■ HONG KONG
Ching admits to mediation
Freed Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong (程翔), who was jailed on spying charges, yesterday admitted in an interview with Hong Kong's RTHK radio to being involved in mediation efforts between China and Taiwan. Ching, 58, who had been chief China correspondent for Singapore's the Straits Times, was released last month on parole after spending nearly three years in jail on charges of spying for Taipei. In its original verdict, a Beijing court said Ching passed on information, some of it top secret, to two people from a Taiwanese foundation who were in fact deputies of an intelligence agency. Ching wrote some articles for the foundation but has denied being involved in spying.
■ north korea
Official probed over cash
A North Korean official in charge of inter-Korean trade is being interrogated after some US$20 million in cash was found at his home, Dong-A Ilbo reported yesterday. The newspaper, quoting an unidentified Chinese source, said Jung Un-op, head of the North's National Economic Cooperation Committee, is being questioned about the cash. He said most staff of the committee's branch offices in China and Russia had undergone questioning in Pyongyang. Dong-A, quoting experts, said some of the cash may be bribes from South Korean businesses taking part in inter-Korean economic projects or the proceeds from the sale of aid goods.
■ india
Five die from food offerings
Five children have died and 96 people have fallen seriously ill in Isua Village in Bihar after eating sweets and rice offered to a goddess at a village shrine, health officials said yesterday. The children fell sick on Thursday during a festival to mark the full moon shortly after eating the temple offerings, known as prasad, made to Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning. "The children began vomiting and falling on the ground senseless," Ramvilas Ranjan, a health official in the district, said by telephone. Ranjan thinks it was probably food poisoning. Villagers told him the food had been kept in a store room for 10 days. Tests are being done on the prasad.
■ japan
`Girl' caught trespassing
A man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig, local police said. Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the Asahi Shimbun said. When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said. They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.
■ malaysia
No nail polish for voters
Female voters have been told to remove their nail polish on election day on March 8 or face having it stripped off by election officials, the New Straits Times said yesterday. Election Commission Secretary Kamaruzaman Mohamad Noor said nails must be clean so that ballot workers can apply indelible ink on the right index finger to indicate a vote has been cast. "Just for that one day, we need you to keep your fingers free of nail polish," he said. The nation is also introducing transparent ballot boxes in response to allegations that past elections have been marred by fraud.
■ SWEDEN
Same underpants for all
The Swedish Standards Institute has developed a new style of boxer-style underwear that both men and women can wear when hospitalized. Hospitals currently stock four models of underwear -- two for men and two for women. Switching to one model will save money because hospitals can buy greater quantities at a better price, project leader Tuula Cammersand said. They'll also save space. "A lot of people have complained that the different types take up a lot of space because you need all the different models and in different sizes," she said. The new boxers are expected to receive final approval in April and be introduced before the summer, she said.
■ ITALY
Judge jailed over crucifix
Judge Luigi Tosti was sentenced on Thursday to a year in prison for refusing to sit in a courtroom with a crucifix on the wall, his lawyer said. "I am disappointed by this decision," lawyer Dario Visconti said, adding that Tosti would appeal the ruling, which also bars Tosti from serving for a year. "Taking away crucifixes is not a way of offending Christians but only to make the courts are truly neutral and secular," Visconti said. "It's a struggle that Mr. Tosti has been waging since 2003," Visconti said, noting that Tosti was appealing a separate seven-month prison sentence for the same reason. Crucifixes have been present in courtrooms since a 1926 justice ministry directive.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Mandrax seized, not heroin
Forty-seven bags of drugs seized in South Africa on Tuesday turned out to be mandrax and not the more rare and expensive narcotic heroin, police said on Wednesday. "Preliminary tests suggested that the bags contained heroin, but additional forensic tests showed it was actually mandrax," police spokesman Devon Naicker said, correcting earlier claims of one of the world's largest heroin busts. The drugs, which originated in Zambia, had a street value of about 1.5 million rands (US$190,000), he said. Mandrax is a synthetic drug, very popular in Africa because of its relative affordability. On Tuesday, police said they had seized a massive consignment of heroin worth some US$100 million, after discovering 1,363kg of drugs on the Beit Bridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The driver and passenger of the truck in which the drugs were found, both South Africans, were arrested.
■ SWEDEN
Space tale sounds fishy
An unmanned rocket carrying 72 small fish on a brief space flight was launched from northern Sweden on Thursday for a study on motion sickness. The thumbnail-sized cichlids were filmed as they swam in small aquariums during the 10-minute flight. The fish landed safely and appeared to be in good condition. A German research team will now study the video to see if some of the fish swam in circles because that is what fish do when they experience motion sickness, team leader Reinhard Hilbig said. "They were very happy, I think they want to have another flight," he said. Cichlids were picked for the flight because they are sturdy fish who were deemed to have good chances to survive the stress of a space flight. "Goldfish are a little bit fat and messy, while the cichlid fish is a well-trained, sporty fish with muscles," Hilbig said.
■ UNITED STATES
Cat takes surprise road trip
A cat that took a three-week ride across the US in a storage container is headed home to Florida. Humane Society officials in the state of Arizona say the two-year-old gray cat crawled into the locker in Pompano Beach, Florida, while a man loaded it for a move to Phoenix. A worker in Phoenix heard a cat meowing inside the container on Tuesday. The cat, named Meatloaf, was hungry and thirsty but unharmed. Meatloaf's owners had put up posters around their neighborhood. Officials will give Meatloaf time to recover before flying him home.
■ FRANCE
Self-healing rubber bands
A group of scientists have made a self-healing rubber band material that can reclaim its stretchy usefulness by simply pressing the broken edges back together for a few minutes. The material, described in the journal Nature, can be broken and repaired over and over again. It is made from simple ingredients -- fatty acids like those found in vegetable oils, and urea, a waste compound in urine that can be made synthetically. The material would be an asset to industry and might help shed light on the physics of elasticity, wrote Philippe Cordier and colleagues at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris.
■ UNITED STATES
`Iraqi Air Force' in Florida
A small propeller airplane stenciled with the words "Iraqi Air Force" made an emergency landing on a country road near the rural Florida community of Sebring on Wednesday. Police surrounded the plane and stopped journalists from photographing it. The plane's markings were covered. As it turns out, it was a training aircraft built for the Iraqi military that was being flown from the Tampa area to Miami for shipment to Iraq, Cessna spokesman Doug Oliver said on Thursday. The Cessna C-172 experienced mechanical problems and the pilot was forced to land, Federal Aviation Administration records said.
■ UNITED STATES
Senior busted with pot bales
A 72-year-old man was arrested after more than US$1 million in marijuana was found in his car. The arresting officer had seen the suspect back his car into another vehicle in New Carrollton, Maryland, said Police Chief David Rice. "The officer ran a check on the driver and found out his license was suspended," Rice said. He then asked the driver if he could help him to get items out of the car before it was impounded, Rice said. The man asked the policeman "to pop the trunk," and when he did, the officer was struck by strong odors emanating from two bags that were later found to contain bales of marijuana, each weighing around 11kg, Rice said.
■ UNITED STATES
Two dead in gang violence
Two gang shootings led to a police gunbattle in which officers killed one gunman, wounded another and captured a suspect in a surging Los Angeles gang conflict, authorities said. The police gunbattle followed two gang shootings on Thursday: the first in which a man carrying a toddler was shot multiple times and a car-to-car shooting soon afterward, authorities said. The first victim died a few hours later. The child was not hit. Police said officers went to a known location for the Avenues gang and found four suspects in both shootings. Three got out of a car and opened fire with three weapons, police said. The officers fired back, killing one person armed with an AK-47 and wounding another, police said.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
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