■ Malaysia
Wen visits France
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) arrived in France yesterday for a four day visit that looks set to be dominated by trade issues, with a large order for Airbus airliners said to be in the offing. Wen started his visit in Toulouse -- headquarters to the European air consortium -- where French officials are hopeful he will announce plans to buy up to 120 medium-range A320 planes. The prime minister was to hold talks with President Jacques Chirac in Paris early today, followed by a meeting with his opposite number Dominique de Villepin where officials have said a number of commercial and economic accords will be signed. He also has a meeting planned with the business organization MEDEF and will fly to Marseilles to view the nearby site of the future experimental nuclear fusion reactor ITER, in which China is a partner.
■ Malaysia
Minister to court Chinese
Malaysia's Home Minister Azmi Khalid said yesterday he was about to depart on a trip to China aimed at repairing relations after outrage over the alleged humiliation of a Chinese woman by police there. Khailid, who was asked by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to make the urgent trip, will meet with Chinese officials today. The move follows the release last month of a video clip in which a woman believed to be a Chinese national is forced to strip and perform squats in front of a Malaysian policewoman. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei (武大偉) last Wednesday summoned the Malaysian ambassador in Beijing to protest over the treatment of Chinese citizens, and Beijing has called on Malaysia to ensure their safety.
■ Ukraine
Woman burns father to death
Police launched a search for a woman who allegedly splashed her sleeping father with gasoline and set him ablaze. The 72-year-old unidentified man in southern Johor state was rushed to a hospital following the incident on Saturday, but he succumbed to his injuries. A murder inquiry was underway. The man's 33-year-old daughter, who had a history of mental illness, left home immediately after the incident and could not immediately be traced. The victim's 68-year-old widow said her husband had quarreled with their daughter earlier in the week because she refused to take her medication.
■ Sri Lanka
Norway warns of escalation
The Norwegian-led international ceasefire monitoring mission overseeing the country's uneasy truce with Tamil Tiger rebels warned yesterday that escalating hostilities could cause "irreparable damage" to the country's peace process. "The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission has observed a dangerous trend of violence in the North and the East in the last few days resulting in a number of deaths and injuries of both civilians and security forces personnel," the mission's chief, Hagrup Haukland said. The mission made an appeal for all parties "to do their utmost to calm down the volatile situation before it escalates any further."
■ Philippines
Joint effort rescues teachers
Muslim guerrillas and government troops took part in a rare joint assault and successfully rescued two kidnapped teachers yesterday in the southern Philippines, military officials and rebels said. Philippine marines and hundreds of Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels fanned out in search of schoolteachers Felipe Lacunies and his wife, Helen, after their abduction on Friday. A group of guerrillas found them abandoned in a hut in Piagapo town in Lanao del Sur province. Felipe, 58, said they were tightly guarded and were constantly taken on foot or horseback through the wilderness in Piagapo, southeast of Manila. After learning that government troops had tracked them, the kidnappers abandoned the two teachers in a hut, where they were found by the rebels.
■ Japan
Fishing boat capsizes
A South Korean fishing boat capsized in the East China Sea off southwestern Japan early yesterday, throwing all eight crew members overboard and leaving four missing, the Japanese coast guard said. The 109 Dae-sung was found capsized about 480km west of the Cape of Bo in Kagoshima on Japan's southern island of Kyushu early yesterday. The cause of the accident was not known, although the weather had been rough. Four of the eight crew members -- all believed to be South Korean men -- were rescued by a South Korean vessel that was passing through the area, but four remain missing. It was not immediately clear what condition the rescued men were in.
■ Philippines
Election official emerges
A former election official at the center of vote-rigging charges against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo emerged yesterday from months of hiding and agreed to appear before Congress, which is investigating charges that he conspired with her to rig last year's polls. Escorted by men armed with assault rifles, former Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano said, "As promised, I'll come out, I'm not hiding anything."
■ Woman immolates husband
A woman set her hard-drinking husband of 20 years on fire, killing him as payback for "wasted years," the Interfax news agency said on Saturday citing local police. The woman, who was not named by police, doused her husband with gasoline and set him on fire after finding the man passed out in the yard of their home in the eastern Zaporizhskaya region, police said. The man died of his wounds. The woman, who was being held in police custody, told officers she wanted to pay her spouse back "for wasted years" as during their two decades together she was the main breadwinner while the husband regularly drank.
■ Ukraine
Bird flu kills poultry
The government has recorded its first bird flu outbreak, prompting the president to declare a state of emergency in four Crimean villages following the deaths of more than 1,600 chickens and geese. Dead birds in the Black Sea peninsula tested positive for the H5 subtype, officials said Saturday. Bird flu had already been detected in neighboring Romania nearly two months ago, and Officials scrambled to reassure this nation of 47 million that they were well-prepared. Ukrainians, meanwhile, began debating whether to stop buying poultry -- the only meat many in this poor nation can afford.
■ Vatican
Abbas meets pope
Pope Benedict XVI met privately with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, receiving his latest invitation to visit the Holy Land. The Palestinian leader said he and the pontiff also discussed the plight of the tiny Christian minority in the Palestinian territories. "You will be very welcome in Jerusalem and all the holy places," Abbas told the pope after their 20-minute meeting in the pontiff's library. "Thank you very much," the pope replied. Both men smiled and appeared relaxed. Abbas, speaking English, told journalists that Benedict "responded positively" to his invitation but indicated no date.
■ Lebanon
Human remains found
The remains of more than 20 people who died several years ago were found on Saturday, near what had been the headquarters and a prison of Syrian intelligence, police reported. Bones were found in three mass graves on a hillside opposite the facility in the ethnically Armenian village of Anjar, just 3km from the Syrian border. They included human skulls and were found in 26 gunny sacks, which also contained underwear and the remains of one military uniform, a photographer said. An Anjar resident who requested anonymity said that "prisoners who died in the Syrian mukhabarat [secret police] prison were buried on the hill."
■ Brazil
Onassis heiress weds
Amid military-style security and fevered gossip rippling through both Brazilian and Greek high society, one of the richest women in the world -- Athina Onassis Roussel, who inherited a fortune of close to US$1 billion -- was to wed 32-year-old Brazilian Alvaro Affonso "Doda" de Miranda Neto, an Olympic show jumper, on Saturday. The couple are thought to have shelled out more than US$48,500 -- around 415 minimum monthly wages in Brazil -- just on hiring the venue. The catering cost is about the same again, with the Valentino dress and 5m-long veil costing US$1 million.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
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