■ CHINA
Landslide buries road
A landslide buried a road and threatened a school in a major city in southwestern China, prompting the evacuation of more than 6,300 students and residents, a news report said yesterday. No injuries were reported. The landslide occurred on Thursday in the industrial metropolis of Chongqing, the Xinhua news agency said. It said monitoring of the hillside alerted authorities to the impending slide, allowing them to clear the area before it hit. Some 4,200 students at the nearby Fuling No. 5 Middle School were sent home as a safety measure and nearby residents were evacuated, Xinhua said.
■ CHINA
Bird flu kills 4,850 birds
Bird flu has killed 4,850 poultry in northwest China, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. The outbreak occurred in Turpan, a city in the Xinjiang region, on Dec. 29 and a state laboratory confirmed the presence of the pathogenic H5N1 virus on Thursday, Xinhua said. Some 29,383 birds were slaughtered as a result, it said. The last reported outbreak in poultry occurred in September, when 9,830 ducks died in southern China near Hong Kong.
■ THAILAND
Insurgents kill Muslim man
Suspected separatist insurgents have shot dead a Muslim man and wounded two others on the anniversary of the start of a bloody rebellion in Thailand's far south, police said yesterday. The 43-year-old villager was killed in a drive-by shooting on Friday evening near a mosque in Yala Province, where two security officials were also wounded in a shooting and a bomb attack, local police said. Friday marked the fourth anniversary of a militant attack on an army base in Narathiwat Province, which revived long-running tensions and kick-started a separatist insurgency that has left more than 2,800 people dead. The south was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it more than a century ago, provoking decades of animosity.
■ JAPAN
Company offers pet subsidy
Hoping to send the message that pets are life-long partners not disposable accessories, a Japanese maker of medicines for animals has begun giving employees who own dogs or cats a monthly "family allowance" for their pets. The number of pets in Japan has grown with greater affluence and a falling birth rate and there are now more pet cats and dogs than children under age 15, but about 310,000 cats and dogs are put down annually, said Tokyo-based Kyoritsu Seiyaku Corp. Employees who own dogs and cats cn get a "family allowance" of ¥1,000 yen (US$9) per month.
■ JAPAN
Prisons prepare for elderly
Faced with a prison population aging as rapidly as the rest of the country, Japan is to build new jails with disabled access, including elevators, slopes for wheelchairs and grab-bars in toilets and baths. The three new penal facilities will offer healthy meals and may also have specialists in nursing and rehabilitation on staff, a Justice Ministry official said on Friday. The number of prison inmates aged over 60 rose to 8,700 in 2006 from 3,500 in 1997. Those with disabilities are currently spread around the country, making it difficult for wardens to deal with them, the ministry said. The three new penal facilities will each accommodate about 360 people and total building costs are estimated at ¥8.3 billion.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
'Dassies' under the hood
A car-owner in Johannesburg was driven to desperation when she found a family of Cape Hyrax, small animals that resemble guinea pigs, living in the engine of her BMW. Hoping to shake off the short-eared, short-tailed creatures known locally as "dassies," she drove at high speed to a dealership on the other side of town, but failing to do so dumped the vehicle there without giving an explanation. Astonished staff at the BMW dealership phoned Johannesburg Zoo and asked them to come and rescue the animals as the car had been abandoned in their carwashing area and was interfering with their work, a zoo official said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Slow driver banned
A woman so terrified of driving that she drove along an expressway at under 16kph was banned from the road for a week on Friday and told she must retake her test. Stephanie Cole, 57, from Bristol, had been seeing her doctor for "fear of driving" when she was caught on Aug. 30 last year between the shoulder and slow lane of the M32 with a sign on the back of her car reading: "I do not drive fast, please overtake." Cole, a wheelchair-using multiple sclerosis sufferer who had pleaded guilty to driving without reasonable consideration, was also given a three-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay court costs of £35 (US$69).
■ CZECH REPUBLIC
Art group faces jail terms
A group of artists who allegedly hacked into a national TV weather broadcast to show a fake nuclear blast at a mountain resort will face trial and possible three-year jail terms if convicted, a state prosecutor said on Thursday. Members of the group allegedly tampered with equipment so Czech viewers watching a live panoramic shot of the Krkonose, or Giant Mountains, on June 17 last year were jolted by a flash of bright light. When the light cleared, a fiery mushroom cloud could be seen rising on the horizon. The group said the aim of the project was to show how reality could be manipulated by the media.
■ CYPRUS
Protest turns violent
Riot police on British bases used batons to disperse rock-throwing youths on Friday after a protest against the bases' presence turned violent, officials said. There were no serious injuries or arrests. Spokesman Captain Nick Ulvert said about 120 youths from a group called "Britain Reconsider" staged the protest outside the gates of RAF Akrotiri, near Limassol. TV footage showed protesters holding Greek flags, torches and a banner with the slogan " This land doesn't want you." Ulvert said police charged 20 to 30 youths when they started hurling rocks "the size of footballs."
■ RUSSIA
Fishermen rescued
Eleven fishermen, feared dead for three months, were rescued after surviving on rations in an abandoned military base in Russia's far east, the Vesti 24 news channel reported on Friday. The men were rescued by soldiers after five of them ventured from the base this week on Kamchatka peninsula, 8,000km east of Moscow, where they had been sheltering since October. "Armed with a map, they went 30km before meeting up with soldiers. They were lucky," Alexei Sivolap, Kamchatka regional head at the Ministry for Emergency Situations said. The group took shelter at the base after being hit by bad weather during an October fishing trip.
■ UNITED STATES
Piggy bank thief charged
A man has been charged with sneaking into a toddler's bedroom in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and stealing US$20 from a piggy bank while the two-year-old girl slept. Authorities say DNA evidence linked Ryan Mueller, 30, to the crime that occurred on Aug. 10. Authorities say the girl's mother was in another room with another child when she saw a light turn on in her two-year-old daughter's room. She walked into the girl's bedroom and saw a man shaking the piggy bank as the girl slept. The man fled before police arrived, stealing the money but leaving the piggy bank. Mueller was charged with felony burglary, which carries a penalty of up to nine-and-a-half years in prison.
■ UNITED STATES
Women trapped for two days
Two cleaning women, trapped inside a broken elevator in Illinois for two days, survived on two cough drops and six aspirin until they were rescued. Beata Bartoszewicz and her mother, Roma Borowski, entered an elevator in an empty building in a Chicago suburb on Dec. 22. After the elevator doors closed, the women discovered they were stuck on the first floor of the two-story building. There was no response from an emergency call alarm and the women could not pry open the doors, Bartoszewicz said. Neither had a mobile phone or water and the building was not due to open until after Christmas. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, an employee of the building happened to go to work. Fire crews freed the women an hour later.
■ BRAZIL
Thieves steal rare alligators
Thieves stole seven rare albino alligators from a Brazilian university zoo and investigators suspect animal smugglers were behind the crime, officials said on Friday. The theft at the Federal University of Mato Grosso was carried out sometime between Monday, when the alligators were last fed, and Wednesday morning when a zookeeper noticed their disappearance, zoo director Itamar Assumpcao said. There were no signs of a break-in, he added.
■ VENEZUELA
Plane crashes into the sea
A plane crashed into the sea on Friday with 14 people on board, including eight Italians and a Swiss citizen. There was no immediate report on casualties. Search teams fanned out by air and sea to look for the downed twin-engine plane, which left Simon Bolivar International Airport near Caracas and hit the sea about 39km from Los Roques islands, said General Antonio Rivero, Venezuela's emergency management director. Italy's foreign ministry said eight Italians were on board. Rivero's agency said there were five Venezuelans on board, as well as one Swiss man.
■ UNITED STATES
Cold snap fells iguanas
How cold was it in South Florida this week? So cold the iguanas fell from the trees. The cold-blooded reptiles go into a deep sleep when the temperature falls below 10oC. Experts said their bodies basically shut off and they lose their grip on the tree. But it is not sudden death -- the reptiles perk up when the temperatures rises. Miami Metrozoo officials said the night cold causes the most drops. "The worst part of the cold comes in the evening and they literally just shut off," said Ron Magill, communications director for the zoo. "Their bodies shut off, they lose their grip on the tree and they start falling." While many of the iguanas will wake up, they could face death if low temperatures persist.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to