■ Singapore
PM wants people to smile
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) has launched a campaign urging the city-state's 4 million people to smile during the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF in September, the Straits Times reported yesterday. "We should make a special effort to welcome all the delegates to this event, to make their stay here fruitful and memorable. We should greet them literally with 4 million smiles," the daily quoted Lee as saying at the start of the campaign on Sunday. On Sept. 19 and 20, Singapore will host 16,000 delegates and visitors for the annual meetings. Photographs of smiling Singaporeans will be combined into a digital mural to welcome the delegates to the country. The government has warned that it will use severe punishments such as caning for protesters who commit violent acts during the IMF-World Bank meetings.
■ Hong Kong
MI3 `insulting' to Chinese
The latest Mission Impossible movie has had scenes cut from it in Chinese cinemas because officials believe they are insulting to Shanghai, a news report said yesterday. Censors were unhappy about scenes showing laundry hanging on bamboo poles and a slow response by police to a high-speed chase, the South China Morning Post reported. The movie starring Tom Cruise will be screened in China from July 20 after the movie's makers apparently agreed to changes requested by the Chinese government, the newspaper said. Cruise and his co-stars were in Shanghai last year to film part of the third instalment of the blockbuster series.Last week, the Da Vinci Code was banned after a two-week run in Chinese cinemas following protests by state-backed Catholics in some parts of the country.
■ France
Former prez bemoans crisis
Former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing says France is in "crisis," and that none of its EU partners are looking to Paris for initiatives ahead of presidential elections next year. France will offer proposals for the EU's future at the 25 nation bloc's summit on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, but "nobody attaches any importance to them," Giscard d'Estaing said late Sunday on LCI television. "It is a country in crisis, a country that cannot take the initiative, a country whose horizon is limited to 10 months right now," he said, referring to next year's presidential and legislative elections. Giscard d'Estaing, who led the effort to draw up the EU Constitution -- which was rejected by French and Dutch voters last year -- said it was a "good idea to extend the reflection period" for the text.
■ United Kingdom
Suspects to enter pleas
Five men charged with the murder of policewoman Sharon Beshenivsky will appear in court today for a pre-trial hearing. The men, charged with murder, robbery and firearms offenses, are due at Leeds Crown Court to enter pleas before a trial later this year, police and court officials said. They are accused of killing the 38-year-old last November when she and a colleague responded to an emergency alarm at a travel agency in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The defendants are: Yusuf Jama, Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah, Raza Haq Aslam, Faisal Razzaq and Hassan Razzaq.
■ Congo
Sexual violence highlighted
Women in Africa are ravaged not just by poverty but by systematic sexual violence too, a UN Security Council delegation on a four-nation tour of the continent were told on Friday. Whether in the parched deserts of Sudan's Darfur region, or in the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, women are systematically subjected to the same sordid routine: rape with impunity by armed militias and soldiers, often those ostensibly their protectors, a text presented to UN delegates by a group of women's rights advocates said.
■ Nigeria
Faction's office blockaded
Police blockaded the newly designated headquarters of a faction of the ruling party over the weekend, saying on Sunday that they sealed off the building to prevent a "breakdown of law and order" in the capital. About 100 members of the main People's Democratic Party broke away from the group on Friday and selected the building as their new headquarters. Faction member Bode Ojomu said they deserted the ruling party because of unfairness in the way officials were appointed at a December convention.
■ France
Justice changes pledged
Justice Minister Pascal Clement said on Sunday he will propose changes to the country's justice system to try to prevent a repeat of mistakes that led to more than a dozen people being wrongly accused in a pedophilia case. Clement said he would also seek an opinion from the top authority for judges about the handling of the so-called "Outreau affair," named after the northern French town where an alleged pedophilia ring operated. The case, which centered on the abuse of 18 children between 1995 and 2000, gripped the nation's attention for several years. It ended in acquittals last December by an appeals court for six people.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
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