■ United States
Security does duck detail
The Secret Service, which has the job of guarding the president and other dignitaries, now has a new temporary duty -- protecting a mother duck and her nine eggs. The duck, a brown mallard, has had several names suggested by Treasury Department people, including "Quacks Reform," and "Duck Cheney." The duck has built a nest in a mulch pile right at the main entrance to the Treasury Department. Metal guard rails protect the nest and she has been provided with a water bowl.
PHOTO: AP
■ United States
CBS cameraman arrested
An Iraqi cameraman who has worked for CBS in Iraq has been arrested after being wounded during a firefight in Mosul. The US military said the cameraman is being held on suspicion of rebel activity because he "poses an imperative threat to coalition forces" and that he "will be processed as any other security detainee." US military officials said the man's camera held footage of a number of roadside bomb attacks against American troops, and they believe he was tipped off. CBS said the man was referred by a trusted person in Tikrit and that it is common practice in Iraq for western news organizations to hire local cameramen in places considered too dangerous for westerners to work effectively.
■ United States
Man runs into DMV
A man drove his car into a wall at the Division of Motor Vehicles building, then walked in and renewed his driver's license. Police believe the man was driving while impaired on medication and charged him with driving under the influence. The man's car went up over a sidewalk, denting the building's metal siding and startling workers sitting nearby in the agency's accounting department. "I saw the guy back up, get out of his car and walk into the DMV like nothing happened," an employee said. Workers notified higher-ups and pointed out the driver, who had taken a number, apologizing to a clerk that he had ``tapped'' the building. By the time police arrived, the man had paid US$20 and renewed his license.
■ Mexico
Mayor vows to campaign
Mexico's most popular politician plans to give himself up soon and go to jail, after Congress ruled he face trial for a minor land dispute crime that could turn campaigning for the 2006 presidential elections into chaos. Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to campaign for the presidency from behind bars.
■ United States
Sandwich patent fails
There's only so far you can go in trying to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The US Court of Appeals rejected an effort by J.M. Smucker Co. to patent its process for making pocket-size peanut butter and jelly pastries, which are enclosed without a crust using a crimping method that the company says is one of a kind and should be protected from duplication by federal law. Patent examiners at the US Patent officials disagreed, saying the crimped edges are similar to making ravioli or a pie crust. The company appealed, but the decision was upheld to reject the patents.
■ Vietnam
Border agreement reached
Vietnam, China and Laos have agreed on the intersection point of the three countries' border and will sign an accord later this year, state press said yesterday. They held a five-day meeting -- the second on the issue -- in Hanoi which ended Friday. "During the friendly and frank talks, all three sides reached an agreement on the intersection point of the countries' borders and planned to define the point at the specific site by late April," the English language Vietnam News daily said. A treaty will be signed "within the year" and a comprehensive map attached, it said.
■ India
Man dies with only 91 wives
An Indian man who claimed to have 91 wives died with the unfulfilled dream of marrying 100 times, it was reported Friday. Udaynath Dakhinaray, 84, died this week from complications related to paralysis from an accident two months ago, in the Keonjhar district of eastern Orissa state, the PTI news agency reported. Dakhinaray married young, when he was a student. After his first marriage broke up, he vowed to marry 100 women. "He never forced any woman to marry him. He married them with their consent," his 90th wife Mira, told PTI. He also boasted about receiving proposals from abroad.
■ Australia
NSW drought worsens
Three-quarters of Australia's most populous state has been hit by drought after experiencing an "exceptionally dry" month, the New South Wales government said yesterday. The state's drought-hit areas rose from 68 percent to 76 percent after last month, according to Ian Macdonald, NSW primary industries minister. "It means that farmers are having to delay planting of winter crops, such as wheat and canola," Macdonald told ABC radio. "And some of our summer crops such as sorghum have been badly hit. The rice industry will have its worst result in 30 years -- so it's a fairly grim position around the state."
■ Vietnam
Agent Orange suit appealed
Attorneys for the Vietnamese plaintiffs whose lawsuit against US chemical manufacturers of Agent Orange was dismissed last month have appealed the ruling, an official said Saturday. The appeals were filed in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, said Tran Xuan Thu, General Secretary of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange. "We appealed because the ruling by the US federal judge was irrational," he said. The class action lawsuit filed on behalf of some 4 million Vietnamese claimed that US chemical companies committed war crimes by manufacturing Agent Orange for military use during the Vietnam War.
■ South Korea
Helicopters fly over DMZ
South Korean helicopters flew over the heavily armed buffer zone that separates the two Koreas for the first time since the peninsula's division to extinguish a fire, the South's Defense Ministry said yesterday. Two helicopters flew over the Demilitarized Zone near the peninsula's east coast Friday evening to extinguish the fire that could otherwise have spread south across the border, the ministry said. The 40-minute operation happened after North Korea granted permission for South Korean helicopters to fly in the border area for the first time since the end of the Korean War. The blaze hasn't completely died out, but the ministry said it has no plans to send more aircraft into the DMZ because of bad weather.
■ United Kingdom
Pothead granny spared jail
A 66-year-old British grandmother with a taste for marijuana casserole was spared jail on Friday despite admitting she had shared cannabis-laced cookies with fellow pensioners. Patricia Tabram from East Lea in the northern tip of England, who said she uses cannabis to alleviate pains in her neck and back, pleaded guilty to possession of the drug with intent to supply. But Judge David Hodson said he would not make a "martyr" of her when she returned to Newcastle Crown Court for sentencing. Instead, she received a six-month suspended prison sentence. The white-haired, bespectacled granny was unrepentant, and said she would keep cooking with pot. "I had it this morning in my scrambled eggs and I'll have it again for lunch. I'm not giving it up," she told Channel 4 news.
■ Italy
Jets intercept Serbian plane
Acting on a tip that a Serbian plane was carrying a bomb, authorities on high alert for Pope John Paul II's funeral Friday scrambled F16 jet fighters to force down one plane, while police stopped another on the ground from taking off, the Air Force said. No threat was found on either plane, but the action tested the high-strung defenses Italy put in place to protect some 200 dignitaries and millions of pilgrims who flocked to Rome for the funeral. Both incidents occurred about three hours after the ceremonies ended. Two F-16 jet fighters intercepted a rented executive jet and forced it to land at a military airport about 40km southwest of Rome at 4:18p after receiving a tip that it was carrying a bomb.
■ United Kingdom
UK embassy in Yemen shut
The government said Friday it was suspending all operations at its embassy in Yemen after receiving a credible security threat as Yemeni government forces killed more than 70 rebels during two days of clashes in a northern Yemeni town. "We have had a credible security threat which we are obviously taking very seriously so we are suspending all operations in the British embassy," a Foreign Office spokesman said. "Obviously it's closed today anyway because it's a weekend in Yemen. But the embassy will remain closed tomorrow until further notice," he added.
■ France
Drug dealer likes Picasso
Police found a painting by Pablo Picasso hidden at a drug traffickers' family home outside Paris nearly a year after it was stolen from the Pompidou Center, museum and police said Friday. The museum said an inventory check in May revealed that the oil-on-canvas "Nature Morte a la Charlotte," painted in 1924, was missing. The disappearance was reported to police. Investigators located the painting Tuesday hidden behind an armoire at the family home of a drug trafficker in Antony, south of Paris, said a judicial police spokeswoman.
■ Russia
Putin holds CIS reform talks
President Vladimir Putin held talks Friday with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev over the future of the Commonwealth of Independent States -- a loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics that is much in need of reform after the toppling of former regimes in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier this week Putin said that the CIS would discuss a possible reform of the grouping at its next summit in May.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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