■ South Korea
Kim blasts `hated' US
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has spoken of the nation's "burning hatred" towards the US amid ongoing US-South Korean war games. Kim's comments were made during his inspection of an army unit, the official Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday. "Our army and people are turning out as one in the sacred anti-US struggle with burning hatred for the US imperialist aggressors and the unshakable resolution to take revenge upon them," Kim was quoted as saying. "No force on earth can match the single-mindedly united forces in the DPRK [North Korea] which no weapon can ever frighten or destroy."
■ South Korea
Stampede injures 16
Tens of thousands of people crowded to get free admission to an amusement park in Seoul yesterday, triggering a brief stampede that injured 16 people, officials said. About 50,000 people were waiting outside the Lotte World theme park on the first day of a six-day, free-admission event, when the accident happened, said Kim Heung-kyu, a park official. Kim said it was not clear how many people were involved in the stampede, but 16 people sustained broken bones, abrasions and other relatively minor injuries.
■ Malaysia
Envoy lashes at Myanmar
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar criticized Myanmar's military government for refusing to let him meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his ASEAN fact-finding visit there, the New Straits Times newspaper reported yesterday. Syed Hamid returned from Yangon on Friday following a two-day visit. The envoy said the ruling junta gave him a list of actions it would take toward political reforms, but refused to let him meet with the detained Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, the Times said. "I told them that it would have been better if I had been allowed to meet Suu Kyi and other political leaders as it would be a step towards their democratic reform," Syed Hamid said.
■ India
Soldier killed in ambush
An Indian soldier was killed and seven wounded when Muslim guerrillas attacked an army convoy yesterday on the outskirts of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, the army said. A spokesman from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group called up newspaper offices in Srinagar, claiming responsibility for the attack which came two days after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proposed a peace treaty with Pakistan. "There was a heavy exchange of fire," army spokesman V.K. Batra said. He said one of the attackers was also killed in the incident which took place near Pampore.
■ Pakistan
Four killed in shootout
Suspected rebel tribesmen attacked a mountaintop military post yesterday in the southwest, triggering a gunbattle with security forces that left two attackers and a soldier dead, an official said. Another attacker was killed in a land mine explosion as he tried to escape on a motorcycle after the shootout near Sui, a town southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, a government official, Abdul Samad Lasi, said. Two soldiers were injured in the gun fight, he said. The roadside post was attacked before more than a thousand tribal people were to travel along there to Dera Bugti, another town near Sui, Lasi said. The former refugees were returning to their homeland in a government-sponsored program aimed at restoring their lives in the ancestral region they left because of tribal feuding.
■ Nigeria
Taylor to be transferred
Nigeria will transfer former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who is living in exile in Nigeria and has been indicted for war crimes, to Liberian custody, the government said on Saturday. The former warlord is seen as the mastermind behind once intertwined civil wars in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where a special UN-backed court wants to try him for supporting brutal rebels in exchange for diamonds. "President Olusegun Obasanjo has today ... informed president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that the government of Liberia is free to take former President Charles Taylor into its custody," the Nigerian government said in a statement.
■ Greece
Phone phobia on the rise
A new phobia has exploded among mobile phone users in the country. The "fear of fear" has been brought on by revelations of eavesdropping at Vodafone, the nation's biggest mobile operator, say psychoanalysts reporting a boom in patients. Greeks, anxious their phones may have been tapped by bosses or spouses, have sought medical help. "The afflicted show all the signs of a classic phobia," said Dimitris Souras, an Athenian psychotherapist. "I have had at least 25 people, of all ages, displaying what I can only call a `fear of fear,' that is fear of their own fear that their private conversations may have been monitored." All had complained of anxiety, sleep disorders, irritability and an inability to function properly.
■ United Kingdom
UK kids tops in self-harm
A hidden epidemic of self-harm is affecting teenagers across Britain, with one adolescent in 12 deliberately injuring themselves on a regular basis. The most comprehensive report into the issue, to be published today, says that there are likely to be around two children in every classroom who self-harm. "We have the highest rate of self-harm in Europe, but the universal misunderstanding about self-harm is so overwhelming that numbers will rise even further unless we act immediately," said Catherine McLoughlin, chairwoman of the first ever national inquiry into self-harm among youth.
■ Morocco
Autonomy plan mooted
King Mohammed VI on Saturday asked Western Sahara leaders to back his autonomy plan for the disputed territory, while insisting the desert region must remain part of his North African kingdom. In a speech, the king revived a long-inactive committee made up of the territory's tribal, political and other leaders, asking them to support an autonomy plan to be taken to the UN. He insisted, however, "We won't give up even one inch of our dear desert." The king spoke at the close of a five-day visit to the territory, his fourth trip to Western Sahara and the first since 2002. Morocco annexed the mineral-rich coastal area, the former Spanish Sahara, in 1975.
■ Germany
Vote tests Merkel coalition
Three state elections in Germany yesterday were to put Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right government to the test for the first time since she ousted Gerhard Schroeder last November. More than 17 million Germans in Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, Rhineland-Palatinate in the west and Saxony-Anhalt in the east -- one-fifth of the nation's voters -- were called to the polls in a rare "Super Sunday" of elections.
■ Mexico
Soccer star survives crash
Former Argentine football great Jorge Valdano was injured on Saturday when a helicopter carrying him and seven other people crashed in Mexico City, authorities said. Valdano suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung and will remain in hospital for several days, a source close to the former football star said. All eight were being treated in hospital where officials said one of the crash victims was in serious condition, while the lives of Valdano and the other six were not in danger, officials said. The chopper crashed just after takeoff. A civil aviation official said that "too much weight from passengers and fuel" could have caused the crash.
■ Brazil
Bankers passports seized
Federal police said they have confiscated the passports of six officials with Credit Suisse, pending an investigation into alleged tax evasion and money laundering. Four are Swiss nationals and two are Brazilian, a federal police statement said. The six, who work in private banking with Credit Suisse First Boston in Sao Paulo, were ordered not to leave the country without permission. Police on Friday announced that they had detained a director of Credit Suisse at Sao Paulo International Airport when he tried to board a plane to Switzerland late on Wednesday. A federal police officer said that Peter Schaffner is under surveillance and that a judge in Sao Paulo had ordered him held until yesterday, to allow for interrogation. Schaffner, 50, is responsible for Credit Suisse's private banking operation in Sao Paulo, according to police.
■ United Kingdom
Kember returns home
Christian peace campaigner Norman Kember urged people to think about the suffering of Iraqis as he flew home to Britain on Saturday after being held hostage in Iraq for four months. "There is a real sense in which you are interviewing the wrong person," he told reporters at London's Heathrow Airport. "It is the ordinary people of Iraq that you should be talking to -- the people who have suffered so much over many years and still await the stable and just society that they deserve." Looking tired and frail, but speaking in a firm voice, Kember also thanked the soldiers who had rescued him.
■ Chile
Crash driver may be charged
The driver of a bus that crashed in Arica, northern Chile, leaving 12 elderly American tourists dead, remains under investigation as authorities seek to determine the cause of the wreck, the prosecutor in the case, Manuel Gonzalez, said on Saturday. Gonzalez said that the driver Cristian Contreras, 32, may be charged. One likely cause of the accident was that Contreras, who remains hospitalized under police watch, may have fallen asleep at the wheel. The charges that Contreras could face include involuntary manslaughter, he said.
■ Canada
No damage from oil spill
Officials cleaning up the oil spill from a ferry that sank off British Columbia's north coast have found no serious environmental damage in the area. Incident commander Andy Ackerman said on Saturday that cleanup crews are still finding pockets of diesel fuel connected with the Queen of the North, which sank on Wednesday, but they haven't found any dead wildlife yet. Ninety-nine passengers and crew were rescued from the vessel after it hit a rock and sank. Two passengers remain unaccounted for.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS