■ South Korea
Roh criticized for comment
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun was slammed as an international relations novice yesterday in editorials that argued he hurt his country's prestige by saying Seoul may fight a "diplomatic war" with Japan. Roh said in a letter to the South Korean people on Wednesday that Seoul's determination to set Japan right on a territorial dispute between the two countries over tiny islands and a Japanese textbook that critics say whitewashes Japanese militaristic past "may cause stinging diplomatic war." The South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo suggested that Roh study a course in Diplomacy 101.
■ China
Screams lost in translation
China imported a US-made scream machine to scare away the birds at Beijing airport -- except they didn't recognize the noises and refused to budge. The bird-dispersing equipment had recorded the screams of US birds or the sounds of the birds' natural enemies, the Beijing Evening News said. "Local birds did not understand the foreign language" the newspaper said. So Chinese experts "translated" the US bird noises into those of their Chinese counterparts. "The workers have already recorded six or seven bird screams which are common in Beijing," it said.
■ China
Ice-trafficking gang tried
A Chinese gang has gone on trial accused of trafficking more than US$5.5 billion worth of methamphetamines, or "ice," in one of the world's biggest narcotics cases, the China Daily said yesterday. The eight suspects appeared in court in the southern boomtown of Guangzhou charged with manufacturing and trafficking 10.89 tonnes of the drug between 1999 and 2002, "almost equal to the amount of ice drug seized globally in 1999," the newspaper said. The defendants, including suspected gang leader Chen Bingxi, 49, face the death penalty if found guilty in keeping with China's hard line on drugs, including forced rehabilitation of addicts.
■ Thailand
German arrested again
A one-legged German at the center of an HIV scare involving hundreds of Thai women and girls was arrested and set to be deported for a second time in 10 days, police said yesterday. Hans-Otto Schiemann, 54, who claims to be infected with HIV and had unprotected sex with hundreds of Thais, was arrested Wednesday in Chaiyaphum province, three days after re-entering the country through Thailand's main international airport despite being blacklisted. "He is under detention at immigration in Bangkok awaiting deportation," Chaiyaphum police Lieutenant Colonel Kampol Nonuch told reporters.
■ Thailand
Officer's sentenced reduced
A former police officer whose lawyer had claimed he went missing in Asia's tsunami when he failed to appear in court to appeal his conviction on sex charges had his 18-year sentence reduced yesterday by almost two years. Sakda Changrua, a former police Lieutenant Colonel, was convicted in 2002 of sexually molesting two underage girls -- aged 13 and 15 -- but was released on bail so he could appeal. When Sakda didn't show up at an appeal hearing on Feb. 24, his lawyer told the court Sakda was missing in southern Thailand, where more than 5,000 people were killed by the Dec. 26 tsunami. Police said Sakda's name did not show up on lists of those missing in the tsunami, and the court scheduled another hearing.
■ United States
Alarm clock fights back
Can't get out of bed in the morning? Scientists at MIT's Media Lab in the US have invented an alarm clock called Clocky to make even the doziest sleepers, who repeatedly hit the snooze button, leap out of bed. After the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room. "When the alarm sounds again, simply finding Clocky ought to be strenuous enough to prevent even the doziest owner from going back to sleep," New Scientist magazine said Tuesday.
■ United Kingdom
Gym scolded for ads
UK gym operator LA Fitness was reprimanded Wednesday for stressing out would-be customers with leaflets that looked like parking tickets. A woman complained to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority after finding under the windshield wiper of her car a yellow advert with black arrows at the top and bottom offering a buy-one-get-one-free membership. The self-regulatory agency acknowledged that upon reading the leaflet it was clearly advertising material, but said at first sight it could easily be mistaken for a parking ticket and "was likely to cause distress to recipients."
■ France
UN to vote on Sudan
France is to put to a vote on Thursday a UN resolution referring Sudanese war crimes cases to the International Criminal Court, daring Washington to cast an embarrassing veto or accept a tribunal it opposes. After weeks of haggling on a comprehensive resolution on Sudan, the UN Security Council has been deadlocked on where to try perpetrators of atrocities in the country's western region of Darfur. On Wednesday, France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, introduced a draft resolution that would refer Darfur cases to the ICC, the world's first permanent criminal court, as recommended by a UN panel of experts in January.
■ United Kingdom
What rhymes with Charles?
Pity the poor Poet Laureate. Britain's official poet Andrew Motion, who once waxed lyrical about Princess Diana, now faces the trickier task of penning a celebratory ode for the wedding of Prince Charles to his longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles. The outspoken Motion, selected by the prime minister and approved by the monarch, once rocked the British establishment by writing a poem condemning the Iraq War. He now faces his most delicate task yet writing about next month's wedding of the heir to the throne to the woman blamed for breaking up his marriage to the ill-fated Diana. Fellow poets were full of sympathy for Motion but, asked to have a go themselves, could not resist poking fun at the couple.
■ Tanzania
Plane crash kills eight
Eight people were missing and feared dead after a Russian cargo plane plunged into the Tanzanian section of Lake Victoria late on Wednesday, provincial authorities said. "We are launching an operation to pull out the wreckage. We don't see any sign of life," Daniel Ole Njoolay, a regional commissioner, told reporters by phone on Thursday from the lakeside town of Mwanza. "It crashed into the lake immediately after the take off. It happened at 11:07 at night. "Much of the body is sunk but the wings are floating. We can see the wreckage, it's about two kilometres from shore."
■ Canada
Tuberculosis aid announced
Canada said on Wednesday it would spend an extra C$38 million (US$31 million) this year in the global fight against tuberculosis. "Tuberculosis causes death and suffering all over the world. Canada is committed to fighting this disease, many of whose victims also suffer from AIDS and poverty," said Minister of International Cooperation Aileen Carroll. The money, announced on the eve of World Tuberculosis Day, will be split among agencies including the Global Drug Facility, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease and the World Health Organization.
■ United Nations
Cuba slams rights report
Cuba on Wednesday accused a UN investigator who says it violates human rights of playing along with the US in a campaign of "lies and slander" against the communist-ruled island. Havana's ambassador in Geneva issued the charge at the UN's Human Rights Commission after the investigator, French lawyer Christine Chanet, formally presented her third annual report to the body on the situation in Cuba. "This document, based on lies and slander, only serves as a platform to justify the anti-Cuban campaign of the US ... which has submitted my country to aggression for 45 years," the envoy, Jorge Ivan Mora Godoy, said.
■ Haiti
Minister's house fired on
Gunmen opened fire on the house of Haiti's justice minister, killing a police officer in a brazen attack that underscored the country's shaky security climate ahead of key fall elections, officials said on Wednesday. The Tuesday night shooting in Port-au-Prince came days after UN peacekeepers and Haitian police raided two rural towns to remove armed ex-soldiers who helped oust former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year. Two peacekeepers and two ex-soldiers died in clashes. A group of gunmen fired several times at Justice Minister Bernard Gousse's house in the capital, killing a policeman who was guarding the property, a spokeswoman for the interim government said.
■ Mexico
Five killed in shootout
A shootout between police officers raiding a safe house and suspected drug traffickers killed five people and injured nine others outside of Ciudad Juarez on Wednesday. A team of 26 municipal officers stormed into the Los Compadres neighborhood outside the city around midday in search of suspects implicated in the Tuesday slaying of another officer and were ambushed by gunmen, said Juan Salgado, the city's director of public safety. The dead include Sergeant Miguel Angel Diaz and four male suspects linked to drug smuggling syndicates, Salgado said.
■ United States
Gang member nabbed
Police arrested a suspected member of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha street gang in Miami as he allegedly carried three rifles in a supermarket cart, authorities said on Wednesday. Authorities plan to charge Edwin Reyes, a 23-year-old from Honduras, with possession of firearms and a visa violation. He is accused of illegally entering the US. Authorities accused him of being part of Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, a street gang that has wrought havoc in Central America and the US.The gang has 20,000 members in the US and thousands more in Central America and Mexico, according to US officials.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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