Sun, Mar 18, 2007 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Indonesia
  Jakarta tackles bird flu

  Jakarta's governor has given a two-week deadline for door-to-door checks to be completed to enforce a ban on domestic poultry, reports said yesterday. The ban was introduced last month to tackle bird flu, which has killed eight people so far this year in the country, but was hampered by major floods in the capital. "I give two weeks to the mayors to raid residents' poultry," governor Sutiyoso said in his office as reported by the Media Indonesia daily. He added that poor knowledge about bird flu meant people were unaware of the danger of keeping poultry in residential areas.

  ■ Indonesia

  Missing party found alive

  Six people were found alive after being missing for more than two weeks, an official said yesterday. "[On Friday] night Doctor Juliana Carolus and friends, who were missing since Feb. 28, were found alive in the Dobo waters," ministry of health official Rustam Pakaya told reporters. Carolus, head of the health office in the Tanimbar isles, with five of her staff, left on a speedboat on Feb. 27 from the town of Saumlaki. The Dobo waters, where they were found, are about 400km away from where they set off. The group was reported to have been found by fishermen, floating near the Papua mainland. They are reported as being well.

  ■ Singapore

  Aid program launched

  The foreign affairs ministry announced an agreement with France to jointly provide technical help in areas such as education to Southeast Asian nations. The two countries have signed a letter of intent to formalize the Third Country Training Program, it said on Friday. "The Third Country Training Program institutionalizes cooperation between Singapore and France," the foreign affairs ministry said. "It also facilitates closer collaboration in various human resource capacity building programs for Southeast Asian countries in fields such as governance, health and higher education."

  ■ Malaysia

  Endangered animals eaten

  Restaurants selling exotic meat are contributing to the extinction of endangered species as the ever-scarcer delicacies fetch steadily higher prices, a news report said yesterday. The animals that end up on dinner plates at illegal restaurants include tigers, bears, pythons, macaques, porcupines, panthers and civet cats, the New Straits Times said. Many of these species are nearly extinct. "The protected species can only be saved if these people change their eating habits," The Wildlife Department enforcement division director Misliah Mohamed Basir said. Misliah said only eight exotic animal restaurant owners have been prosecuted in the past five years.

  ■ Philippines

  Grenade kills partygoers

  A disgruntled guest killed himself and seven others and injured 23 when he set off a grenade by accident at a birthday party, police said yesterday. Regional police superintendent Napoleon Cachuela said the guest had been kicked out of the celebration in Rizal town on the island of Palawan on Friday night after becoming unruly while carrying a gun, but he later returned with a grenade. The grenade went off in a scuffle with other guests, all members of the Commando Brotherhood, a local group that idolizes the military. "This is the result of a simple misunderstanding between a group of drunken persons," Cachuela said.

  ■ Kazakhstan
  Grenade found in honey pot

  Border guards in Almaty, Kazakhstan have arrested a man for trying to smuggle a home-made grenade in a pot of honey, local media reported on Friday. The man, a Russian citizen, was traveling by train from the Russian town of Omsk. "The pot seemed too heavy so it had to be checked," a senior Kazakh border official told the Kazakhstan Today news agency. The man told police he did not know it was a grenade and that his wife had given it to him as a present for her relatives in Kazakhstan.

  ■ Russia

  Walker returns to Arctic

  British walker Karl Bushby has returned to Russia's Arctic region of Chukotka to resume his trek around the world from a desolate village where he was detained nearly a year ago, his father said on Friday. A Russian court last year ordered former paratrooper Bushby and his temporary companion American Dimitri Kieffer to leave Russia because they crossed the border illegally after walking from Alaska across the treacherous ice of the Bering Strait. But they won on appeal, enabling Bushby to restart his 60,000km trek from the bottom tip of South America back home to Britain.

  ■ Russia

  Putin gets own fast lane

  His presidential convoy is already a common sight. But Moscow drivers forced to wait while Vladimir Putin whizzes past received more bad news on Friday when it emerged that the Russian president is to get his own fast lane in a tunnel that is meant to relieve traffic congestion. Kremlin developers revealed they are planning a new tunnel in Novy Arbat, one of central Moscow's most traffic-choked avenues. As well as three lanes for ordinary drivers it will have a special lane for Kremlin bosses. Traffic police already block off Moscow's roads to allow Mr Putin to speed from his rustic dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo, just outside Moscow, to his Kremlin office.

  ■ Congo

  Armies refuse to disband

  The personal armies of two former Congolese rebel leaders in Kinshasa have refused to disband as promised, ignoring this week's deadline. The personal guard of Jean-Pierre Bemba as well as that of Azarias Ruberwa, both of whom ran and lost in Congo's landmark presidential election last year, have continued their armed patrols, refusing to turn over the security of the ex-rebels to the country's police force by Thursday as promised. A spokesman for Bemba said that the senator's safety takes precedence.

  ■ Italy

  Police save lobster

  Avant-garde theatre is under attack in Italy for pushing the boat out too far after police raided a Milan playhouse to save a lobster from being bludgeoned to death and eaten on stage. Following complaints from animal rights groups, the first-night performance of Incident: Kill to Eat by Argentinian playwright Rodrigo Garcia was broken up by three plainclothes officers who spared the lobster from an all-too-real death scene. A full house was expecting to see Garcia's examination of death and meat eating, during which an unlucky crustacean is suspended from a nylon cord and a microphone picks up the sounds of its squirming. In his program notes, Garcia, a former butcher, denounced the dishonesty of not killing what you eat.

  ■ United States
  Larry King under the knife

  Veteran CNN talk show host Larry King had surgery on Friday to clear an artery blockage but plans to return to work tomorrow to interview US presidential candidate Barack Obama, the network said. King, 73, emerged from the scheduled operation without any complications and was alert and talking to his staff by the afternoon, CNN spokeswoman Bridget Leininger said. "He was actually already giving orders to us for Monday," she said. The operation, called a carotid endarterectomy, removes plaque that can build up in a patient's carotid artery, a blood vessel that supplies the neck and head.

  ■ United States

  May the mail be with you

  Star Wars robot R2-D2 took up his position on a Hollywood street on Friday, a few yards from where Darth Vader and Chewbacca lookalikes prowl for photo-ops with tourists. The R2-D2 in question is one of around 400 mailboxes that are being revamped with special packaging to make them look like the famous chirruping robot from the science-fiction film, which is marking its 30th anniversary this year. The mailbox is situated near the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood -- one of the first cinemas to screen Star Wars 30 years ago. Customers will be able to use the R2-D2 boxes just like any of the 280,000 postal service mailboxes around the country.

  ■ United States

  Pluto memorial approved

  Astronomers may have stopped calling Pluto a full-fledged planet, but it is on its way to regaining that status whenever it is visible over New Mexico. A nonbinding memorial approved this week by the state House of Representatives declares that Pluto be designated a planet whenever it "passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies." The International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet last August because its orbit overlaps with Neptune's. That caused hard feelings in New Mexico, home of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who located Pluto in 1930.

  ■ United States

  Cops arrest seven-year-old

  Baltimore police arrested a seven-year-old boy, handcuffed him, then hauled him off to the station house where his mother claims they took his mug shot and fingerprints -- all for allegedly riding an off-road motorcycle on a sidewalk. "They scared me," Gerard Mungo told the Baltimore Examiner before breaking down in tears. The incident brought new heat on a department already under fire for making what critics call frivolous or unnecessary arrests. Mayor Sheila Dixon apologized on Friday for Gerard's arrest. "It is clear to me that the arrest was wrong, that the officers on the scene should not have arrested the child, and on behalf of the City of Baltimore I apologize to the boy and his parents," she said.

  ■ United States

  US soldier found guilty

  A US soldier was found guilty of lesser charges of negligent homicide in the killing of three Iraqi detainees who were let loose and told to run before being shot, officials at Fort Campbell in Kentucky said on Friday. Sergeant Raymond Girouard, 24, of Sweetwater, Tennessee, had been charged with premeditated murder and other offenses that could have drawn a life sentence. He was acquitted of those charges and found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide as well as obstruction of justice and other charges, which could result in a sentence of 20 or more years, although that remained to be determined, a base spokesman said. Sentencing will take place on Monday.
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