■ Hong Kong
Cat owner sues airline
The owner of an award-winning Persian cat is suing Cathay Pacific after the pet was found bleeding with nine claws missing before boarding a Malaysia-bound flight, a media report said yesterday. Grace Cheung Kei is seeking HK$45,000 (US$5,800) in compensation from the airline for the injuries to Sharamka Jemma, the South China Morning Post reported. The report said the incident happened in July, when Cheung took the animal and four other cats to the airline check-in counter for a flight to Kuala Lumpur, where they were to be entered in a show.
■ Chian
Minister orders checks
Education Minister Zhou Ji (周濟) has blamed middle school officials in Jiangxi Province for a stampede on a stairwell that killed six children and called for a nationwide safety check of schools, Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. The stampede occurred on Saturday, when hundreds of first-year students, about 12 or 13 years old, at Tutang Middle School swarmed out of their classes. Local authorities detained the principal on Sunday, it said.
■ South Korea
Labor group calls strike
A major labor group has called for a nationwide strike today, aiming to bring hundreds of thousands of workers onto the streets to protest over labor laws and a planned trade deal, organizers said yesterday. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of the country's biggest umbrella labor groups with 800,000 members, said it expects 200,000 people to jam Seoul and other cities. The KCTU is seeking laws to protect non-unionized labor, stop South Korea-US talks on a bilateral free trade deal and reform of safety legislation.
■ Hong Kong
Banker demands interest
A banker who won back US$8 million from a Latin dance champion and her husband for prepaid lessons she never took has demanded she also be paid interest on the award. The lawyer for Mimi Monica Wong argued the experienced banker would have had many opportunities to invest the money, so she should be paid back the interest as ordered by court, equivalent to about HK$9 million (US$1.2 million), a report said. Wong, head of HSBC's private banking in Asia, won the money in September from flamboyant Italian dance instructor Mirko Saccani after he insulted her publicly by calling her a "lazy cow" and told her to "move your arse."
■ South Korea
Soaps aim to increase births
Writers of television soap operas are being enlisted to help South Korea promote family life in an attempt to reverse its declining birthrate. Thirty scriptwriters for TV soaps and entertainment programs are taking part in a two-day workshop organized by the state-run Planned Population Federation of Korea and the Radio Writers Association, the Korea Times reported yesterday. The event aims to increase positive portrayals of marriage and birth in the mass media and especially in TV dramas. "More and more dramas portray birth and families with many children negatively while making the lives of single career women seem cooler and wiser," researcher Choi Eun-sil said.
■ Australia
Troops to stay in E Timor
There are no plans to withdraw troops from East Timor, and other nations may get involved in the peacekeeping process, Defense Minister Brendan Nelson said yesterday. "We will be staying as long as the government of Timor Leste and the United Nations believe it is important for the forces to stay," Nelson said of the UN-sanctioned force charged with restoring order in restive Timor. "We are committed to the people of Timor Leste as long as they need us," he said after meeting East Timorese Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta.
■ Malaysia
Police seek Muslim hoaxer
Police have appealed for help in tracking down a woman who allegedly sent a hoax phone text message about Muslims being baptized in a Roman Catholic church that triggered angry protests, reports said yesterday. Perak State Police Chief Aziz Bulat said the woman, identified only as Raja Sherina, failed to show up for questioning last week -- a deadline set by the authorities, the Star reported. Police released a photograph of the woman, which was carried in most major newspapers yesterday. "We need the public's help to track her down," Aziz was quoted as saying. It is not immediately clear if she will be charged if caught.
■ Pakistan
BBC journalist missing
A Pakistani journalist working for the British Broadcasting Corp went missing on Monday after visiting a relative in Islamabad, the broadcaster and the man's family said. Dilawar Khan Wazir works for the BBC's Urdu-language service, covering the tribal areas on the Afghan border where security forces have been battling Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban. Wazir had not been heard from since the morning when he left his brother's lodging in Islamabad for the city of Dera Ismail Khan, his brother, Zulfiqar Ali, said.
■ Israel
Court recognizes gay unions
The Supreme Court ordered the government yesterday to recognize same-sex marriages performed abroad. The lone dissenter on the seven-judge panel was an observant Jew, highlighting the controversy the decision immediately touched off among ultra-Orthodox Jews and other conservative groups. Yossi Ben-Ari and Laurent Schuman, who were married in Canada in 2003, were among five couples who petitioned the Supreme Court court to have their marriage registered in Israel, too. Moshe Negbi, a legal expert, said the court's decision is mostly symbolic because gay couples in Israel already had many of the rights of heterosexual partnerships. The significant changes are that they will now get the same tax breaks as a married couple and be able to adopt children, Negbi said.
■ United Kingdom
Police to recruit Poles
Senior officers at a Welsh police station are considering recruiting Poles to serve a growing number of Polish nationals who have moved into the area to find work since the country entered the EU in 2004. A senior officer confirmed that Polish-speaking officers could help cope with the needs of a changing population. "We are looking at a number of measures to improve our service to all sections of the community in north Wales," Deputy Chief Constable Clive Wolfendale said.
■ United States
Stolen Goya painting found
The FBI has recovered a painting by Spanish master Francisco de Goya that was stolen earlier this month while being transported from Ohio to New York for an exhibition. The 1778 painting, valued at US$1.1 million, was stolen from a transport truck parked overnight in a hotel parking lot, FBI special agent Steve Siegel said. The artwork was being carried between Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art to New York's Guggenheim Museum. Siegel said the painting was recovered on Saturday in central New Jersey following a tip-off. "It does not appear to have been any kind of inside job," Siegel said.
■ United States
Web publishers protected
Internet campaigners on Monday welcomed a California court ruling that protects service providers and online publishers against defamation lawsuits for posting content written by someone else. In a written ruling the California Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision, reaffirming that individuals seeking legal redress for comments published online could only sue the original source of the information. Internet firms and civil liberties groups warned that an earlier California Court of Appeal decision would have made publishers liable for content posted on their Web sites, stifling freedom of information.
■ Germany
Facilitating art restitution
The government pledged on Monday to improve the way it deals with claims for art looted by the Nazis following criticism from museums that the restitution process is too complicated and lacks sufficient funding. Culture Minister Bernd Neumann vowed to make the return of art works more transparent, coordinated and comprehensible after a meeting with museum representatives and legal experts. He said small museums in particular needed more help with restitution cases.
■ United States
Five-kidney swap succeeds
It took 12 surgeons, six operating rooms and five donors to pull it off, but five desperate strangers simultaneously received new organs in what hospital officials described as the first-ever quintuple kidney transplant. The patients and donors were doing fine, a spokesman at the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center in Baltimore said on Monday. The transplant was an extreme example of a live-donor practice in which a patient who needs a kidney is matched with a compatible stranger; in return, the patient must line up someone willing to donate an organ to a stranger. The practice is useful when a kidney patient's friends or relatives are willing to donate but are not a suitable match. Once the swap was agreed to, the transplants were done all at once to prevent anyone from backing out or in case someone fell ill.
■ Guatemala
Fireworks fire kills 15
Fifteen people died when a market in Guatemala City caught fire on Monday, suffocating shoppers and workers trapped inside a labyrinthine building of grain and vegetable stalls. Firefighters' spokesman Oscar Sanchez said the charred bodies of 14 people were recovered at the scene, where the blaze burned two city blocks. One person died after being transferred to a hospital, he said. Witnesses said a lit cigarette set a fireworks stand on fire, said Ricardo Lemus, another fire department spokesman.
■ United States
Girls die in school bus crash
A school bus packed with high school students smashed through a guardrail along an overpass in Huntsville, Alabama, and crashed nose-first 9m below, killing three teenage girls and injuring at least 30 other people, some critically, authorities said. Students on the bus, which had no seat belts, were screaming when rescue workers arrived. "They were thrown all over the bus," said Huntsville fire chief Dusty Underwood on Monday. Police chief Rex Reynolds said officers were looking for a small car that apparently came close to or struck the bus, causing it to veer off the elevated section of Interstate 565.
■ France
Celebs sign pro-gay petition
An international petition calling "for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality" was signed by five Nobel laureates and a host of celebrities, organizers said in Paris on Monday. "Seventy countries ... still make homosexuality a crime by law and punishable by death in 12 of them," stated the document, which was endorsed by Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, economics laureate Amartya Sen and Nobel literature prize winners Dario Fo, Jose Saramago and Elfriede Jelinek. Signatories listed on idahomophobia.org, the campaign Web site, also include Noam Chomsky, Meryl Streep and Elton John.
■ United States
School wants refunds back
A computer glitch erroneously refunded dozens of Old Dominion University students thousands of dollars, and now the school is asking for the money back. School officials said 55 students are being told they must reimburse the school a total of about US$323,000. "Some of the students did not take this very well," president Roseann Runte said during a meeting of the executive committee of the Board of Visitors on Monday in Norfolk, Virginia. Repayment plans are being worked out, officials said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
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
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘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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