■ INDIA
PM attacks prejudice
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged citizens yesterday to reject centuries of ethnic and religious divisions, warning that they would be manipulated by politicians to fracture the country. His comments follow the recent arrests of Hindu leaders with links to right-wing outfits in connection with a bomb blast that was earlier suspected to be the work of Muslim militants. “Stop identifying yourself in terms of how the past has shaped you,” the prime minister said. “Who looks at our nuclear scientists or space engineers in terms of their narrow social identities or their religious beliefs?” Singh asked the audience. Police are investigating if Hindu militants were involved in a series of terror strikes across the country since last year.
■ CHINA
Gas leak sickens children
More than 100 primary school students in Guangdong Province were taken to a hospital after they inhaled gas emitted by an illegal refinery nearby, a local official and state media said yesterday. The sulfurous gas escaped at about 9am on Thursday in Zengcheng city, said Tang Jianning, an official dealing with emergency affairs at the city government. A village school several hundred meters away had to send all its pupils to hospital checks after the smell caused a boy to lose consciousness and made many other children sick, the New Express newspaper said. The refinery, which produced lubricants from recycled waste oil, often operated at night to escape government checks, the News Express said. Following the accident, officials have ordered it demolished within three days, it said. Industrial and road accidents killed 101,480 people last year, the government said.
■ INDIA
Lunchbox men deliver ads
Mumbai’s businessmen will now be getting ads delivered with their home-cooked lunches. Some 5,000 of the city’s famed lunchbox delivery men — or dabbawallas — have traded their loose shirt-and-trouser uniforms for T-shirts advertising a mutual fund. Rather than eating out at restaurants, many of Mumbai’s office workers pay to have a cooked meal delivered from their homes. Getting those meals to the city’s army of office workers is the job of the dabbawallas, who deliver to some 500,000 customers each day.
■ PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Not enough lawyers
Opportunists often sue the cash-strapped government — and win — simply because it does not have enough lawyers to represent it in court. When a government lawyer fails to show up, judges are obliged to rule in favor of those claiming damages. Such “vexatious claims” in the South Pacific island nation are “a major source of lost revenue for the country,” a senior Australian official said yesterday at a senate inquiry into Sydney’s aid to its impoverished neighbor.
■ CHINA
Peace Hotel to host art
Shanghai’s iconic Peace Hotel, once known as the most luxurious destination in the Far East, is to host a contemporary arts center, operators said yesterday. The center in the hotel’s south building will open to the public before the start of Shanghai’s World Expo in May 2010, Swiss watch makers Swatch Group, which will own a 90 percent stake, said in a statement. Since it was completed in 1929, the hotel has hosted celebrities ranging from Charlie Chaplin and Noel Coward to Muhammad Ali. ■ AUSTRIA
Kissing ban causes furor
The decision by a headmaster to ban kissing from his school made front page news on Thursday as outraged pupils and politicians slammed the move as medieval and excessive. Siegfried Biermair, the head of a school in Gunskirchen, sent a letter to parents on Monday informing them of the kissing ban after teachers complained that the kissing rituals of some girls were getting out of hand. Instead of simply greeting each other with a light peck on the cheeks between lessons, some 14-year-olds had taken to “theatrically falling into each other’s arms and kissing each other on the mouth, sometimes very intimately and for many minutes,” Biermair complained. Such behavior “could lead to undesirable developments” and boys could also start demanding kisses, he argued. So, at a meeting, teachers and a number of parents had voted unanimously in favor of a kissing ban. However, the move was immediately slammed as “ridiculous” and “excessive,” not only by pupils, but by politicians as well.
■ FINLAND
Swede in air-born drama
Finnair says a Swedish woman gave birth to a girl 11,000m over Kazakhstan on a flight from Bangkok to Helsinki. The Finnish national carrier’s spokesman Christer Haglund says mother and baby are fine. They were met at the airport by a medical team. Two doctors and two nurses were among the 227 passengers on the 11-hour flight aboard the MD-11 aircraft. They assisted the birth on Thursday with the aid of a satellite link to a medical service. It was the first time a baby had been born on a Finnair flight.
■ BELGIUM
Crime gang smashed
Authorities in Belgium, Ireland and Romania have smashed a Romanian crime gang that specialized in copying bank cards and operated worldwide, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said on Thursday. The gang acting “on a global level” from their Belgian base is suspected of defrauding card users of millions of euros. In Europe, there were victims of their hi-tech “skimming” operations in Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and Romania. There were more suspected victims in Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Morocco and New Zealand, the public prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
■ GREECE
Inmates end hunger strike
Prisoners said on Thursday they would end their 18-day hunger strike against overcrowding in Greek jails after the government proposed releasing thousands of inmates next year. A group representing the prisoners said strikers will start accepting food yesterday. The decision came after the Justice Ministry unveiled draft legislation allowing the early release of 5,500 prisoners by next April, to relieve severe overcrowding.
■ KOSOVO
Three arrested for attack
Police on Thursday arrested three German citizens suspected of throwing an explosive device last week at the Pristina office of the international community’s representative. The suspects were in Kosovo “in a private capacity” and have no immunity from prosecution, police spokesman Veton Elshani said. The Foreign Ministry in Berlin confirmed the arrest of German nationals. Police were still investigating the Nov. 14 attack which targeted the office of the International Civilian Representative, an official appointed to oversee UN settlement proposals for the region.■ UNITED STATES
Attorney general collapses
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed while giving a speech late on Thursday in Washington and was rushed to hospital, where he is conscious and “in good spirits,” a Justice Department official said. Mukasey, 67, was giving remarks to an annual dinner of the Federalist Society when he took ill. “Upon his collapse, emergency first aid was rendered by the attorney general’s security detail and a doctor who was on the scene” before he was taken to George Washington University hospital, Peter Carr, acting director of public affairs, said in a statement. “The attorney general is conscious, conversant and alert. His vital statistics are strong and he is in good spirits,” Carr said.
■ UNITED STATES
Obama cellphone accessed
Verizon Wireless said on Thursday that some employees had gained unauthorized access and viewed a personal cellphone account held by president-elect Barack Obama that is now inactive. An Obama aide said his voice-mail messages and e-mails were not breached in the incident. “We were notified yesterday that employees had accessed the records of an old cellphone no longer in use,” the Obama aide said. “No voice or e-mails were listened to or read.” In a statement, Verizon Wireless president and chief executive Lowell McAdam apologized to Obama and said all employees who had had access to Obama’s account, whether authorized or not, were put on immediate leave with pay.
■ UNITED STATES
Hearing on Cheney set
A judge was scheduled to hear arguments yesterday on whether to dismiss indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales. Some officials are questioning the motives of the Texas county prosecutor who brought the indictments. They are accusing Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra of trying to even scores with political enemies. Presiding Judge Manuel Banales was scheduled to hear the arguments yesterday on motions to dismiss or quash the indictments.
■ CANADA
Conjoined twins die
One-month-old conjoined twins died on Thursday on board an airliner that was taking them from Europe to the US for medical treatment, a Canadian newspaper reported. The Halifax Chronicle-Herald said on its Web site that the Delta Airlines jet had been about 35 minutes off the coast of Nova Scotia when the twin girls’ mother noticed they were not breathing. The plane was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the twins were formally declared dead. The paper said the girls were from Liberia.
■ CANADA
Minister presses Saudis
Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said on Thursday he would continue to press Saudi Arabia for clemency for two Canadian teens who face beheading over a deadly schoolyard brawl. Sultan Kohail, 17, was sentenced to 200 lashes and one year in prison for his part in the brawl, which left one person dead. He remains free on bail, but a retrial has been ordered in which he could also face a possible death sentence. His brother Mohamed, 23, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by beheading. He remains in jail awaiting execution. The brothers were arrested last year and charged with killing a youth during a brawl in Jeddah. Mohamed Kohail allegedly punched a boy who hit his head against a fence, fell to the ground, and died.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
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