■ Philippines
Explosion kills eight
An explosion inside a grocery store killed at least eight people and wounded about a dozen others yesterday on a violent southern island in the country, police said. The explosion took place in downtown Jolo town on Jolo Island, about 950km southeast of Manila, said police Senior Superintendent Ajiron Ajirim. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the blast, he said. The island is a stronghold of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf rebels.
■ Hong Kong
Guangdong chickens on sale
Markets began selling live chickens yesterday from Guangdong Province after health officials lifted a three-week ban on live poultry imports from the area because of bird flu fears. About 20,000 live chickens were trucked in from Guangdong on Sunday and the birds went on sale yesterday, the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said. The ban began on March 5 after China reported that a man died from bird flu on March 2 in Guangdong's capital Guangzhou, less than a two-hour train ride away. The government decided to allow a resumption of live poultry imports because there were no more human cases or poultry outbreaks after the death, officials have said.
■ China
Beijing warns Vatican
The government yesterday warned the Vatican and Hong Kong's new cardinal, Joseph Zen (陳日君), not to meddle in Chinese politics. "Church people should not get involved in political affairs," a spokesman for the Catholic department of the State Administration of Religious Affairs said in a reaction to Friday's elevation of Hong Kong's bishop to cardinal. The spokesman also referred to China's long-standing positions that the Vatican should not interfere in China's internal affairs in any form and should end its relations with Taiwan. Zen has been a critic of China and made a name for himself in Hong Kong as a human-rights advocate and proponent of religious rights. He said he seems himself as a "Chinese voice at the Holy See."
■ Japan
5.5 earthquake hits
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.5 rattled the southern part of the country yesterday, the Meteorological Agency said. There were no reports of injuries or serious damage, police said. The quake was most strongly felt on the eastern coast of Kyushu Island, one of the country's four main islands. The agency said there was no danger of a tsunami. The quake struck at about 11:50am and was centered off the coast of Hyuga in Miyazaki Prefecture, 740km southwest of Tokyo, the agency said. After closely analyzing data, the agency later revised the quake's depth to 35km under the ocean floor, instead of an earlier estimate of 50km. Local police spokesman Shinichiro Harada said no injuries were reported.
■ Pakistan
Landmine injures six
Six young children were injured when a school bus hit a landmine in the restive tribal belt bordering Afghanistan early yesterday, officials said. Two of the victims aged between five and eight were seriously hurt. They were rushed to hospital after the blast in Shakai town, 25km north of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan region, a local official said. The vehicle was badly damaged, the official said on condition of anonymity. "Six children from Suffa Public School in Shakai were wounded, two of them seriously," he said. He blamed rebel tribesmen for the attack.
■ Nigeria
UN demands Taylor's arrest
The government is under pressure from a UN war crimes tribunal to arrest the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, as concerns grew that he might flee to evade trial. UN prosecutor Desmond de Silva said he had asked President Olusegun Obasanjo to arrest Taylor "to avoid the possibility of him using his wealth and associates to slip away, with grave consequences to the stability of the region." Taylor is wanted on war crimes charges in Sierra Leone. He was granted refuge in Nigeria in 2003. Human Rights Watch warned on Sunday that it was an "unfair burden" to expect Liberia to mount an attempt to detain Taylor on Nigerian soil. Taylor is wanted for fuelling a brutal war in Sierra Leone by supporting rebels there in exchange for diamonds.
■ United Kingdom
Gitmo play goes to US
The plight of British residents in Guantanamo, is to be heard on Capitol Hill -- through the voices of actors. An updated version of the play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, is to be presented before members of the US House of Representatives on April 6 under the sponsorship of two Democratic representatives. The play is based on recorded testimony from one of the detainees, the families of prisoners, their lawyers and their letters home, as well as public record statements made by US and British politicians.
■ United Kingdom
Lennon's scribbles on sale
A 10-page school exercise book, bound in red paper and filled with the scribbles of a 12-year-old Liverpool boy, is expected to fetch £100,000 (US$175,000) at auction next month. The exercise book, somewhat grandly entitled "My Anthology," is the work of John Lennon and includes doodles, drawings and poems said to have inspired some of the Beatles' greatest songs. One sketch is of the walrus from Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter, believed to have been the inspiration for the band's song I Am the Walrus. Also being auctioned is Lennon's engraved silver christening bracelet. A devastating letter from Lennon and fellow Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr to Paul McCartney, which some Beatles experts believe led to the irrevocable split in the band, is another item in the sale.
■ Italy
PM slams communists
At an election rally in Naples on Sunday, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denied having said that Chinese communists used to eat babies. "But read The Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in Mao's [Zedong (毛澤東)] China, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilize the fields." Berlusconi has accused the center-left opposition coalition of including "three parties which proudly declare themselves to be communist." Berlusconi's language has become more virulent as attacks judges, employers' representatives and his opponents as the election nears. The Black Book of Communism was published in France in 1997.
■ Cyprus
Huge lemons a sweet treat
Lemon trees in Psevdhas, about 32km southeast of Nicosia, have stunned their owners by suddenly bearing fruit so huge they're almost as large as footballs. One tree has clumps of lemons with diameters ranging from 10cm to 20cm. The owners can't explain the bonanza. They said they only use organic methods.
■ United States
Ex-worker sought over bombs
Three explosive devices detonated at the homes of aviation industry employees in western Colorado were similar to a device that exploded at a British company's corporate office in Tennessee last month, authorities said on Sunday. The devices went off on Friday and two others were disarmed at the homes of a Federal Aviation Administration employee and workers at British company Serco Group Plc, which operates 56 air traffic control towers. No one was hurt and damage was minor. No one was hurt. Federal investigators have obtained an arrest warrant for Robert Burke, a former Serco employee who was fired two years ago while working as an air traffic controller at Walker Field in Grand Junction.
■ Costa Rica
Eruptions close scenic area
Six minor eruptions in a hot lake crater have forced closure of the Poas Volcano National Park, officials said Sunday. An access road and paths to the 2,704m Poas allow visitors to peer directly into its 1.5km-wide, 350m-deep lake crater. The strongest eruption came on Friday night, when the volcano spat lake sediment and hot rocks some 150m in the air, officials said. The national Vulcanological and Seismological Observatory said some impact craters were found 700m away. No lava was expelled. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from across Costa Rica and around the world visit Poas and the surrounding park each year.
■ Venezuela
Chavez warns on homes
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday vowed to build 150,000 homes for the poor this year -- and warned that the state might expropriate some houses if people try to sell them for too much money. Speaking at a new public housing complex on the outskirts of the capital of Caracas, Chavez said the government had built 15,921 homes in the first three months of this year and would speed construction to finish 150,000 by year's end to attack an acute housing shortage.
■ United States
Scalia pans `hypocrisy'
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly told an overseas audience this month that the US Constitution does not protect foreigners held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Scalia also told the audience at the University of Freiberg in Switzerland that he was "astounded" at the "hypocritical" reaction in Europe to the prison, said this week's issue of Newsweek magazine. The comments came just weeks before justices were to take up an appeal from a detainee. Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees could use US courts to challenge their detention.
■ Mexico
Six bodies found
The bodies of six men -- blindfolded, handcuffed and shot to death -- were found on Sunday packed inside a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading to the Texas border. Authorities discovered the victims in General Bravo, 90km from Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, police said, adding that one of those killed was in the cabin and the rest were stashed in the back of the truck. All had their eyes taped with bandages and were handcuffed with their feet tied. Investigators found a message inside the truck, which said: "This is a message for those in the Gulf Cartel, traitorous pals." Authorities say violence across northeast Mexico has been on the rise since March 2003, when Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas was arrested.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
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
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS