressure on Pyongyang to resolve a feud over abducted Japanese. The bill's target is a controversial North Korean ferry, the only passenger link between the two countries and a vital source of hard currency for North Korea's impoverished economy, lawmakers who drafted the legislation have said. "The government's fundamental policy [towards North Korea] is dialogue and pressure," Foreign Ministry Yoriko Kawaguchi was quoted by Kyodo news agency as telling a news conference. "The bill is one tool to use."

  ■ Hong Kong

  Boss tried to steal recipe

  A chef in southern China is suing his boss for putting a spy camera in the kitchen to steal his secret recipes, a news report said yesterday. The chef, an expert in Sichuanese cuisine, found a hidden camera in his restaurant kitchen he claims was installed by his boss to try to discover his recipes. He is now suing the restaurant in Guangdong Province for 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) for psychological damage, the South China Morning Post reported. His boss responded that the camera was installed not to steal recipes but to keep an eye out for laziness among kitchen staff, the newspaper said.

  ■ Kazakhstan

  Government critics harassed

  An international rights group slammed Kazakhstan's government yesterday for allegedly harassing opposition figures ahead of parliamentary elections. "The government is attempting to keep its fiercest critics out of the media and out of politics," said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division. "This is going to undermine the integrity of the elections this fall." A report from the New York-based group detailed alleged government harassment of Kazakh opposition figures through "arbitrary criminal and misdemeanor charges and threats of job dismissal, in many cases aimed at preventing them from running for public office."

  ■ Afghanistan

  Quake hits Hindu Kush area

  A powerful earthquake jolted the remote Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistan's northeast border with Pakistan early yesterday. Reports said at least one person was dead and probably more. "There are casualties, but we are still trying to sort out the details," said Qarabig Ezedyar, the head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society. The quake was centered in Badakhshan province and caused panic in the capital, Kabul, 275km to the southwest. The US Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale, while Pakistan's Seismological Center put the magnitude

  at 6.8.

  ■ Australia

  Crime boss mourned

  Hundreds of people crammed a church in Melbourne yesterday to mourn crime boss Lewis Moran, who last week became the 23rd victim of the country's worst gang war in decades. Moran, the 58-year-old patriarch of one of Melbourne's most notorious crime families, was gunned down by two masked men while drinking with a friend at an inner-city gaming club. Police fear what began as a battle for control of Melbourne's drug scene five years ago has become a tit-for-tat vendetta which may soon claim an innocent member of the public.

  ■ South Africa
  Top musician killed

  Leading South African jazz musician Gito Baloi was shot and killed in central Johannesburg, the latest prominent artist to fall victim to the country's high rates of violent crime, officials said on Monday. Police said Baloi, a Mozambican-born bass guitarist, was shot and killed early on Sunday by two assailants while driving home from a performance in Pretoria. Provincial officials called on the public to help track down his killers.

  ■ Venezuela

  Minister shoulders blame

  Venezuela's minister of information resigned on Monday after the death of one of eight soldiers burned in a mysterious barracks fire whose injuries President Hugo Chavez dismissed in a national broadcast as only "light." Army commanders have described the blaze in a punishment cell as an accident started by a cigarette. But relatives of one of the soldiers and opposition groups said they suspected the men were doused with a flammable liquid and deliberately set on fire as a retaliation for signing a petition seeking a referendum against Chavez.

  ■ United States

  Iraq dominates Pulitzers

  Coverage of the war in Iraq garnered American journalism's most prestigious prizes for international reporting and for photography in breaking news. The Los Angeles Times,, collected five Pulitzers Monday -- the second most ever awarded to a newspaper in a single years. The New York Times won seven in 2002 primarily for its coverage of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and aftermath. The prize for international reporting went to Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post, for his coverage of the Iraq war.

  ■ Russia

  Academic guilty of spying

  Researcher Igor Sutyagin was found guilty of espionage on Monday, Russian news reports said, in a case that raised fears of a resurgence of Soviet-style tactics and alarmed the scientific community. Sutyagin, an academic at Moscow's respected USA and Canada Institute, has been in jail since his October 1999 arrest on charges that he sold information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that investigators claim was a cover for the CIA.

  ■ Netherlands

  Bestiality ban considered

  Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman told parliament on Monday that he was planning a formal ban on sexual relations with animals to protect the rights of pets and livestock. He was responding to the complaints of several lawmakers, who were outraged that a man accused of raping horses walked free on the grounds that the animals had not physically suffered from the rape. "I am considering a change to the current law to make all forms of bestiality illegal," Veerman said in a letter to parliament, adding he hoped to have a draft measure ready within months. A group of parliamentarians had argued in a letter to the minister that sex with animals was a "violation of their physical integrity," considering that the creatures were unable to give or withhold their consent. Current Dutch health law lists some treatment of animals as punishable offenses, such as castrating one's own cat or using a dog for forced labour, but does not mention sexual intercourse.

  ■ Ukraine
  Six arrested in nuclear theft

  Six employees of a nuclear power station were detained for allegedly stealing nuclear materials for sale on the black market, Ukrainian prosecutor general's office said. The suspects removed a high-pressure vessel known as an autoclave that was located in the Rivne station's evaporation system, a local prosecutor said, as quoted by the Interfax news agency. However, the device was not in service at the time and the theft did not have any impact on the working of the station, Tomylovich said.

  ■ South Africa

  Teen loses leg to shark

  A 16-year old South African surfer lost his right leg in a shark attack near Cape Town on Monday. A hospital spokeswoman said the teen was in stable but critical condition. Local media, quoting marine emergency services, said the teenager had been attacked by a great white shark that had been spotted by life guards on Sunday and was believed to measure at least 5m in length. Great whites are common in the cold and seal-infested Atlantic waters near Cape Town. Fatal shark attacks in general are rare. The University of Florida's International Shark Attack File shows 60 unprovoked shark attacks were recorded in 2002. Only three people were registered on the file as killed by sharks in 2002.

  ■ Brazil

  Nuclear standoff denied

  Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Monday refuted a Washington Post report that Brazil has barred UN nuclear inspectors from visiting a plant for enriching uranium under construction near Rio de Janeiro. The Post's report on Sunday cited Brazilian officials and diplomats from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The paper, citing diplomats, added that Brazil and the IAEA are at an impasse over the inspections issue. But Amorim said: "The idea that we are prohibiting inspectors from coming to the country is unfounded." The Post reported Brazil insists that the facility under construction will produce low-enriched uranium for use in power plants and not the highly enriched material used in nuclear weapons.

  ■ Ingushetia

  Assassination bid fails

  The president of the Republic of Ingushetia was slightly injured yesterday in an apparent suicide bomb attack on his way to work. An aide said that a vehicle packed with explosives rammed into the entourage of Murat Zyazikov, 47, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as he was traveling to his office. "This was an assassination attempt," his spokesman Issa Merzhoyev said. Reports said that at least five bodyguards were hospitalized following the attack and that the car was carrying up to 100kg of explosives. Zyazikov apparently survived that attack because he was traveling in an armored Mercedes car, ITAR-TASS quoted officials as saying.

  ■ United States

  Nader fails to qualify

  Ralph Nader failed to qualify for Oregon's presidential ballot when fewer than 1,000 people showed up at a gathering to sign their names to petitions, but aides to the independent presidential candidate said he would try again. A total of 741 people came to a Portland theater to sign the petitions -- 259 fewer than those the veteran consumer advocate needed to qualify for the Oregon ballot, said state elections director John Lindback. "Even the best basketball player doesn't get a slam-dunk every time," Nader told the crowd Monday, acknowledging the numbers fell short.
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