■ MYANMAR
Daily reports drug seizure
Myanmar, the world's second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, seized nearly 40kg of opium last month, the official New Light of Myanmar daily said yesterday. There were 239 drug-related cases last month, it said, but did not provide the number of people arrested in those incidents. The military government also seized 1.4kg of marijuana and 107,000 stimulant tablets last month, the paper said. The nation regularly burns drug hauls to show the world that it is cracking down on rampant drug production. But the US has said that several hundred million amphetamine tablets are produced in Myanmar every year and shipped by gangs to neighboring China and Thailand.
■ AUSTRALIA
Japan ties at risk: Nelson
The nation's newly elected government risks damaging political and trade ties with Tokyo if it uses the military to monitor Japanese whaling in Antarctic, the opposition said yesterday. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has suggested using the navy to monitor Japan's controversial whale cull and will announce next week whether he will act on the plan. But opposition leader Brendan Nelson said that, while he was against whaling, Rudd must think carefully before deploying warships to shadow vessels belonging to one of the nation's major allies. Japan's ships set sail last month on the country's largest hunt yet, which for the first time since the 1960s will kill humpbacks. Japanese officials argue the whale catch is fully legal. The country's whalers plans to kill more than 1,000 of the giant mammals in the annual hunt using a loophole in a 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling that permits limited whaling for scientific purposes.
■ CHINA
Spielberg writes Hu
Film director Steven Spielberg, artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on Thursday urging Beijing to press ally Sudan to accept peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur. "I write to you now with a renewed sense of urgency in the hope that China will redouble its efforts to pressure Sudan to join in a fair peace agreement and, at last, bring an end to the genocide," the letter to Hu said. "Please urge Sudan to accept -- and rapidly facilitate -- the United Nations authorized hybrid force," said the letter, released by Spielberg spokesman Andy Spahn. With time running out for Darfur as Sudan resists deployment of the UN and African Union force, "the world needs China to lead here," the director wrote.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Rowling tale brings £1.95m
A hand-written and illustrated tale of wizardry by Harry Potter author JK Rowling fetched £1.95 million (US$3.98 million) -- nearly 40 times its expected price -- at auction on Thursday. The Tales of Beedle the Bard had been expected to go for up to £50,000 at the sale by Sotheby's in London. The buyer was from London dealer Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, the auctioneer said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Swords to be banned
The government said on Wednesday it would ban the sale of samurai swords because the weapons had been used in a number of serious, high-profile attacks. The Home Office said the swords would be added to the Offensive Weapons Order from April next year, meaning they could not be imported, sold or rented. Collectors of genuine Japanese swords and those used by martial arts enthusiasts would be exempt from the ban. "In the wrong hands, samurai swords are dangerous weapons," Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said.
■ ROMANIA
Dead man walks into office
A man had his bid to renew his identity papers rejected because official records said he had died more than eight years ago. Gheorghe Stirbu, 61, a retiree, went to authorities last week to have his identity card reissued because the old one had expired. But the clerk said he couldn't issue new papers because the office had a death certificate showing that Stirbu himself had expired on March 3, 1999, from breathing difficulties, and been buried the same month. Stirbu said he was not ill at the time. Stirbu's daughter Iuliana Mocanu said: "He could have had a heart attack. He didn't sleep for days when he found out the news." Stirbu has prepared papers to prove he is still alive.
■ KENYA
First lady slaps official
The first lady slapped a government official during an Independence Day celebration after he introduced her by the name of a woman widely believed to be Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's second wife, local media reported. An official from the president's office made the gaffe introducing Lucy Kibaki to hundreds of guests on Wednesday during a State House garden party. "Before he could finish, the First Lady rose from her seat at the dais, walked to him and slapped him on the face," the leading Daily Nation said. Lucy Kibaki was reported to have been incensed when the official introduced her as "Wambui." Many believe Mary Wambui has been Kibaki's second wife for 30 years, despite repeated denials from State House.
■ UKRAINE
Mass murder trial opens
The trial of a Russian ex-convict accused of raping and killing dozens of young women and girls has opened in Ukraine, a court official said on Thursday. Sergey Tkach, a 55-year-old father of five who has been married three times, is accused of committing some 40 murders, the prosecutor's office said. Tkach is also suspected of 40 other murders currently under investigation, while another 60 crimes, some committed in Russia, have not been investigated yet, the office said. Tkach was arrested in southern Ukraine in 2005, where he had been living. He came to Ukraine in 1982 from Kemerovo in Siberia, Russia, where he had worked for the police. Tkach was judged sane and will stand trial, which is expected to last at least six months.
■ UNITED STATES
Teacher misinterprets song
An impromptu rendition of Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle by a custodian at a Roxbury, Connecticut, school had police rushing to the rescue after a teacher believed she was going to be killed. The custodian and two friends, all teenagers, were handcuffed and kept on the ground about 15 minutes by state police called to Booth Free School on Wednesday. A teacher who was working late misinterpreted the lyrics, which included "You're in the jungle baby; you're going to die" and were being blared over the public address system, as a threat. A number of school shootings and threats over the past year in the US have many on edge. Sergeant Brian Ness said the group did not realize the teacher was in the school and will not face charges.
■ UNITED STATES
Stance eases back pain
Pregnant women may stand out a mile away with their characteristic backward-leaning stance, but that clumsy-looking position is a unique adaptation that evolved over millennia, anthropologists said on Wednesday. Pregnant pre-humans appeared to have stood the same way. And it may save women from even more back pain than they already have, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The bodies of women do two things when they are pregnant -- they adjust their stance to move the center of gravity to accommodate the growing fetus, and the lower vertebrae have evolved a distinct shape to allow this shifting to take place without damaging the spine, Katherine Whitcome of Harvard University and colleagues found.
■ ICELAND
Teen calls White House
A teenager says he convinced the White House he was Iceland's president and managed to schedule a call with US President George W. Bush but was found out before he got to talk to him. "My call was transferred around a few times until I got hold of Bush's secretary and managed to book a call meeting with Bush the following Monday evening," Vifill Atlason, 16, said. The teenager posed as Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson when he made the call on Dec. 1. Icelandic police turned up at his door two days later -- the day of the planned call -- and took him in for questioning. "They told me the CIA had called the National Commissioner of the Icelandic police and asked if the police could try and find out where I received that phone number from," Atlason said.
■ BRAZIL
Nudist couple accused
A US couple accused of sexually abusing minors at a nudist colony in southern Brazil deny the charges and believe they were set up by wealthy members of the colony who didn't like their work for the poor, their lawyers said on Thursday. Frederic Calvin Louderback, 63, of San Diego, California, is accused of abusing at least 10 boys between the ages of six and 14, all from poor neighborhoods near the colony, according to police. The Zero Hora newspaper said Louderback and his girlfriend rarely mingled with other members of the nudist colony, but were admired by residents of a village near the colony. "Until they prove something, he's very innocent. He always provided education, clothes, notebooks and shoes for the kids. He wanted to be useful, because he had money," said Marino Jose da Silva, whose two young daughters attended English classes run by the Americans.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS