■ UAE
Burj Dubai opening delayed
The world's latest tallest skyscraper, being built in Dubai, will take longer than planned to finish, its builders said on Wednesday, putting off the opening planned for the end of this year. The Burj Dubai tower currently stands over 500m tall. The state-owned developer Emaar Properties said completion would be postponed until next year. It did not give specifics, but the newspaper Gulf News and ArabianBusiness.com said the delay would be four months. Emaar did not give the reason for the delay and the company's representatives refused to answer calls on Wednesday. Last summer, the company said the skyscraper had reached 512m, surpassing Taiwan's Taipei 101, which has dominated the global skyline at 508m since 2004.
■ RUSSIA
Apartment mobsters caught
Police have arrested an organized criminal group suspected of kidnapping Moscow flat owners to gain control over valuable real estate, police said on Wednesday. Two of those arrested had used various schemes to gain ownership of 300 flats in the center of Moscow, a spokeswoman for police in the Orlov region south of the capital said. In one case, a 30-year-old man was kidnapped, falsely diagnosed as mentally ill and hospitalized, leaving his apartment to the criminals. He was freed last month. Some of those kidnapped were used as slave labor, police said.
■ ALBANIA
Twins' party turns tragic
A boat carrying 20 people celebrating the birthday of five-year-old twins sank overnight in a lake near the capital, killing 16 people, including the two children, police said yesterday. The boat belonged to a restaurant on the shores of Lake Farka, about 5km east of the capital, Tirana. It had a capacity of seven, but was transporting 20 partygoers from the restaurant when it sank shortly after midnight, a Tirana police spokeswoman said. Four people survived, she said. By 3am authorities had collected 16 bodies from the lake: seven men, seven women and the five-year-old twin boys.
■ UZBEKISTAN
US on the way back
The US military is again using the country as a stop-off point for military operations in Afghanistan after ending its presence there over a diplomatic row, a US official said yesterday. Uzbekistan in 2005 closed down a US air base set up near the Afghan border in retaliation against US criticism of the repression of unrest in the city of Andijan by Uzbek forces. But diplomatic contacts between the former Soviet republic and Washington have warmed up recently. "Individual Americans attached to the NATO international staff can use the German airbridge from Termez to Afghanistan on a case-by-case basis," an official from the US embassy in Tashkent said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Missing penis angers actor
London's Royal Opera House agreed to stop using a picture in its advertisements after an actor complained that his penis had been air brushed out of a nude image. Argentine Juan Pablo Di Pace appeared to have no penis at all in the full-frontal shot used in publicity material for a production of Verdi's Rigoletto. The actor complained to the opera house via his lawyer that the photograph, taken in the 2001 production, was used to promote shows six years later, even though he no longer worked there.
■ UNITED STATES
Small explosion in NYC
A small explosion caused minor damage to a military recruiting center in New York's Times Square area early yesterday, but there were no injuries, police said. NY1 television said a small bomb or incendiary device was thrown at the one-story building at about 3:45am, causing a small break in one of the windows. Police said minor damage was caused to the building's door. A witness said three people ran away from the scene. Police closed off traffic in the area and said a bomb squad searching the area.
■ UNITED STATES
No 'Danny Boy' allowed
It's depressing, it's not usually sung in Ireland for St Patrick's Day and its lyrics were written by an Englishman who never set foot on Irish soil. Those are just some of the reasons a Manhattan pub has given for banning the song Danny Boy for this whole month. "It's been ranked among the 25 most depressing songs of all time and it's more appropriate for a funeral than for a St Patrick's Day celebration," says Shaun Clancy, who owns Foley's Pub and Restaurant opposite the Empire State Building. The 38-year-old offers rewards, such as a free Guinness, for singing any other traditional Irish song.
■ CANADA
Party rethinks platform
The leader of the Quebec separatist movement on Wednesday stepped back from its commitment to eventually hold a referendum on the province splitting from the rest of the country. Parti Quebecois (PQ) leader Pauline Marois told a press conference that if the party, now in opposition, is ever tasked to govern Quebec, "I propose that we remove the straightjacket and suspend our obligation to hold a referendum." The proposal to scrap the movement's commitment immediately to seek independence must still be endorsed by PQ delegates later this month. Marois said the party should shelve the plan while it focuses on rebuilding public support.
■ UNITED STATES
Swayze treated for cancer
Actor Patrick Swayze is being treated for pancreatic cancer but is doing well enough to continue working, his representative said on Wednesday. The Dirty Dancing star has a very limited amount of the cancer and appears to be responding well to treatment, according to George Fisher, Swayze's physician. Fisher's prognosis was included in a statement released on Wednesday by Swayze's representative, Annett Wolf. "Patrick is continuing his normal schedule during this time," the statement said. Swayze, 55, has two films in the works: the movie Powder Blue and a television movie titled The Beast.
■ UNITED STATES
Air officials express concern
A key worry of officials is that terrorists could sneak tiny bomb parts onto a plane and then assemble them, a transportation official said. Gale Rossides, deputy administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, said the agency was trying to detect small components that might be turned into improvised explosive devices (IED). "These things are what we see as the No. 1 threat today. Getting very small, tiny, hard-to-find component pieces through the checkpoint," Rossides told the Canadian Aviation Security Conference on Wednesday in Gatineau, Canada. "The most important part of detecting the IED starts with our officers at the checkpoint.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
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