■ THAILAND
"Police target teen sex
Alarmed by polls showing one in four teens will celebrate St Valentine's Day by having sex, police planned to swoop on motels, malls and parks to ensure youths behaved themselves. The annual campaign to ensure good behavior on Valentine's Day involved city officials turning on all lights at public parks in Bangkok, while parents were urged to make sure their teenagers came home early. Police and "student inspectors" from the Education Ministry were to check discrete "curtain" motels to make sure youths under the legal age of 18 were not using them for amorous interludes.
■ INDONESIA
Quake sparks tsunami alert
A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the eastern province of Maluku early yesterday, prompting a tsunami alert that was later lifted, the meteorology and geophysics office said here. The earthquake, which struck at 2:58am, was centered 275km southwest of Maluku, some 10km under the seabed, the office said. "There is the potential for a tsunami," it said. One hour later the alert was lifted. Tsunami warnings are routinely issued in Indonesia for strong quakes occurring at a depth of 10km or less. Equipment is not currently in place to measure a change in water depth commensurate with a tsunami forming off a coast.
■ AUSTRALIA
Dozens rescued from yacht
Thirty-seven people were airlifted from a stricken yacht off the Great Barrier Reef on Tuesday in the second dramatic rescue from wild seas in two days, police said. Two helicopters were used to winch the passengers and crew from the 18m yacht stranded in the Whitsunday Islands in the northeastern state of Queensland, they said. Heavy rain, strong winds and large seas forced rescuers to abandon plans to use boats or ropes to bring the passengers to shore. Overnight police pulled a family of six, including four children, to safety after their yacht slipped its moorings in gale-force winds and smashed into rocks at nearby Airlie Beach.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Space kimchi ready to go
A specially engineered version of kimchi, the beloved pickle dish, has been cleared for a historic space mission this year, officials said on Wednesday. The bacteria-free kimchi, developed by top scientists, will blast off along with the country's first astronaut after being approved by Russian space authorities, they said. Instant noodles, cinnamon tea and uncooked organic food, all developed by the state-run food research body, have also been approved for the mission in April.
■ JAPAN
Film director passes on
Kon Ichikawa, the film director whose versatility ranged beyond well-known anti-war dramas like The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain to comedies and documentaries, died on Wednesday in Tokyo at the age of 92. The cause was pneumonia, said a spokeswoman for Toho, which released many of Ichikawa's more than 80 films and announced his death. Ichikawa's career reached what many consider its high point when US viewers were streaming to art-cinema houses in the 1950s and 1960s to see movies by emerging masters like Ingmar Bergman. In those years critics rated Ichikawa on a level with Akira Kurosawa. He was "once hailed as one of the world's greatest directors," Olaf Moeller wrote in 2001 in Film Comment.
■ ARMENIA
Ten hurt in plane crash
A plane carrying 21 people crashed on takeoff from the capital Yerevan early yesterday, injuring at least 10 people, the head of the civil aviation authority said.
The plane, a Canadair CRJ-100, was heading for Minsk, Belarus, when it flipped over on the runway at Zvartnots Airport and burst into flames, Avtiom Movsesian said. He said there were 18 passengers and three crew members aboard. Ten were hospitalized with injuries. An airport spokesman said none of the injuries were life-threatening. The plane belonged to Belarus' state airline Belavia.
■ SAUDI ARABIA
Divorced couple to reunite
Riyadh has promised to allow a couple who were forced to divorce by a religious court to live together again, the UN zzaz is being held in a government home for orphans with a young son because she refused to return to her family home after the divorce order. Her husband has custody of their daughter.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Rare white stag filmed
A mythical and ghostly creature has appeared in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands -- and caught on camera. The rare white stag, from the red deer species, is believed to be among just a tiny handful living in Britain, the John Muir Trust said. The conservation group is keeping the stag's location secret for fear of poachers. "To see him amongst the other stags was truly thrilling because he does look like a ghost: you do a double-take," said Trust Partnership manager Fran Lockhart, who filmed the stag.
■ GERMANY
Sex auction leads to lawsuit
A woman who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who's the father. Six men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman last April and May. She only knew their online names. "She needed their contact details," the spokesman for the court in Stuttgart said on Wednesday. "Of course, if they're not willing to go along with the gene test, she'll have to take them to court." The Web site operator had refused to reveal the true identity of the men, citing a confidentiality clause in its terms and conditions. The court ruled that a child's right to know who its father was took precedence.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Curry houses in crisis
The government was urged on Wednesday to ease restrictions on Bangladeshi workers in an attempt to help avert a crisis in curry houses. At least 27,500 more workers are needed, the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) charity said. The shortage is caused by the government's new immigration system for non-EU migrants, IAS said. Attempts to hire eastern Europeans have failed because they "have no cultural sensitivity towards or understanding of the curry industry," IAS said.
■ VENEZUELA
"US court backs ExxonMobil
A New York federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a freeze of US$300 million in assets owned by Venezuela's state oil company following a legal challenge by US oil major ExxonMobil. "All the conditions have been met to confirm the attachment," said Judge Deborah Batts, who presided over a review of the affair at a New York federal court. The escalating legal battle relates to ExxonMobil's bid to secure compensation after Venezuela nationalized key oil fields in the Orinoco basin, including two ExxonMobil operations. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro took McCormack's statement as proof that the squabble was political in nature. "The US government is nothing more than the direct representative of the multinational oligarchy ... who operates through political power," Maduro said in Caracas.
■ NICARAGUA
Protest filed with Colombia
Nicaragua protested formally to the Colombian government on Tuesday after saying a ship from Colombia's navy confronted Nicaraguan fishermen in waters both countries claim as their own. The protest note, handed to Colombia's ambassador to Managua, marks the latest confrontation between the two countries, which both claim three isolated Caribbean islands and their surrounding waters. On Tuesday, Managua said that a Colombian frigate had intimidated a fishing boat trawling for lobsters earlier in the week in what it described as Nicaraguan waters.
■ UNITED STATES
Police callers get sex pitch
People calling a Michigan state police post got an unexpected pitch for phone sex. Calls to the Bridgeport post's main number were met on Wednesday morning with a recorded message saying, "Indulge yourself with the most exciting conversation imaginable." That was followed by a telephone number for a phone sex line, the Saginaw News reported. The phones were working properly by midmorning, Sergeant Alan Renz said. The mix-up was an "internal issue that has nothing to do with the phone company" and an investigation is under way, he told the newspaper.
■ UNITED STATES
Jewelers reject Pebble Mine
Five of the leading US jewelers have sworn off gold that could some day come from the Pebble Mine, a huge deposit near the world's most productive wild sockeye salmon stream. The jewelers, including Tiffany & Co, Ben Bridge Jeweler and Helzberg Diamonds, pledged on Tuesday not to knowingly sell jewelry made from gold that might be extracted from the proposed mine near the Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska. Northern Dynasty Mines Inc is developing the prospect in partnership with Anglo American PLC. Northern Dynasty spokesman Sean Magee said he was surprised that none of the companies contacted Northern Dynasty before signing the pledge. He said they would be contacting the retailers this week to describe Pebble Mine and the approach to the project.
■ UNITED STATES
Web site marks dead affairs
A Web site is offering the lovelorn a way to bury memories of an old love affair -- by writing an obituary. Relationshipobit.com is the brainchild of Kathleen Horan, a 38-year-old reporter for WNYC public radio. She says she has no idea where her "reverse social networking" Web site might lead her but for now views it as a social experience. "Time heals," she says, "but you want to know what the heck other people" do to mend their hearts.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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