■ China
Mine explosion kills 13
An underground gas explosion in a Chinese coal mine killed 13 people and injured nine, a news report said yesterday. The explosion struck the Niuxinhui Coal Mine in the northern province of Shanxi on Friday afternoon, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing local industrial safety officials. The cause of the blast was under investigation, Xinhua said. It said the mine was undergoing an expansion project at the time.
■ COSTA RICA
Chinese buy visas
Chinese mafia members have offered millions of dollars to Costa Rican officials to buy visas for Chinese nationals seeking to sneak through the country into the US, an official said in a report on Friday. A Chinese mafia member is alleged to have contacted Migration and Foreign Nationals affairs chief Mario Zamora offering him US$2.5 million if his office began processing 500 visas last November, the daily La Nacion reported. "There were death threats in the event anything happened" to derail the process, Zamora said.
■ MALAYSIA
Explosions were `accidental'
Malaysia's army has retracted its claim that two grenade explosions along the border with Thailand this week were an attack on its soldiers, saying the ordnance went off accidentally. Four soldiers were hurt in the pre-dawn blasts at Malaysia's Ban Din Samoe post in northern Kedah State on Wednesday. "What actually happened is an accidental discharge of the grenades, and there was no intrusion," deputy army chief Lieutenant General Muhammad Ismail Jamaluddin said on Friday night. He said investigations have shown that the assault claim was mistaken.
■ Pakistan
Islamabad pans terror claim
Government authorities protested on Friday over a claim by US director of intelligence John Negroponte that al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders were hiding inside Pakistan. Since December 2001, western intelligence agencies have presumed the al-Qaeda leader and his top Taliban allies were hiding in the highland tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Negroponte singled out Pakistan as the location of the jihadist leaders' hideout, saying that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were rebuilding a network there.
■ TAJIKISTAN
Drug seizures rise
Seizures of illegal drugs rose last year slightly to 5 tonnes, the nation's chief anti-narcotics official said on Friday. Drugs enforcement chief Fakhriddin Jonmakhmadov gave no explanation for the increase. Jonmakhmadov also said his agency had collaborated with their Afghan counterparts to destroy seven laboratories processing heroin, and seize about a tonne of drugs on Afghan territory. The nation shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan, the world's largest heroin producer, and has become a major transit route for drugs smuggled to Europe and the former Soviet Union.
■ SRI LANKA
Landslide rescue operation
Soldiers and air force helicopters intensified rescue operations in the central tea growing region of Nuwara Eliya yesterday, where landslides killed at least 17 people and left others feared trapped, officials said. The landslides -- triggered by heavy rains -- damaged at least 1,600 homes, leaving an estimated 9,000 people homeless across 15 villages in the mountainous region known for its lush tea gardens and which is prone to landslides, the Defense Ministry said. "Our forces have redoubled efforts and we have rescued dozens of people," military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said in the capital, Colombo.
■ INDIA
Sentence review rejected
The Supreme Court dismissed a petition by a Kashmiri man sentenced to death for plotting an attack on the country's Parliament in 2001 that left 14 dead and pushed nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan dangerously close to their fourth war, news reports said. The four-judge panel of the Supreme Court on Friday rejected Mohammad Afzal's petition for a review of the sentence, the Press Trust of India reported. Afzal was convicted after confessing in interviews to television channels that he was involved in plotting the Dec. 13, 2001 raid on Parliament that left 14 dead, including the five assailants. Afzal has also filed a mercy plea with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
■ PAKISTAN
Girl withdrawn from school
The father of a schoolgirl who ran away from Scotland to live with him in Pakistan has withdrawn her from a Muslim school amid fears she was being influenced by a radical Islamist, the Guardian reported yesterday. Misbah Rana, 12, also known as Molly Campbell, was attending an Islamabad madrassa for girls, part of the Lal Masjid mosque, which has been linked to Islamic militancy, the paper said. She reportedly came under the wing of Khalid Khawaja, a former intelligence officer who claims to have met Osama bin Laden more than a hundred times. Her father, Sajad Rana, told the paper: "The minute I found out they were connected to the Taliban, I went to get her out."
■ Italy
Dante shown in a new light
Dante Alighieri, traditionally portrayed as a stern figure with a large hooked nose, is now being shown as having a softer side, thanks to a reconstruction of his face by Italian scientists. According to most artistic Renaissance renditions, the most distinguishing features of the author of The Divine Comedy were a prominent nose and lower lip and a generally severe expression. The new face -- based on drawings and measurements of Dante's skull by a professor in the 1920s, a plaster model and computer technology -- shows softer traits: large eyes, a rounded jaw and a gentler expression, although the nose remains crooked.
■ France
Louvre `sells soul'
After months of rumors and a week of protests, the government has finally confirmed that in exchange for a sum said to be US$800 million to US$1 billion, it will rent the name, art treasures and expertise of the world-famous Louvre art museum to a new museum to be built in Abu Dhabi. A formal agreement is expected to be signed later this month, with the new "Louvre" to open in 2012. Critics of the plan -- some 2,400 signers of a petition accusing the government of "selling its soul" -- have been dismissed as "grumpy spirits" by Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.
■ Russia
China rails against gum ad
Complaints from the Chinese embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap a chewing gum commercial playing on Russian television which featured China's national anthem as backing music. China's People's Daily said the commercial for Wrigley's chewing gum using the March of the Volunteers had "harmed the dignity of China." Igor Kirkchi, general director of BBDO, an advertising subsidiary of Omnigroup in Moscow, which designed the ad said it was immediately withdrawn after complaints from China."It was a mon-strous misunderstanding," he said.
■ Nigeria
Oil workers set free
Nine South Korean oil workers abducted from an oil services base in the country's southern delta were freed unharmed on Friday after three days in captivity, a government spokesman said. On Wednesday, gunmen in six boats invaded the riverside base in Bayelsa state and kidnapped the nine men after blowing up part of an office building. The nine were working for Daewoo Engin-eering and Construction which is working on a pipeline project in Bayelsa state, when they were kidnapped apparently for ransom. Their abduction happened less than a week after five Chinese telecom workers were kidnapped.
■ United Kingdom
Storm chaos continues
Storms which have already killed at least two people caused new chaos on Friday. The Coastguard scrambled in the North Sea after a ship carrying 94 passengers lost power in a stretch of water where another vessel narrowly missed slamming into a gas rig on Thursday. The incident came a day after a 4,500-tonne cargo ship ran adrift further south in the North Sea, only narrowly averting a collision. In southwest England, a search off the coast of Cornwall for a woman reported to have fallen from a Russian cargo vessel has been called off. In neighboring country Ireland, hopes of finding seven missing Irish fishermen and others caught up in inclement weather faded.
■ Spain
Isabel Peron arrested
Former Argentine president Isabel Peron, who is wanted in her home country for questioning over the killings of leftist dissidents prior to the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, was arrested on Friday. Police arrested Peron, the widow of Argentina's former president Juan Peron, at her home in the town of Villanueva de la Canada and a judge later granted her conditional release while a decision is taken on whether or not to extradite her. Peron succeeded her husband as president after his death but she was ousted in a coup in 1976. A day before her arrest, an Argentine judge issued an international warrant for the former leader.
■ Canada
Skunk seeks ride home
Wildlife officials are looking for a brave driver prepared for a 3,500km trip to take a stinky stowaway skunk back to her home in California. But the skunk, who survived a seven-day journey across the US and into Canada without food and water, after being accidentally locked away in a transport truck, is having a hard time finding someone to give her a ride home. "We can never give a no-spray guarantee, of course," said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director at the Toronto Wildlife Center, which has been caring for the skunk since Jan. 5, referring to the black-and-white striped animal's foul-smelling defense mechanism. "It would have be somebody who would be prepared for that possibility."
■ United States
Lawyer arrested over kiss
A criminal defense attorney in Waterbury, Connecticut, has been arrested for kissing a female judicial marshal -- "a peck" he said was intended as a Christmas greeting. Ralph Crozier, 55, was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge on Thursday for kissing the marshal at Waterbury Superior Court on Dec. 22. Crozier said state police investigators told him the marshal did not invite him to kiss her, which was why criminal charges were filed. He said a security video that investigators say captured the incident will prove he meant nothing sexual by the kiss and that the incident is an example of political correctness run amok.
■ United States
Polonium contact feared
Health officials are telling people who traveled to London last year that they may want to be tested for exposure to the radioactive poison that killed a former Russian spy. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said on Friday that the notification process began this week after health authorities in London gave them a list of people who may have been exposed to polonium 210, a radioactive substance that killed late Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in November. As the criminal investigation has progressed, British health authorities have slowly widened the circles of people suspected of having been exposed to polonium 210.
■ Brazil
Subway hole collapses
The walls of a huge hole being excavated for a new subway station in South America's largest city, Sao Paulo collapsed on Friday, creating an enormous crater that swallowed three dump trucks. Local media reported three construction workers were hurt in the incident, but firefighters and the state-owned Sao Paulo subway company said it could not immediately confirm the injuries. Television footage showed the dump trucks inside the 60m diameter hole, and a towering crane at its edge appeared on the verge of tipping into the hole.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
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
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
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,
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