■THAILAND
Gyms combat obesity
Residents must set up exercise clubs in every community if they are to beat the obesity scourge that threatens to enwrap them, Deputy Public Health Minister Wicharn Meenchaiyanant said in reports published yesterday. Some 40 million Thais neglect to exercise and eat too much, giving the country the highest number of fatties in the region, he said. He said the evidence was clear that a bad, high-fat diet, inactive life and smoking combine to make people in the country unhealthy. In Asia only Australia, Mongolia, Vanuatu and Hong Kong had fatter populations. Wicharn said at least 10 million Thais, out of a total population of 63 million, needed to lose weight. The health ministry plans to ask every village in the country to create an exercise club.
■JAPAN
Old bomb disrupts city
About 5,400 residents were evacuated in Osaka and flights at nearby airports were rerouted yesterday as army experts disposed of a large bomb believed to have been dropped by the US military during World War II, authorities said. An explosives disposal unit from the Ground Self-Defense Force safely defused the rusty one-tonne bomb in a crowded residential area during a 50-minute operation, military spokesman Shoji Matsumoto said. Nearby highways and roads were closed, and city buses, boats and flights in and out of nearby airports were rerouted, city officials said in a statement.
■PHILIPPINES
Rebels attack company
Communist insurgents attacked an agricultural firm in the south, burning down heavy equipment after disarming its private security guard, the military said yesterday. The New People’s Army (NPA) gunmen attacked the compound of Caraga Filchin Corp near Davao City on southern Mindanao Island under cover of darkness late on Saturday, regional army spokesman Major Arman Rico said. They overpowered a lone security guard, took away his weapon, and burned down a crane before fleeing, Rico said. The attack came after the owner refused to pay illegal “revolutionary taxes” demanded by the NPA, Rico said.
■NEPAL
Police take officers hostage
About 500 riot police took senior officers hostage in a revolt in the west over ill treatment and poor food, officials said yesterday. The policemen seized the riot police camp at Nepalgunj, about 500km west of Kathmandu, on Saturday and were holding seven senior police officials hostage, a government administrator in the area said. Armed rebel policemen were guarding the camp’s entrances and there had been some shooting but no one was injured, he said. Other police surrounded the camp and the area has been cordoned off while negotiations with the rebel officers continue, he said.
■NEPAL
Civil servants protest
Government offices were closed and state employees staged street demonstrations yesterday in the southeast to protest the death of a colleague after he was grabbed by Maoist activists, an official said. Education officer Mohammed Hasrat Ali collapsed while scuffling with the activists and died en route to a hospital on Saturday at Rajbiraj, about 300km southeast of the capital, Kathmandu, said Sitaram Pokharel, chief government administrator in the area. Ali was carrying a bag with cash and had stopped at a service station when his vehicle was seized, Pokharel
■TURKEY
Boat damages playground
An empty freighter with a rudder problem crashed ashore on Saturday morning in Istanbul and damaged a playground before going adrift in the busy Bosporus strait, maritime authorities said. No one was hurt when the 244m Singapore-flagged Aral Sea hit the west bank of the narrow waterway, an official with the Maritime Authority in Istanbul said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Private ATV television showed footage of the damaged playground in the northern Istanbul district of Sariyer. Maritime authorities dispatched rescue boats to tow the freighter to shore.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Siamese twins separated
Siamese twins from Morocco, connected since birth at the chest and stomach, were separated in a successful operation at a Riyadh hospital on Saturday, the state news agency SPA reported. It said Safa and Marwa, who shared the same liver and digestive system, were operated at King Abdul Aziz Medical City where they were hospitalized on arrival on April 4, accompanied by their parents. King Abdullah covered the costs of their stay and medical care, in what Riyadh said was the 19th such operation carried out with success at the center, mostly at the expense of the royal family.
■Saudi Arabia
Asian maids ‘spike’ tea
A court sentenced two Asian housemaids to four months in prison and 250 lashes each for contaminating the tea of their employer with urine and menstrual blood, a local newspaper said yesterday. The court in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah heard that the Saudi employer was taken to hospital suffering from abdominal pain and other troubles after drinking a cup of tea, the daily Okaz said. One of the two maids — a Filipina and an Indonesian — admitted that she spiked the tea with urine and blood. It was not clear whether the other maid was an accomplice. The country’s households employ an estimated 1.2 million domestic workers, most of them from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia.
■AUSTRIA
Soccer-themed gay pride
About 120,000 people in colorful and often scanty dress took part in Vienna’s annual Rainbow Parade on Saturday to call for equal rights for gays and lesbians, organizers said. Sunny weather and 30ºC heat ensured record attendance for the 13th edition of the march, which like almost all other events in the country this year had a soccer theme, even two weeks after the end of Euro 2008. “No more offsides!” organizers urged, calling for legalized gay marriage and an end to discrimination, although daring high heels, rather than soccer boots, were the choice of footwear on the Ring boulevard where the Fan Mile recently stood.
■NORWAY
Deaths don’t stop rockers
A couple were found dead on Saturday and eight others were hospitalized at the Kvinesdal rock festival, apparently having suffocated following a gas leak, police said. The two people who died, a man aged 32 and a woman aged 31, were an unmarried couple who had three children, Agder police spokesman Asbjoern Enoksen said. “We are not exactly sure how they died but we suspect they suffocated from fumes inside a bus,” Enoksen said. A full autopsy would be performed today, he said. The lives of the eight people hospitalized were no longer in danger, he said. The Kvindesdal festival, which features heavy metal acts such as Alice Cooper, was due to continue yesterday as scheduled.
■UNITED STATES
Tony Snow dies of cancer
Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 53. Snow died at 2am at Georgetown University Hospital, his former employer Fox News said. Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program Fox News Sunday on the Fox News Channel from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.” Snow was working for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary in May 2006.
■UNITED STATES
Alaska volcano erupts
A volcano erupted on Saturday with little warning on a remote island in Alaska, sending residents of a nearby ranch fleeing from falling ash and volcanic rock. The Okmok Caldera erupted late on Saturday morning, just hours after seismologists at the Alaska Volcano Center began detecting a series of small tremors. The explosion flung an ash cloud at least 15,240m high, geophysicist Steve McNutt said. Ten people, including three children, were at Fort Glenn, a private cattle ranch 9.66km south of the volcano on Umnak Island, located in the western Aleutians. They managed to call authorities on a satellite phone before losing their connection.
■UNITED STATES
Town breaks penny records
Hundreds of volunteers have proven pennies really can go a long way. Kilometers, in fact. Three days after the first one-cent coin was placed on the ground on Tuesday evening, the group had assembled a 64km-long chain of pennies Friday night in the parking lot of Fort Scott Middle School in Fort Scott, Kansas. It is the longest line of pennies ever assembled, eclipsing the old mark by more than 8km, an official from the Guinness Book of World Records said. The previous record was 55.63km, set in Malaysia in 1995.
■UNITED STATES
Big Easy runs the bulls
It’s the running of the bulls, New Orleans style. Hundreds of men, women and children, most in white with red scarves around their waists and red bandannas around their necks, gathered outside a French Quarter bar on Saturday morning to be chased down Bourbon Street by members of New Orleans’ roller derby league. “Roller skates and a stampede through the Quarter — what could possibly go wrong?” accountant Jason Medonia said. The run, in its second year, featured 33 roller girls in horned helmets from teams with names like Confederacy of Punches and Crescent Wenches.
■BERMUDA
Bertha hovers nearby
Slow-moving Bertha barely clung to its hurricane status as it hovered near Bermuda late on Saturday, but forecasters said it could pick up speed and still deal a glancing blow to the island. The Bermuda Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning as Bertha’s outer bands were expected to brush the island in the coming days. Most tourists chose to hang out in pools and walk along the beach instead of battle the stronger surf and rip currents along Bermuda’s southern coast. Signs have been posted announcing that beaches are closed. Lifeguards at Horseshoe Beach blocked the shoreline with bright red tape and turned tourists away. Many lingered, however, taking pictures of the crashing waves.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
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