■ CHINA
People poisoned by nitrite
A seven-year-old boy died and 55 others fell violently ill after eating poisonous beef in an ethnic minority area in southwest Yunnan Province, state media reported yesterday. The victims, all residents of Zhadian Township, had eaten beef stew on Thursday spiked with the chemical nitrite, which is toxic in excessive amounts, Xinhua news agency said. The street vendor who sold the stew had run out of salt when cooking the dish and grabbed "something that looked like salt" instead, according to the agency. Sample tests of the stew showed more than 12g of nitrite per kilo of beef, four times the fatal amount, Xinhua said.
■ HONG KONG
Chow Yun-fat protests
Actor Chow Yun-fat (周潤發), star of the hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has backed a campaign to save a pier that was a landing point for royalty during the colonial era, a media report said yesterday. Chow, dressed in a low-key baseball hat and tracksuit, visited Queen's Pier early on Saturday morning as protesters led a vigil against its demolition, the Sunday Morning Post reported. The actor arrived in a mini-van in the early hours of the morning as most of the protesters slept and signed a huge banner strung across the condemned pier, which has become a symbol of the city's dwindling architectural heritage.
■ INDIA
Dowry prisoner released
Police in Olkata have rescued a 40-year-old woman who was imprisoned by her in-laws in a dingy room for 15 years because she could not pay enough dowry. Police said the woman, Madhavi Das, was naked and locked in the room when policemen broke in with help from neighbors on Saturday. "She was admitted in a mental asylum as years of solitary confinement has taken a toll on her sanity," Siddhi Nath Gupta, a senior police officer, said yesterday. Three members of the family, including her husband, were arrested. The most common reported form of domestic violence in India is dowry-related, where women are abused and beaten and even killed by their in-laws for not bestowing enough gifts or money to their husbands or their families at the time of marriage.
■ MALAYSIA
Party disputes election
An opposition party linked to former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim disputed yesterday the ruling coalition's victory in a bitterly fought by-election, alleging electoral fraud and calling it an insult to democracy. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's National Front trounced the People's Justice Party to retain the Ijok legislative seat in central Selangor state in Saturday's by-election. It had been seen as a test of support for both sides ahead of national polls, which are not due till 2009 but expected to be called by late this year or early next year. The Justice Party claimed it found irregularities.
■ THAILAND
Muslims protest killing
Angry Muslim villagers blockaded a road in the restive deep south for several hour yesterday to protest the killing of a religious leader in a grenade attack on a mosque. The protest by nearly 100 Muslims, mostly teenagers, in the southern province of Pattani came a day after Samarn Usoh, 67, was badly wounded in the attack. He died later in hospital. Police blamed separatist insurgents for the attack on the mosque, which is adjacent to Pattani's historic Krue Se mosque where 32 militants were killed three years ago. The protest lasted several hours and ended peacefully.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Rare quake hits England
A rare earthquake shook households in southeast England on Saturday, toppling chimneys, causing power cuts and alarming residents, authorities said. The tremor, which the British Geological Survey said hit 4.3 on the Richter scale, struck around 8:15am. One woman suffered a minor head and neck injury that required hospital treatment. The quake -- whose epicenter was identified as 12km off the coast of Dover -- was the largest to hit Britain since 2002.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Stars act for Darfur
Entertainers including musicians Bob Geldof, Elton John and Mick Jagger and actor George Clooney on Saturday called on world leaders to take "decisive action" over atrocities in Darfur. The statement was released to coincide with the Global Day for Darfur yesterday. The Global Day for Darfur was to be marked around the world by activists overturning 10,000 hourglasses filled with fake blood. The event has been organized by a coalition including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
■ IRELAND
Ahern announces election
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern announced yesterday that the country's next general election would be May 24 and vowed to extend his 10-year run in power. Ahern spoke after meeting President Mary McAleese, who signed a document dissolving the parliament for a four-week election campaign. McAleese said the new parliament would convene on June 14 to elect a government. "Once again, the moment has arrived for the people to decide Ireland's future," Ahern said.
■ TURKEY
Secular Turks in protest
Tens of thousands of secular Turks gathered in Istanbul yesterday, chanting slogans against the pro-Islamic government, which has faced severe criticism from the powerful military for allegedly tolerating the activities of radical Islamic circles. It was the second large demonstration against the government in just two weeks and shows a deepening division between secular and Islamist camps in Turkish society.
■ MEXICO
Abortion foes in poster blitz
Abortion protesters vowed on Saturday to print posters bearing the names of Mexico City legislators who had voted to legalize the procedure while uncertainty lingered over whether doctors at city-run hospitals could refuse to perform them. Abortion opponent Guillermo Bustamante of the National Union of Parents told the government news agency Notimex that his group planned to display posters all over the city picturing legislators who voted for the new law next to an aborted fetus in a campaign to get the law, which went into effect on Thursday, overturned or repealed.
■ UNITED STATES
Love-struck thief arrested
Whenever Antonio Moreno wanted to see his girlfriend, say police in Santa Barbara, California, he'd jump in a car and drive right over. But there was a problem. The 26 cars Moreno jumped into all belonged to someone else, according to authorities who arrested the 31-year-old near his Inglewood home on Wednesday. They said he was behind the wheel of a 1987 Toyota Camry when they found him. Since January, police said, Moreno had been stealing Toyota Camrys and Nissan Sentras by using a simple device that starts Japanese cars of a certain age.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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