■SOUTH KOREA
Britain, Seoul team up
Seoul will help London to identify 450 people who recently sought asylum in Britain claiming to be North Korean defectors, a report said yesterday. London has sent fingerprints of the 450 applicants to Seoul, asking it to check whether any of them had already been granted permission to live in South Korea, Yonhap news agency said. “We will run their fingerprints against those in our database and if they match, his or her chances to be granted asylum in Britain will seriously diminish,” the agency quoted an unidentified foreign ministry official as saying. The number of North Koreans who sought asylum in Britain surged last year. They include some North Koreans who have chosen to seek asylum in Britain after failing to adapt to life in South Korea, according to Yonhap.
■AUSTRALIA
Former deputy PM retires
Former deputy prime minister Mark Vaile announced his resignation from politics yesterday, ending a 15-year career in parliament during which he spent seven years as trade minister. Vaile was deputy prime minister from 2005 until November last year when the conservative coalition of his National Party and former prime minister John Howard’s Liberal Party was voted from power. The 52-year-old said that he was proud of his work as trade minister from July 1999 to September 2006. “Our work to secure Free Trade Agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the United States of America and Chile and launching negotiations with ASEAN, Malaysia, China and Japan are all outstanding policy achievements which I am honored to be part of,” he said in a statement on his website. Vaile’s resignation follows that of Howard’s long-standing foreign minister, Alexander Downer, earlier this month.
■VIETNAM
Australian couple sentenced
A court has sentenced an Australian woman to life in prison and her husband to 20 years after they were convicted of heroin smuggling, reports said yesterday. Hoang Le Thuy and her husband Nguyen Van Huy, both of Vietnamese origin, were arrested in July 2006 at Ho Chi Minh City airport with 500g of heroin, the Sai Gon Giai Phong and Thanh Nien daily newspapers said. The communist-ruled country has one of the world’s toughest drug-trafficking laws. Any one arrested with more than 600g of heroin or 20kg of opium usually receives the death penalty.
■INDIA
Man divorces fake wife
A man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said on Friday. Sanjib Saha presented a woman as his wife in a lower court in the eastern city of Kolkata this month. Both said they sought a mutual divorce, something the court granted immediately. Saha’s real wife was then asked to leave the marital home. She has since appealed the ruling at a higher court, charged her husband with cheating and the original divorce was suspended. “The case exposed the legal loopholes in our system,” Kaushik Chanda, lawyer of Saha’s real wife, said.
■MALAYSIA
Indonesian singer banned
A popular Indonesian singer has been banned from giving a concert in the southern state of Johor because her performing is considered too risque by authorities, reports said yesterday. Inul Daratista, known for gyrating her hips at fast speed while on stage, has demanded an explanation for the cancellation of yesterday’s show, the New Straits Times said. Johor district officer Jaafar Awang told Kosmo newspaper that the application for a permit was rejected due to Inul’s risque performances. Concert organizer MS Prima moved the concert to a stadium outside Kuala Lumpur on July 27, the reports said. But Inul was quoted by Utusan Malaysia newspaper as saying she has a concert in Indonesia’s Surabaya city on July 26 and would need to discuss with her manager if she is able to rush to Malaysia the next day.
■PAKISTAN
Rival militant groups clash
A government official said at least 10 Taliban have died in fierce fighting between two rival militant groups in the northwest. Syed Ali said yesterday that between 10 and 15 men died on Friday when hundreds of supporters of top Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud clashed with a breakaway faction of the group in the Mohmand tribal region. A spokesman for Mehsud’s group who identified himself as Dr. Asad claimed they killed 15 militants of the rival group and captured 120 others, including their top commander Shah Khalid. He said they would try them under Islamic laws. Asad claimed Khalid was being patronized by the government.
■HONG KONG
Woman sues horse club
A woman who suffered a permanent scar after being bitten by a horse is suing a riding club for HK$521,110 (US$66,800) to cover the cost of plastic surgery and damages, a media report said yesterday. In a writ issued against the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Paddy Wong- Schupp Yuen-yee claimed the scar made her embarrassed to wear sleeveless tops, the South China Morning Post said. She was bitten on Oct. 1 last year during a visit to the Beas River Riding School when a horse leant its head and neck out of its stall and attacked the woman.
■FRANCE
Police lose explosives
Anti-terrorist police are investigating after 28kg of explosives were stolen from a security services bomb disposal depot at Corbas, near Lyon, police said on Friday. An official said that plastic explosives, almost certainly Semtex, had been taken from the facility along with detonators. French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in a statement that the incident stemmed from “known failings within the site’s own security,” adding that the site chief had been “immediately suspended” and a full probe ordered. The explosives were found to have “disappeared” on Friday.
■UNITED STATES
Hungover? Blame the DJ
Loud bar music makes people drink more and drink faster, a study released on Friday has found. “Previous research had shown that fast music can cause fast drinking, and that music versus no music can cause a person to spend more time in a bar,” said Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Universite de Bretagne-Sud in France and corresponding author for the study. “This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption.” Gueguen and his colleagues discretely visited two bars over the course of three Saturday nights whose owners agreed to let them manipulate the sound levels. They randomly selected 40 males aged 18 to 25 who ordered a glass of draft beer and monitored their consumption at different sound levels.
■NIGERIA
Pipeline blast ‘sabotage’
An explosion that destroyed an Eni SpA oil pipeline in the restive southern oil region was caused by aggrieved youths from a nearby community, a military official said on Friday. Colonel Chris Musa, the head of the Bayelsa State military, said Thursday’s blast was not an accident but “deliberate sabotage” by a group protesting the alleged nonpayment of fees by the energy company to the local population. The pre-dawn explosion caused a sudden drop in pressure halting production on pipelines carrying 47,000 barrels of oil a day.
■ISRAEL
Army kills alleged smuggler
The army says it shot and killed a suspected smuggler in a rare incident on the frontier with Syria. An army spokesman says another man was wounded in the incident that took place overnight on Friday. The army says the men appeared to try to enter the country through the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war. Both the men are Syrian nationals, and the army says they will be repatriated. Two Israeli citizens were also arrested.
■ZIMBABWE
New 100-billion-dollar note
Grappling with a record 2.2 million percent inflation, the government has introduced a new 100-billion-dollar (US$5.35 as of press time yesterday) bank note in a bid to tackle rampant cash shortages, the central bank said yesterday. The new note will go into circulation tomorrow, the bank said in a statement cited by state media, joining about half a dozen new high denomination notes already issued this year. In January, a 10-million-dollar note was issued, then a 50-million-dollar note in April. In May, notes for 100 million and 250 million dollars were issued, swiftly followed by those for five billion, 25 billion and 50 billion. The southern African nation, currently gripped by a post-election crisis, has been ravaged by hyperinflation which shot up from 165,000 percent in February to 2.2 million last month.
■UNITED STATES
Motorists go to extremes
Some US motorists sick of getting clobbered at the gas pump seem willing to do just about anything for free fuel, from giving up the right to name their children to stealing from day-care centers to donating blood. In Orlando, Florida, David Partin pledged to name his son after local radio hosts to win a US$100 gas card as part of a contest. Partin will collect the card in December, when his son is born, if he can produce a birth certificate proving the baby is named Dixon Willoughby Partin, after the hosts. “[His wife said] this is his problem to explain when the child is older,” Greg Stevens, WHTQ-FM program director said. At the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Beatty, Nevada, clients who spend US$300 or more this month will receive US$50 gas vouchers as part of a promotion to beat the summer slump in business. “It’s rocking along. We’re doing quite well. June and July historically are not big months,” said James Davis, who co-owns the ranch with his wife, Bobbi.
■MEXICO
Man soaks clothes in drugs
A man has been arrested at Mexico City’s airport for carrying a suitcase filled with shirts and pants saturated in pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamine. The Attorney General’s Office say the 33 pairs of pants and 46 shirts were moist and stained with white powder. Chemical tests showed the powder was pseudoephedrine. Investigators have not determined the amount of pseudoephedrine on the clothes. Officials say the man arrived from Argentina and was caught trying to board a flight to Guadalajara. The statement on Friday did not give his nationality.
■UNITED STATES
Gray wolves re-endangered
A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall. US District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula granted a preliminary injunction late on Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent. The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves. They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.
■MEXICO
Cash found in diapers
A package of baby diapers yielded an unlikely load in Mexico on Friday, the defense ministry said: nearly half a million dollars in cash. Soldiers conducting a routine check “found in a tractor-trailer a packet of diapers containing US$490,300,” the ministry said in a statement. It said that the cash was likely a stash of narco-dollars that were destined for money-laundering, as the truck had come from Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state in Mexico’s northwest, a region known for trafficking by major drug cartels. The driver of the truck was arrested.
■UNITED STATES
Soccer players subdue man
The FBI says an American Airlines flight on its way from Boston to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City after a passenger stripped nude, got dressed and then tried to open an emergency exit door. FBI spokesman Gary Johnson says members of the New England Revolution soccer team who were aboard the Friday afternoon flight helped subdue the man. The man was removed from the airplane by police in Oklahoma City and the Boeing 757 resumed its trip to Los Angeles.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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