■ China
Inbreeding risk reduced
China plans a "giant" panda reserve that will give the furry animal more space to roam and widen its choice of mating partners, in turn reducing the risk of inbreeding, state media said yesterday. The area, measuring 1,200km2 and estimated to cost 180 million yuan (US$22 million), will be located in a forest area in southwestern Baoxing county, the Xinhua news agency reported.
■ China
AIDS orphans need medicine
China's 76,000 AIDS orphans -- children who have lost one or both of their parents and are suffering from the lethal condition themselves -- are in dire need of medication, state media said yesterday. No anti-AIDS drugs for children are produced in China, and there are also no systematic imports of from abroad, the China Youth Daily reported. Under the current circumstances, local hospitals have no choice but to give the children AIDS drugs meant for adults in smaller dosages, even though the practice is sometimes considered dangerous. "China has not yet developed a special anti-AIDS drug suited for pediatric use, and even on a global scale it's a problem," said Zhao Hongxin, a doctor at Beijing's Ditan Hospital.
■ Hong Kong
Burning body uncovered
Firefighters rushed to extinguish a burning shipping container left in some bushes early yesterday and found that it contained human body parts packed into a suitcase, police and local media reported. The remains were those of just one person, police superintendent Shing Pui-fun told reporters at the scene in the suburban New Territories, adding that the person's gender was not yet known. Shing said authorities were treating the case as a murder, but there was no word on the identity of the victim and no suspects have been named or arrested. Cable TV said the body was cut up and the pieces were stuffed into a leather suitcase.
■ Thailand
Hmong refugees arrested
Soldiers rounded up more than 2,000 ethnic Hmong tribespeople from a refugee camp in central Thailand after they allegedly entered the area illegally in hopes of joining a program to resettle camp residents in the US. Hundreds of troops arrived at Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple where the camp is located, around 2am and detained only those Hmong who had registered to live at the camp after a US deadline of August last year, said Yeh Goo, a Hmong leader at the camp. The camp has been officially closed pending the US resettlement of about 15,000 Hmong living there. Thousands of Hmong have been living for years at the camp after fleeing Laos after the communist takeover of the country at the end of the Vietnam war in 1975. The CIA had enlisted the Hmong, a rugged tribal people, to fight the Laotian communists.
■ India
Village full of twins
A tiny village in the southern Indian state of Kerala is home to more than 70 pairs of twins, it was reported yesterday. It is normal practice in Kadavallur, a tiny village in Kerala's Thrissur district, for expectant mothers to be prepared with two cots and two sets of layettes, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The numbers of twins, about 90 percent of them identical, rise every year. Twins are usually of the same sex, a girl-boy pair being rare. The state-run village high school has 18 pairs of twins. They are always playing pranks in class as they look and dress alike, said teacher K.K. Balan.
■ Italy
No pullout from Iraq
Italy's government has insisted it will keep its troops in Iraq despite a demand by militants holding an Italian journalist hostage that the forces announce a pullout within 48 hours. The journalist, Enzo Baldoni, was shown on video footage broadcast on Tuesday by Al-Jazeera satellite television. The militant Islamic Army in Iraq did not threaten Baldoni directly but said it could not guarantee his safety unless Italy planned a pullout from Iraq, Al-Jazeera said. Premier Silvio Berlusconi's office responded that the 3,000 Italian troops would stay: "We will continue our military and civilian presence within the framework established by that UN decision."
■ South Africa
Thatcher's son arrested
South African police yesterday arrested the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on suspicion of involvement in a coup attempt in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, police sources said. A spokesman for the FBI-style Scorpions unit confirmed that "the son of a prominent former British politician" had been arrested and said his identity would be made public later yesterday. Police sources said the suspect was Mark Thatcher, now a businessman who maintains a residence in Cape Town.
■ France
Ex-terrorist flees again
An Italian terrorist turned best-selling crime writer who has been living openly in France for the past 15 years has fled the country to escape near-certain extradition. Liberation, which has followed Cesare Battisti's case closely, said on Tuesday that the author had left France, and that "he is by now far away," the paper said. Battisti, 49, is one of up to 100 former far-left Italian guerrillas who accepted an offer of sanctuary by the late President Francois Mitterrand in 1985. The French justice ministry demanded on Sunday that an arrest warrant be issued for Battisti. He faces life imprisonment in Italy, where a court convicted him of three 1970s murders.
■ United Kingdom
Surrogates soothe sheep
The way to soothe an anxious sheep is to show it a picture of another sheep. British scientists believe that -- like humans -- sheep need to see a familiar face when they are alone. The researchers put sheep alone into a darkened barn and projected life-sized images of sheep, goats and symbolic faces on a screen. Once shown faces of other sheep, the anxious captives seemed to calm down. Team leader Keith Kendrick suggested a human parallel: "One of the things that occurred to me is that if you have separation anxiety in young children, maybe providing them with pictures of their parents might actually help."
■ United Kingdom
Stalker likely to resume
A man who stalked violinist Vanessa Mae for 10 years is likely to continue to harass her after his release from prison, police warned on Tuesday. David Martin, 56, was instructed to stay out of London by a judge who jailed him for six months for the "flagrant breach" of a restraining order when Mae's boyfriend, Lionel Catalan, saw him in their street in February. Martin was arrested in October last year outside one of the musician's homes carrying a knife. Outside the court, Detective Constable David Cahill said: "I have no doubt he will breach the new restraining order."
■ United States
Bridge videotapers arrested
A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was arrested after he drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge while his wife videotaped close-up shots of the structure, authorities said on Tuesday. Ismael Selim Elbarasse, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody last week and held as a material witness in an unrelated terrorism case in Chicago. Neither he nor his wife was charged with any wrongdoing. Authorities said Elbarasse was in a sport utility vehicle with his wife and their three children. According to the FBI, the tape in the camera shows the cables and upper supports of the main section of the bridge and zooms in on bridge joints. The tape also shows the family on vacation.
■ United States
Muslim scholar loses visa
Acting at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the US government has revoked the work visa of a Muslim academic who had been scheduled to teach at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, this fall. Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen who has been criticized for alleged links to Islamic militants and for remarks branded anti-Semitic, was supposed to begin teaching on Tuesday, the first day of the fall semester. "This is unjustified," Ramadan said. He charged the revocation was "coming from political pressure."
■ United States
Metal bottles keep their cool
The makers of the first pull-tab beer cans have started producing aluminum bottles that keep beer colder for as much as 50 minutes longer than a glass bottle. Pittsburgh Brewing Co, maker of Iron City Beer, has partnered with Alcoa Inc, the world's largest aluminum maker, to produce the new bottles, which have three times the aluminum of a typical beer can. That gives them superior insulation, Alcoa spokesman Kevin Lowery said. It's not the first time Alcoa has teamed up with the brewery to put out a new product. In 1962, the two put the first pull-tab beer cans on shelves, freeing beer drinkers of the need to carry openers with them.
■ United States
Jackson's claims refuted
A state investigation has found that pop star Michael Jackson's claims that he was manhandled and injured during his arrest on child abuse charges were false, police said on Tuesday. Santa Barbara Sheriff Jim Anderson said an investigation by the California Attorney General and the state's Bureau of Investigation had concluded that Jackson was not injured during his Nov. 19 arrest. Jackson had claimed that his shoulder had been dislocated and his wrists and back hurt when his hands were cuffed behind his back when he turned himself in for arrest. He also claimed he was locked in a toilet in the sheriff's department for 45 minutes.
■ Argentina
Abuses don't expire
In a ruling that will affect thousands of cases of alleged human rights abuses against the military junta of the 1970s, the Argentine Supreme Court on Tuesday said there is no time limit on prosecutions for crimes against humanity. The ruling came in the case of Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a former agent of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet found guilty of murdering Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife, who were living in exile in Buenos Aires, in September 1974. The ruling confirms Arancibia's life sentence, issued by a lower court in 2000. Prats was Pinochet's predecessor as Chilean army commander.
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
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
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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