■ CAMBODIA
Phnom Penh to host pageant
The country will play host to Miss Landmine 2009, the controversial beauty pageant's Norwegian organizer said yesterday. Miss Landmine parades beautiful female amputee landmine victims on the catwalk as they compete to win prosthetic limbs. Miss Landmine Angola 2008 was crowned the event旧 inaugural winner this month, and the pageant'sfounder, artist Morten Traavik, says he has his heart set on Cambodia as Miss Landmine's next stop.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Taliban appeals to groups
Taliban insurgents urged the international community and rights groups to stop President Hamid Karzai approving the execution of about 100 prisoners whose death sentences were approved by the Supreme Court. The Taliban, fighting to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government, have executed dozens of captured troops and civilians since US-led and Afghan forces ousted the Islamist movement in 2001. The Taliban also executed dozens of criminals, often in public, while they were in power from 1996 to 2001.
■ THAILAND
Fish sends 140 to hospital
More than 140 people have been rushed to hospital in Nan Province after snacking on fish balls thought to be made from the highly poisonous puffer fish, local media reported Sunday. Villagers were given a soup containing the fish balls at a funeral, the Bangkok Post newspaper reported, and soon began vomiting, complaining of numbness in the tongue and shortness of breath. After being rushed to hospital, doctors deduced that the funeral-goers had symptoms in line with puffer fish poisoning, which can be deadly, the daily said.
■ MALAYSIA
Shootout suspects arrested
Police have arrested suspects in connection with a shootout and robbery at the country's main airport which left five injured in a hail of bullets, reports said yesterday. The thieves, who ambushed two money changers and their security guard outside the departure hall, escaped with more than US$2 million in cash. Police arrested five men who had firearms on them on Friday in southern Johor state, the New Straits Times quoted sources as saying. "We believe we have solved the case with the arrests of the five suspects," the source said. Another newspaper, the Star, said four suspects were arrested while police seized five automatic pistols and part of the money stolen in the heist, totalling more than 920,000 ringgit (US$287,500).
■ MALAYSIA
PM plans new 'rice bowl'
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has announced plans to increase food security by growing rice on a massive scale in a state on Borneo island amid fears of shortages caused by the global food crisis. The 4 billion ringgit (US$1.29 billion) allocated for the plan will also be used to increase cultivation of fruits and vegetables, he said. To make the country completely self-sufficient, rice cultivation on a massive scale will be taken up in Sarawak, making the state the new "rice bowl" of the country, Abdullah said.
■ EAST TIMOR
I was misquoted: president
President Jose Ramos-Horta said yesterday he had been misquoted by the media and had not intended to blame Indonesia for a role in attacks earlier this year that left him fighting for his life. He was shot in Dili by rebels who separately ambushed Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who escaped unhurt. Ramos-Horta was last week quoted as saying that elements in Australia and Indonesia were involved in the attacks. On Friday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he was surprised at the reports. But Ramos-Horta said: "It was a misrepresentation by the media. I always said individuals in Indonesia. These individuals can be East Timorese, or they may already have become Indonesian citizens.�
■ SRI LANKA
Military bombs Wanni area
The defense ministry yesterday said its war planes bombed boats operated by Tamil Tiger rebels, but the guerrillas said only a village rebuilt after the tsunami had been hit. Aircraft carried out the bombing raid in the seas off Mullaitivu on Saturday evening after spy planes saw the rebel boat formation, the defense ministry said. The Tigers, who are resisting a military thrust against their de facto mini state in the northern Wanni region, said two civilians were wounded in the air attack.
■ THAILAND
Bomb injures 13 in south
A bomb planted by suspected separatists injured 13 people including a small child and two policemen in the south yesterday, police said. The explosives were hidden in a garbage bin in front of a state railway employee旧 home in Yala Province. They were detonated by cellphone yesterday morning, police said. Two policemen, a four-year-old boy and 10 others were hurt by the blast and were being treated in hospital. More than 3,000 people have been killed since unrest broke out in the Muslim-majority south in January 2004. The region was an ethnic Malay sultanate until Thailand annexed it a century ago. Separatist rebels frequently hit targets associated with the Thai state such as schools, army posts, railway lines and power supplies.
■ FRANCE
Resistance fighter passes on
Celebrated anthropologist and World War II Resistance fighter Germaine Tillion died on Saturday, her association said. She was 100. Tillion died at her home in Saint-Mande, in the Paris region, Germaine Tillion Association leader Tzvetan Todorov said by telephone. In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid "homage to an early Resistance fighter who, imprisoned at Ravensbruck [concentration camp] never lost hope, to an ethnologist whose passions lay in North Africa and the Middle East, to a prolific writer and a committed woman in the political fight for the emancipation of women and against all forms of torture." Tillion " who was sent to the Nazi camp for women and children in Germany in 1943 for her work with the Resistance - was the recipient of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. In a 1988 book on the camp, she wrote that she had survived "thanks to luck, to anger, to the desire to bring these crimes to light, and, finally, to the bonds of friendship."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Titanic ticket sold at auction
A Titanic survivor's ticket for the ill-fated voyage sold to a collector from the US at an auction on Saturday. The ticket, which belonged to the last US survivor of the disaster, Lillian Asplund, sold for £33,000 (US$65,772), auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said. Asplund died in 2006 at the age of 99. She was five years old when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. Her father and three siblings were among the 1,500 people who died. Other items from Asplund旧 collection that sold were a pocket watch that reportedly stopped at the exact moment the ship sank in April 1912. It was bought by a Swedish collector.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Stuffed rhino back sans horn
A 120-year-old stuffed rhinoceros was back on display minus its horn, which was stolen during a nighttime robbery, possibly by an organized gang seeking to sell it on the Asian black market. Museum authorities have warned that if the horn is ground as an aphrodisiac or other traditional medicine, it could have lethal consequences because it was preserved by the use of deadly arsenic and DDT. Cape Town museum officials decided on Friday to reopen the mammal gallery including the white rhino, looking tatty and disheveled without its horn. Trade in rhino horn is banned as it is an endangered species.
■ ITALY
Bond's car pulled from lake
An Aston Martin has been fished out of Lake Garda after it plunged into the water while being driven to the set of the latest James Bond film. Producers of Quantum of Solace say Bond's iconic car was being delivered to the filming unit in heavy rain on Saturday morning when it went off the road and into the lake. TV aired footage of the smashed, black car being hoisted out of the water. The driver was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
■ SPAIN
Bomb hits party's office
A bomb ripped through the office of the ruling Socialist Party in the Basque town of Elgoibar early yesterday, following a warning from separatist guerrillas ETA, Basque police said. No one was hurt as police had received a telephoned warning in time to clear the area. Although most of the damage was inside the office, the blast was strong enough to buckle nearby cars and shatter windows. The attack was similar to a bombing blamed on ETA on Thursday outside a Socialist office in Bilbao, wounding seven police officers.
■ UNITED STATES
Husky survives in the desert
A dog that ran off during a road-trip rest stop apparently made her way nearly 129km across Nevada旧 high desert and two mountain ranges to return home a week later. Moon, a Siberian husky, was reunited on April 14 with owner Doug Dashiell, who had last seen her on April 6 near Railroad Valley, about 124km from his home in Ely. Moon, who is nearly two years old, was no worse for the wear, with the exception of stinking like a skunk that apparently sprayed her somewhere along the journey. She had wandered up to an Ely residence where Alvin Molea took her home, fed her and gave her a place to sleep. Molea called the White Pine Veterinary Clinic because the dog was wearing a tag from the clinic. The dog旧 journey would have taken her across the White River and Ward mountain ranges.
■ UNITED STATES
Owner almost python lunch
A pet store owner in Eugene, Oregon, is calling a police sergeant a hero for saving her from the coils of a 3.6m Burmese python doing its best to turn her into a meal. Teresa Rossiter had reached into a cage on Thursday to show the huge snake to a customer when it bit her right hand and coiled around her left arm to throw her to the floor. A friend who happened to be at the store kept the snake off her neck and body while police were called. When Sergeant. Ryan Nelson rushed into the store, he was ready to kill the snake with his knife. But Rossiter asked him to spare the expensive python, so Nelson put on gloves and pried open the snake's mouth to free Rossiter's hand. Two responders from the Eugene Fire Department helped unwrap the snake, which was eventually returned to its cage. Rossiter called Nelson a hero. "He was the bravest guy ever. He went way above and beyond the call of duty," she told the Oregonian. Rossiter suffered dozens of puncture wounds, but she, the sergeant and the python were fine.
■ MEXICO
Leftist leader freed from jail
The man who led a five-month-long takeover of the southern city of Oaxaca by leftist protesters was freed from jail on Saturday, state officials said. Flavio Sosa led thousands of protesters who sealed off Oaxaca with barricades and battled police in late 2006 to demand the resignation of Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz, who protesters claim rigged his electoral victory and repressed opponents. The statement did not say why the court released Sosa, but prosecutors had failed to convict him of any of the charges.
■ CANADA
World War I vet honored
Ottawa on Saturday paid tribute to its last surviving veteran of World War I, John Babcock, 107, who enlisted at age 15 but never fought on the frontlines. Babcock joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and arrived in Britain a few months later, when he was transferred to the Boys Brigade. The war ended before he turned 18. Babcock was born in July 1900 and grew up on a farm near Kingston in Ontario. He currently lives in the US state of Washington.
■ CHILE
Palestinians on their way
A second batch of Palestinian refugees from a total of 735 stranded on the Iraq-Syria border since 2006 have flown to Chile under a resettlement plan sponsored by the Catholic church in Chile and the UN Agency for refugees. Chile has agreed to host a total of 117 of the refugees. The 37 who left yesterday included 17 children. A third and final group will leave at the end of this month.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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