■ PAKISTAN
Court to delay poll result
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that this weekend's presidential election can go ahead, but said results should not be announced until it has decided on legal challenges against the vote. The ruling clears the way for today's ballot in which President Pervez Musharraf is controversially standing for re-election while still holding his post of army chief. "The bench has unanimously resolved and directed that the election process should proceed as per the schedule announced by the chief election commissioner," chief judge Javed Iqbal said.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Condom summit to be held
Fresh from summit diplomacy with North Korea, South Korea's government now faces an entirely new challenge -- trying to set international quality and size standards for condoms. The five-day meeting is organized by the Seoul government and the International Organization for Standardization. South Korean firms led by Unidus Corp account for some 30 percent of global condom sales "The size of South Korean condoms now meets international standards, helped by an increase in the size of men's penises here," Unidus chief Kim Sung-hoon told Yonhap news agency.
■ JAPAN
Wikiwork reprimanded
The Agriculture Ministry reprimanded six bureaucrats for shirking their duties after an internal probe found they spent work hours contributing to Wikipedia -- including 260 entries about cartoon robots. The six civil servants together made 408 entries -- on issues unrelated to farm issues -- on the popular Web site encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003, an official said yesterday. One of the six focused solely on Gundam -- the popular, long-running animated series about giant robots -- to which he contributed 260 times. "The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Female pilot reinstated
A South Korean court yesterday ordered the defense ministry to reinstate a female helicopter pilot who was forced to retire after a double mastectomy. The Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of Lieutenant-Colonel Pi Woo-jin, who was discharged late last year following the surgery. She had filed a lawsuit fighting her sacking after almost 28 years of service.
■ NETHERLANDS
Bugs smuggling drugs
Drug smugglers have enlisted bugs to smuggle cocaine, a customs spokesman said on Thursday. When an alert customs officer took a close look at a consignment of more than 100 large, dead bugs sent from Peru to the Netherlands, he discovered that cocaine had been stashed in their backs. "We see a lot of things, but this was a first for us," customs spokesman Kees Nanninga said. "It looked like they were cut open, the drugs hidden in their backs and then they were glued back together again," he said. The insects held only 300g of cocaine, worth about US$11,300, Nanninga said.
■ FRANCE
Controversial bill approved
The senate yesterday approved a controversial immigration bill that would authorize voluntary DNA testing on foreigners wishing to join their families in France. Fierce opposition to the bill has led the government to make a series of concessions to win over critics. Supporters say the measure would make it possible for would-be immigrants to speed up the application process by proving their kinship with family members in France. They point out that 12 other EU countries carry out similar tests. But opponents say the bill would set a dangerous precedent by making genetic affiliation a criterion for citizenship.
■ BOSNIA
Karadzic's wife speaks out
The wife of fugitive Serb genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic has urged him to surrender and put an end to the constant "harassment" of his family, a weekly reported on Thursday. "All we want is for this to end, we want Radovan to surrender or to be arrested," Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic told the magazine Slobodna Bosna. Karadzic told the magazine she and her family have been "persecuted and harassed" for more than a decade despite the fact they had no contact with the wartime Bosnian Serb leader. Karadzic has been on the run from the International Criminal Tribunal for 12 years, and is wanted on charges related to the Srebrenica massacre.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Painting may be da Vinci's
Detectives have recovered a painting they believe is a Leonardo da Vinci work stolen from a Scottish castle in a daring daylight raid four years ago, police said on Thursday. Officers had seized a painting thought to be Madonna with the Yarnwinder, a Scottish police force said. It is valued by art experts at between US$40 million and US$100 million. Police would not give more details, saying the investigation was fast-moving. Madonna with the Yarnwinder was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in southern Scotland in August 2003 while it was on public display. Two thieves posing as tourists overpowered a guide before escaping with the painting.
■ RUSSIA
Bodies likely Stalin victims
Workers rebuilding a 19th century Moscow house unearthed the remains of 34 people apparently dating back to dictator Josef Stalin's political purges, city police officials said on Thursday. Police also found a rusted pistol on the estate. The remains appeared to date to the 1930s and more could be found, police said. The Soviet Union in the 1930s experienced a wave of politically motivated purges of the government and Communist Party orchestrated by Stalin's secret police. The killings reached their apex in 1937.
■ UNITED STATES
Legislator embarrasses self
An image of a topless woman that popped up during a state legislator's computer presentation to a high school class had been downloaded by a child of the lawmaker, a state House staffer said. The image of a topless woman was projected after Representative Matthew Barrett inserted a data memory stick into the computer lecture on Tuesday on how a bill becomes a law. He was speaking to a government class of about 20 students in the northern Ohio city of Norwalk. Barrett has said he did not know at the time how the image had become intermingled with the graphics presentation he was there to show. The lawmaker immediately shut down the computer and finished the presentation using paper handouts.
■ UNITED STATES
Beer-swigging driver nabbed
A man in Florida wrecked his pickup after leading deputies on a 185kph chase and tossing beer cans out the window. So authorities were not thrilled with the 26-year-old man's next move: swigging beer and directing an obscene gesture at them. Authorities said he told them "he was going to die fighting and swinging." But a stun gun shock ended that threat. William Joseph Galloway was being held on Thursday on US$8,000 bail. No one was hurt.
■ UNITED STATES
Man kills self over rezoning
A business owner shot and killed himself during a city council meeting in Tennessee after members voted against his request to rezone his property, witnesses said. Ronald "Bo" Ward, owner of Bo's Barber Shop, had told the council his business would go under if he could not get his home rezoned as commercial. After the five to seven vote on Thursday night, Ward stood and walked toward the council. "Ya'll have put me under ... I'm out of here," he said before shooting himself in the head with a small handgun. Ward had said the rezoning would increase his property value, allowing him to secure a loan to offset debt he incurred when he expanded his shop.
■ UNITED STATES
Bra sets off alarm
Security guards refused to allow a woman into a federal courthouse until she removed a bra that triggered a metal detector. Lori Plato said she and her husband, Owen Plato, were stunned when US Marshals Service employees asked her to remove her bra after the underwire supports set off the alarm. "I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said on Wednesday. "They said, `No." Patrick McDonald, the US Marshal in Boise, Idaho, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.
■ UNITED STATES
Lighter mistaken for gunfire
Sheriff's deputies who mistook an exploding cigarette lighter for gunfire dived to the ground and called in reinforcements, shutting down a neighborhood in California for hours. "We have a lot of unusual things happen in our business, and we expected the unexpected. It's better to be safe than sorry," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lieutenant Robert Craton said. The lighter belonged to one of two people stopped on Wednesday for loitering and drinking alcohol in a park. During questioning, a lighter was placed on the hood of a car, sheriff's Captain Richard Shaw said. "The Bic lighter exploded, and shrapnel went everywhere," Shaw told the Pasadena Star-News in its Thursday edition.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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