■ BANGLADESH
Soldiers to eat potatoes
More than half a million troops have been ordered to eat potatoes in an attempt to ease the impact of surging rice and wheat prices. Potatoes are not traditionally on the menu for the country’s 140 million people but army chief General Moeen Ahmed and the army-backed interim government has ordered a change in diet because the tubers are now cheaper and more abundant. World prices of rice, wheat, edible oil and pulses have almost doubled over the last year, increases that poorer Asian countries can ill afford. Bangladesh was hit last year by two severe floods and a cyclone that destroyed around 3 million tonnes of food grains, raising fears of a possible famine.
■ MALAYSIA
Officer caught snoozing
A police officer was arrested after he allegedly broke into a Mercedes Benz to steal its stereo but then dozed off on its luxurious seat, a news report said yesterday. The police officer allegedly was high on drugs and fell asleep while trying to steal a compact disc player from the car while it was parked at a hotel in southern Malacca state on Monday, the New Straits Times reported. The officer, who was not identified, is allegedly a member of a gang linked to other break-ins and motorcycle thefts, the report said. After his arrest he led police to three other alleged members of the gang who are also linked to the police force, it said.
■ SRI LANKA
Battles kill 10
Scattered battles across the northern region killed eight Tamil separatists and two government soldiers, the military said yesterday. Army troops clashed with Tamil Tiger rebels in the northern Mannar district on Thursday, leaving four guerrillas and two soldiers dead, a Defense Ministry official said. Twenty-four rebels and nine troops were injured in the fighting, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Separate battles on Thursday in the Welioya region killed four more rebels and wounded eight insurgents and three soldiers, he said.
■ THAILAND
Cabinet extends emergency
The Cabinet yesterday agreed to extend emergency rule in the south where there is a Muslim majority, with the prime minister promising that the divisive law would not last forever. After a Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said the state of emergency would be extended for three more months starting tomorrow in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces, where a separatist insurgency is raging. “We endorsed the extension of emergency rule, which has been extended 10 times ... this extension would make the rule in place for a total time of 33 months,” Samak told reporters after the meeting.
■ INDONESIA
Station to stay on the air
Erabaru (New Era) Radio director Gatot Supriyanto said the station had received a letter from the government’s broadcasting watchdog ordering it to close soon or “receive legal sanctions.” The Indonesian Broadcast Commission said last year that the Chinese embassy had complained that the private radio station, run by pracitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, has been airing criticism of Beijing. Supriyanto said. “We broadcast current events including oppression to Falun Gong members by the Chinese government. Maybe they are unhappy with it,” he said, adding that the radio station remains on the air.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Longtime MP passes away
Gwyneth Dunwoody, the longest-serving female member of the parliament, representing the ruling Labour Party, has died aged 77, the party said yesterday. Dunwoody, who began her parliamentary career in 1974, was known for her fiercely independent views and became an outspoken critic of some aspects of the New Labour reforms introduced under former prime minister Tony Blair. Dunwoody, from Wales, chaired the Transport Committee of parliament. She first joined the Labour Party in 1946 and was a member of the European Parliament from 1974 to 1979.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
What's in a name?
Parents spend 30 million hours a year picking the names of their newborn children, a survey said on Thursday. And choosing the right name can be crucial — if you want your child to get on in life. The survey by Abbey Banking showed that parents agonize for up to 45 hours over the name of their child — a combined 30 million hours annually. One in three parents believed the right name can give a child confidence while up to 2 million thought it could help their child’s career prospects.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Hedgehogs latest pet fad
Can man's best friend be replaced by a prickly pal the size of your palm? Busy pet lovers have been buying hedgehogs, whose nocturnal habits make them appealing to the modern worker because they wake in the evening when their owners arrive home after a day in the office. Although the country has its own wild breed of hedgehogs, the latest pet craze focuses on African pygmy hedgehogs — a cross between Algerian and white-bellied hedgehogs. Initial costs for the animal and accompanying equipment can run to £300 (US$591). But hedgehogs, who can survive on cat food, are cheaper to feed because they eat a third of the household cat’s daily diet, hedgehog breeder Bonnie Martin said.
■ GERMANY
Court rejects alimony claim
The Constitutional Court rejected on Thursday an alimony claim by a mother of five because she had left “an intact marriage” to live with another woman. The court in Karlsruhe found that partners who decide single-handedly to end a healthy marriage and give the “help and care owing to their spouse” to a third party, violate the principle of solidarity in marriage and lose their right to alimony. In an earlier ruling a court in the state of Brandenburg had said that the woman was not at fault because she could not help experiencing a change of sexual orientation, and that she was therefore entitled to alimony. But the Constitutional Court said the laws on marriage and alimony had to be upheld regardless of the sex of the spouse’s new partner.
■ GERMANY
Jogging pilgrim stuns police
Police were shocked to find a man running down a major highway pulling a three-wheeled trailer — but even more surprised to learn he was a Polish pilgrim on a 3,000km trek. Motorists near Coburg in Bavaria saw the man towing a load with a rod attached to his back and called police on Tuesday. After questioning the man, police discovered he was a devout Roman Catholic Pole on his way home from a European pilgrimage that had taken him as far as Portugal. Inside a converted roof luggage box, which also served as a bivouac, the 35-year-old was carrying all he needed for the journey, police said. After inspecting the vehicle, officers declared it roadworthy and sent him on his way.
■ UNITED STATES
Mom has rare quadruplets
A mother has given birth to a rare set of quadruplets in which three of the four boys are identical. The boys were born 11 weeks premature in January at Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson, Maryland. The parents planned to introduce themselves and their boys at a news conference yesterday. There are fewer than 100 documented cases of “identical triplets plus one” in the US, hospital officials said. Two embryos were implanted into the mother, and both were fertilized, hospital spokesman Michael Schwartzberg said. One of them split, then split again, creating the identical triplets. The boys were delivered by Caesarian section on Jan. 29. The babies were treated at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, and all four have been home in Belcamp, Maryland, for about two-and-a-half weeks, Schwartzberg said.
■ UNITED STATES
Tow truck driver takes child
A tow truck driver unknowingly hauled away a car with a seven-year-old asleep inside before returning the vehicle minutes later and speeding away, police said. The panicked parents of the missing boy watched the driver hurriedly unhook their car and take off as they met with authorities late on Monday, according to a Dallas police report. A possible kidnapping investigation at the apartment complex had already begun. Fidel Retana Jr, 23, was pulled over a short time later and arrested on child endangerment charges. But police said on Tuesday they expect to drop the charges. “It appeared that he did not intend to take the child,” Dallas police Sergeant Brenda Nichols said. David Traylor, Retana’s attorney, said his client noticed the boy only when he stopped to ensure that the car was hooked up properly. The car had been parked in a fire lane while the boy’s mother ran upstairs to her apartment. Traylor said Retana left the second time in a hurry because he knew the parents were there and were probably angry.
■ UNITED STATES
Bison deal spares slaughter
Officials announced a deal to let a small number of bison migrate through a private ranch bordering Yellowstone National Park, sparing the animals from slaughter under a disease control program that has claimed more than 3,000 bison since 2000. Governor Brian Schweitzer and park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis said the Royal Teton Ranch’s owner, the Church Universal and Triumphant, agreed on Thursday to sell grazing rights under a 30-year lease that would initially allow 25 bison to pass through the property to access federal land outside the park. Despite criticism from both the livestock industry and bison advocates, Lewis characterized the deal as breaking an impasse on one of the National Park Service’s most divisive wildlife issues. “Until today, bison were never allowed to use that space,’’ she said. All other bison leaving the park during the winter migration still would be subject to slaughter.
■ FRANCE
IMF head paints grim picture
The worst of the instability and rioting caused by the skyrocketing cost of staple foods may yet come, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a French radio station yesterday. “The worst of the crisis may be before us,” Strauss-Kahn told Europe 1 radio. “Hundreds of millions of people will be affected.” The IMF head also said that democratically elected governments may be toppled because of the crisis, even though they enacted correct policies. He also invoked the possibility of regional warfare provoked by the rising cost of foods such as maize, rice and wheat.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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