■ SOUTH KOREA
Rice to attend inauguration
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will attend the Feb. 25 inauguration of South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak. The State Department said on Friday that Rice will also travel to China and Japan during her Feb. 23 to Feb. 28 trip. She is scheduled to meet with senior officials in all three countries to discuss stalled North Korean nuclear disarmament talks. While in Seoul, she also will discuss a US-South Korean free trade deal. The conservative Lee has vowed to improve the half-century alliance with the US.
■ AUSTRALIA
Crocodiles on the loose
Residents were warned to be on the lookout for marauding crocodiles on Friday after a monsoon storm left a northern Australian city flooded and forced the evacuation of up to 1,000 people. Mackay, a mining and sugarcane farming town in Queensland, was pelted with twice its monthly average of rain in 24 hours, meteorologists said, leaving streets and houses awash under muddy water. State officials declared the city a disaster zone and warned people not to venture out into the floodwaters. Among the dangers was the possibility that crocodiles that normally live in rivers and estuaries in the area would be swimming through the floodwaters, said state Environmental Protection Agency official Joe Adair.
■ VIETNAM
Bird flu spreads
Bird flu has killed a second man in Vietnam this week, infected a child and poultry in two provinces and a health official warned more people would fall sick of the virus, the government and state media said yesterday. The 27-year-old man died on Thursday night at a Hanoi hospital after he was taken there from the northern province of Ninh Binh on Tuesday with serious pneumonia, the official Vietnam News Agency reported. The provinces of Ninh Binh and Hai Duong, where a seven-year-old child was infected, are not on the government's bird flu watchlist, but health officials said more human infections could emerge as chicken is a popular dish at this time of the year.
■ CHINA
Ad angers passengers
An advertisement on Beijing's subway proclaiming "Squeezed in? Go and buy a car then!" has angered passengers who said it only encourages traffic jams, a state newspaper said on Friday. The advertisement is also contrary to the Beijing city government's aim of getting more people to take public transport, the official Beijing Daily said. "Isn't this out of tune with environmental protection?" it quoted a subway passenger surnamed Yang as saying. "The company sees subway passengers as potential customers, but the scornful tone of the advertising language exposes a lack of interest in human feelings behind a meticulous design," a female passenger surnamed Liu said.
■ INDIA
Taj Mahal to get face-lift
Indian archeologists have started giving a face-lift to the 17th-century Taj Mahal by applying a mud pack to the marble exteriors of the country's most famous monument. Last year, an Indian parliamentary committee said airborne particles were being deposited on the monument's white marble, giving it a yellow tinge. The mud pack will remain on the marble for about two or three days before it is peeled off and rinsed with distilled water.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Crystal meth use rising
Use of the drug crystal meth is growing fast in Britain and could become as widespread as crack cocaine in just four years, leaks of a report written by the country's police chiefs said. Specialists say that even occasional recreational use of the drug -- a form of amphetamine which is crystallized in order for it be smoked -- is dangerous. The internal report by the Association of Chief Police Officers found that despite its low use, growth levels in Britain matched those already experienced in Australia and the US, the BBC reported.
■ GERMANY
Deutsche Post chief resigns
The country was on the brink of its biggest tax scandal on Friday after one of its best known business leaders resigned after being investigated for 1 million euros (US$1.47 million) in suspected tax evasion. It emerged that up to 1,000 individuals including Deutsche Post chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel, are suspected of siphoning hundreds of millions of euros to Liechtenstein to escape tax authorities. Spiegel Online reported that about 125 cases would be launched next week, with 900 raids planned and that the sums involved could range from 300 million euros to 4 billion euros.
■ NETHERLANDS
'Herbal' remedies seized
Chinese herbal impotence remedies intercepted by Dutch customs officers contain such high doses of chemicals that they could cause heart failure or impaired vision, the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate said on Friday. "Taking the pills could be dangerous because they contain two and a half times the daily dosage" of chemicals found in prescription impotency pills, the inspectorate said in a statement. "Such a high dosage has never been tested on humans. It can't be ruled out that these so-called herbal pills could lead to serious health problems such as heart failure and reduced vision."
■ FRANCE
ETA suspects arrested
Two men suspected of involvement in the deadly 2006 ETA bombing at Madrid's airport have been taken into custody in France, a news report said on Friday. Spain's El Pais newspaper said the men were arrested at a house in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in southwestern France on Friday. A third man was also detained on suspicion of involvement with the armed group, the paper said. The massive truck bombing on Dec. 30, 2006, at Terminal 4 of Madrid's airport destroyed a multi-story parking garage and killed two Ecuadorean immigrants who were sleeping in cars inside the building. El Pais named the two suspects in custody in France as Joseba Iturbide and Mikel San Sebastian.
■ DENMARK
Arson attacks continue
A wave of arson attacks continued yesterday as youths set fire to cars, waste bins and doorways across the country overnight. No injuries were reported in the attacks. The riots have been attributed by police mainly to groups with an immigration background. Five arrested suspects were due to face a custodial judge yesterday. On Friday, a 15-year old was sentenced to two weeks in custody because he had spoken out on public TV for a continuation of the riots. Justice Minister Lene Espersen has called for tough measures against the rioting youths. The riots had broken out before the renewed dispute over the controversial Mohammed cartoons published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
■ BOLIVIA
Morales followers want guns
Bolivian President Evo Morales on Friday said supporters across the nation want weapons to defend his government's populist reforms. "The phone calls come at night, in the wee hours," Morales said at a coca farmers' union meeting in the central city of Cochabamba. "`You're president, you must make them respect you,'" he said his supporters tell him. "`If you can't, give us arms to make them respect you.'" Morales said he was encouraged by their devotion, without saying whether he obliged the requests. The president's comments are likely to heighten tensions between Morales and four opposition governors, who refuse to recognize his new, still-pending constitution granting greater voice to Bolivia's indigenous groups.
■ UNITED STATES
Man on bird killing spree
Around 3pm on Friday, several people walking in Battery Park, New York, called 911 to report curious goings-on -- a man driving a Parks Department golf cart was tearing erratically through a city park. As the calls came in, the police said, it emerged that the cart's driving pattern may have been reckless, but it was not without purpose. The driver was apparently trying to run over as many birds as he could. Officers responded, "and over the course of the investigation we uncovered videotape," a Police Department spokesman said. Five birds were killed, the police said, three pigeons and two seagulls. The authorities said the man at the wheel of the golf cart was Martin Hightower, a 45-year-old Parks Department employee. He was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors, reckless endangerment and intentional injury to animals.
■ MEXICO
Migrants hold mass wedding
Nearly 600 Mexican couples tied the knot in a mass Valentine's Day wedding by the US border on Thursday, many of them undocumented migrants who met while working illegally in the US. As a live band blasted out sugary Mexican love songs in the border city of Tijuana, a short walk from the busy San Ysidro crossing to California, a judge simultaneously married a crowd of couples whose ages ranged from 16 to 65. More than three-quarters were migrants returning from, or trying to get into, the US.
■ UNITED STATES
Diplomat HIV rules changed
Under pressure from a lawsuit, the State Department is changing rules that had disqualified HIV-positive people from becoming US diplomats. Effective on Friday, the department removed HIV from a list of medical conditions that automatically prevent foreign service candidates from meeting an employment requirement that they be able to work anywhere in the world. The change was made after consultation with medical experts and in response to a lawsuit filed by an HIV-positive man who was denied entry into the foreign service despite being otherwise qualified, the department said.
■ UNITED STATES
Fossett declared dead
Steve Fossett, the wealthy, record-setting adventurer who for years blithely sailed, soared and drove through all manner of danger before disappearing in September during what was meant to be a routine short flight, was declared dead on Friday by a Chicago court. He was 63, and had homes in Chicago, Beaver Creek, Colorado and Carmel, California. Fossett was declared legally dead by Judge Jeffrey Malak of the Circuit Court of Cook County, said Mary Downie, a lawyer for Fossett's widow.
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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