■ china
Lion bites off child's arm
A circus lion ripped a 10-year-old boy's arm off after grabbing him through the bars of its cage, local media reported yesterday. The accident happened on Saturday at a park in Mengcheng County, Anhui Province, the Shanghai Daily said. "Park workers managed to pull the boy away, but his left arm had been torn away by the animal," the paper said. The boy was rushed to hospital and underwent surgery, the paper said, without giving details of his condition.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Tourist caught red-handed
A German tourist caught spraying graffiti on the rocks and ice face of Franz Josef Glacier was forced to clean up his handiwork, local media reported yesterday. English tourists caught Jan Philip Scharbert on camera as he spray-painted the glacier last week, the Press newspaper reported. They handed their photos to Department of Conservation staff, who informed police. Scharbert, 28, was arrested boarding a bus to leave Franz Josef village and ordered to clean up the graffiti under supervision. Police said Scharbert took one-and-a-half days to clean up his graffiti.
■ JAPAN
Child porn laws reviewed
The ruling party will review laws on child pornography, an official said on Monday, following calls to close a loophole allowing individual possession. The US and other developed countries have accused Tokyo of laxity in allowing child pornography, amid statistics showing that the number of victimized youngsters has risen to a record high. The Liberal Democratic Party has set up a panel to review the 1999 child porn law. The law bans production and sale of sexually arousing materials involving children, but does not ban possession.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Jersey cops find body parts
Police investigating allegations of child abuse said on Monday their search of a former children's home in the Channel Islands where a body was found at the weekend was now focused on a bricked-up cellar. A child's body parts, thought to date from the early 1980s, were unearthed at the Haut de la Garenne house in Jersey on Saturday after a sniffer dog detected them through several inches of concrete. Sniffer dogs have identified a number of other areas of interest in and outside the house, now used as a youth hostel, said Lenny Harper, Jersey deputy chief police officer. Police were concentrating on a cellar below the building.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
`Bus stop stalker' convicted
A man known as London's "bus stop stalker" was convicted on Monday of murdering two young women and attempting to murder a third. Traveling in his car, Levi Bellfield, 39, would visit bus stops and follow buses late at night, looking for young blondes traveling alone, police said. He would follow them, offer them rides and, if they turned him down, become enraged and attack them. Two women were both killed at night by hammer blows after getting off buses. London police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton, who led the hunt for Bellfield, said authorities will now try to find out if he carried out other murders of women, dating back as far as 1980.
■ FRANCE
Sarkozy blames bank chief
President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview published yesterday that it was wrong for Daniel Bouton, head of Societe Generale bank, to sidestep responsibility for a trading scandal. "You can't say `I'm going to be paid 7 million euros (US$10.3 million) a year' and then, when there's a problem, say `It's not me.' That, I cannot accept," he was quoted as saying in Le Parisien. On Jan. 24, the bank unveiled 4.9 billion euros (US$7.26 billion) of losses. Sarkozy has attacked its management team before over the trading scandal. Bouton dismissed the political pressure when the bank unveiled its annual results last week, saying it was a private company that decided on its own appointments.
■ RUSSIA
The new Weimar Republic?
Russia under President Vladimir Putin resembles Germany in the years before Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Estonia's president said in an interview yesterday in the Moscow Times. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said the country had "a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar mentality ... is so similar that I really hope that we do not go off in the wrong direction." Estonia, which was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II, became independent with the Soviet collapse in 1991. Relations between Tallinn and Moscow remain tense.
■ SPAIN
Cuban wins Alfaguara prize
Cuban writer Antonio Orlando Rodriguez has won this year's Alfaguara Spanish literary prize for his work Chiquita. The novel's protagonist is Espiridiona Cenda, a diminutive Cuban singer-dancer, and it is set in the beginning of the 20th century. Rodriguez, born in Ciego de Avila, Cuba, in 1956, lives in the US. The award, one of the most prestigious in the Spanish language and organized by the Alfaguara publishing house, includes a prize of 118,000 euros (US$175,000).
■ BRAZIL
Spectacular foiled
"French Spiderman" Alain Roberts, known for illegally scaling buildings around the world, said on Monday his latest attempt was foiled by security guards who prevented him climbing a tower in Sao Paulo. "One pulled like a madman at my ankle. He yanked so hard he pulled down my pants and underwear, leaving me naked in the street," he said. "I'm really angry. This was very costly," he said of his fruitless trip. The failed stunt took place late on Sunday at the landmark Edificio Italia building, which stands 46-stories high in central Sao Paulo.
■ BRAZIL
Police helps save forest
Federal police said it launched an operation on Monday aimed at fighting deforestation in the Amazon, a week after townspeople clashed with local police over illegal sawmills. About 300 federal police agents and troopers from the paramilitary national security force arrived in northern Para State in helicopters and a caravan of vehicles. The operation dubbed Arch of Fire should have a total of 1,000 agents on the ground when it is in full force, the agency said. "This operation will be permanent in nature," a federal police spokesman said.
■ VENEZUELA
Chavez fights English
President Hugo Chavez's government was taking its battle against US "imperialism" into people's vocabulary, urging state phone company workers to eschew English-language business and tech terms that have crept into the local vernacular. Through a campaign launched on Monday, newly nationalized CANTV hoped to wean employees and others from words like "staff" (equipo), "marketing" (mercadeo) and "password" (contrasena). Stickers and banners printed up by the company exhorted people to "Say it in Spanish. Say it with pride." The Communications and Information Ministry said in a statement that people must recover Spanish words that are "threatened by sectors that have started a battle for the cultural domination of our nations."
■ UNITED STATES
First reindeer run held
From sausages to stews, reindeer are usually a main dish in Alaska. But the antlered animals were the main event at Anchorage's first annual running of the reindeer. A cheering crowd of hundreds lined snow-packed Fourth Avenue on Sunday to watch what was touted as Alaska's version of Spain's famed running of the bulls. "Normally we just eat them," said Mark Berg, a spectator who has lived in Alaska since 1967. "I just made some jambalaya the other day out of reindeer sausage. I've eaten more of their cousins than they want to know."
■ UNITED STATES
Diver killed by shark
An Austrian tourist died after being bitten by a shark while diving in waters that had been baited with bloody fish parts to attract the predators. Markus Groh, 49, a Viennese lawyer and diving enthusiast, was on a commercial dive trip on Sunday when he was bitten about 80km off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, said Karlick Arthur, Austrian counsel general in Miami. Groh was in the open water without a cage or similar protection. The crew aboard the Shear Water, of Riviera Beach-based Scuba Adventures, immediately called the Coast Guard, which received an emergency call from the vessel, Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Ameen said.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
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
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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