■ Kazakhstan
Parrot smuggler arrested
Kazakh border guards arrested a man trying to smuggle 500 parrots in his car from neighboring Uzbekistan, media reported on Tuesday. "Border guards discovered a live cargo of 500 parrots in his car," Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted a KNB security service official as saying. It was unclear how the parrots were made to fit into the Kazakh man's Audi. Trade in wild parrots is banned around the world, according to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
■ Vietnam
Snakes and turtles seized
Police in the north confiscated nearly 8 tonnes of snakes and turtles destined for restaurants in neighboring China, an official said yesterday. The animals were smuggled from Thailand across Laos into Vietnam and were discovered in the back of a truck in the northern port city of Haiphong, where they were to be loaded onto a China-bound ship, said Pham Van Long, an official with the city's Forest Control Bureau. Long said two-thirds of the animals had already died, and the bureau was asking the government what to do with the remaining snakes and turtles.
■ Papua New Guinea
Women killed for witchcraft
Four women, believed by fellow villagers to have used sorcery to cause a fatal road crash, were tortured with hot metal rods to confess, then murdered and buried standing up in a pit, said police. The National newspaper said yesterday that police had only just uncovered the grisly murders, which occurred last October near the town of Goroka in the jungle-clad highlands, 400km north of Port Moresby. Black magic is widespread in the South Pacific nation where most of the 5.1 million population live subsistent lives. Women suspected of being witches are often hung or burnt to death. Local police commander Chief Inspector David Seine told the newspaper that people in the village of Kamex accused the four women of sorcery after a road crash killed three prison officers.
■ China
Mine rescue abandoned
Rescue workers have abandoned efforts to find 29 miners trapped for a week in a flooded mine in the north because of safety concerns, state media said yesterday. The water level in the mine has risen despite efforts to pump it out, and experts believe there is little chance that any of the trapped miners are still alive, Xinhua news agency said. The flood occurred Jan. 17 at the Haolaigou Iron Ore Mine near Baotou, the biggest industrial city in Inner Mongolia, when 46 miners were changing shifts. Eleven miners escaped right away and six more were rescued the next day, Xinhua said.
■ Australia
Man's life sold on eBay
An Australian man who agreed to sell his "life" on eBay for A$7,500 (US$5,875) said yesterday he was prepared to go through with the deal if the buyer pays cash. Earlier this month, 24-year-old Nicael Holt posted his life for sale on the Internet auction site, saying the deal included his name, phone number and all of his belongings. "New life for sale!!" Holt's entry on eBay read. He said he would also introduce the buyer to all his friends and "potential lovers [around eight which I have been flirting with]." The buyer would also "have access to a cruisy job in March delivering fruit." Also part of the sale was a repertoire of six jokes, a fractured relationship with an ex-girlfriend and a training course in becoming Holt.
■ Chad
Hijacker wants UK asylum
A Sudanese plane carrying 103 passengers and crew was hijacked yesterday and diverted to N'Djamena, where the hijacker surrendered, officials said. Saif Omer, managing director of Air West, said the lone hijacker walked out of the plane after it landed in Chad and said he wanted asylum in Britain. Nobody was injured, he said. The man had been holding a pistol to the pilot's head during the flight, Omer said. Air West 612 took off from Khartoum, Sudan, at 8:30am on a domestic flight when the pilot was forced to change course, Khartoum's airport manager said.
■ United States
Iraq veteran killed
Three teens have been charged in the death an Iraq War veteran who was shot and robbed shortly after cashing a tax refund check for more than US$5,000 in Detroit, Michigan. Steven Johnson, 15, was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, while his brother, William and cousin, Duane Johnson, both 17, were charged with conspiring to rob and kill Terron Bush, 24. All three were arraigned on Monday. Authorities said Duane Johnson's mother had prepared the tax return for Bush, who was confronted by a gunman as he left a check-cashing store. Bush was shot once in the abdomen as he handed over his money, but the gunman shot him three more times, his cousin, Dwight Bush, said.
■ Bosnia
Patient fixes own machine
A mechanic spent seven hours fixing a hospital machine in order to have his kidney stone removed, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Slobodan Mocevic asked for tools to fix the lithotripsy machine after his operation in the small town of Kasindol, near Sarajevo, had been delayed because the apparatus had broken down. "I was desperate, I could not have waited for another minute," he told the daily Oslobodjenje. The machine sends shockwaves through a patient's body to break the stone into tiny fragments.
■ Space
ISS safe from debris
Debris thrown out by a satellite destroyed by Chinese authorities earlier this month poses no immediate threat to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA administrator Michael Griffin said on Tuesday. "We are always performing debris analysis and so far we do not see any need for debris avoidance maneuvers," Griffin told a news conference in Paris attended by representatives of agencies participating in the construction of the space station. China publicly confirmed on Tuesday that it had tested a satellite-destroying weapon on an old weather satellite on Jan. 11, sparking international concern.
■ United Kingdom
Cloned chicken a success
British scientists have succeeded in producing multiple generations of genetically altered, or transgenic, hens that produce functional pharmaceutical proteins in the whites of their eggs. To transfer drug-making genes into chickens, Helen Sang, from the Roslin Institute in Midlothian in the UK and her associates used a lentivirus carrier from which all viral coding sequences were deleted. The genetic material was replaced with the gene regulating ovalbumin production combined with genes for making human interferon or an antibody targeting malignant melanoma. "This construct is used to incorporate new protein genes into the chicken chromosome," Sang said.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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