■CHINA
Tainted baby powder recalled
The state quality watchdog said baby skin powder manufactured by German housekeeping and healthcare products maker MAPA has been removed from shelves for allegedly containing asbestos. Authorities sealed up 48 cans of the baby powder in Suzhou Debao Baby Supplies Co Ltd, the brand’s general agent, in an inspection on Saturday, the General Administration of Inspection and Quarantine said. MAPA, part of French rubber and plastics conglomerate Hutchinson Worldwide, markets its baby care products under the NUK brand.
■INDONESIA
Vote-buying probe launched
The government has launched an investigation into allegations of vote-buying by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s youngest son ahead of national elections this week, an official said yesterday. Electoral authorities in East Java Province were probing allegations Edhie Baskoro, a candidate for Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, handed out money to voters at a rally, local official Arif Supriadi said. Democratic Party Secretary-General Marzuki Ali said Baskoro was not involved in the handing out of money, reportedly 10,000 rupiah (US$0.88), at the rally in East Java’s Ponorogo district. The country heads to the polls on Thursday to choose between thousands of candidates from 38 parties in a legislative vote that will help decide the field of contenders for presidential elections later in the year.
■AUSTRALIA
Drunk mother arrested
A mother allegedly breastfeeding her baby while driving was found to be too drunk to take a breathalizer test after almost crashing into a police car, police said yesterday. The 19-year-old woman was arrested in the central desert town of Alice Springs on Saturday night after she drove her station wagon from a hotel car park into the path of a patrol car. Police pulled her over and allegedly found her breastfeeding her infant son at the wheel, the national AAP news agency reported. Regional police Superintendent Jamie Chalker said he was horrified by the reported incident. The woman was granted bail and will appear in court later this month to face several charges.
■NEPAL
Sherpa starts record climb
A Sherpa guide who holds the record for most climbs up Mount Everest set off yesterday on a new expedition to scale the world’s highest mountain for a 19th time. Appa, who like most Sherpas goes only by one name, flew out of the capital, Kathmandu, with his team yesterday for the small airstrip at Lukla, from where they will trek to Everest’s base camp and spend a few days acclimatizing and preparing for their summit bid in May. He first climbed the 8,850m summit in 1989 and has done so almost every year since. His closest rival is fellow Sherpa guide Chhewang Nima, who has made 15 trips.
■AFGHANISTAN
Chancellor visits troops
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Kabul yesterday to visit German troops there, a government spokesman said. Germany has about 3,800 troops in the country and has a parliamentary mandate to send a total of 4,500 as part of the NATO mission. Merkel, who faces an election in six months time, is reluctant to increase the number of combat troops it sends to the mission, which is unpopular among Germans. She has also resisted pressure from allies to send its soldiers to the more dangerous southern areas of the country, where allied forces are battling a Taliban insurgency.
■ITALY
Afghan children rescued
Police have discovered 24 Afghan children living in filthy conditions in the sewer system under a Rome railway station, local media reported on Saturday. The children, ranging in age from 10 to 15, were unaccompanied and some were in poor physical condition, the reports said. They slept under cartons or dirty blankets in the hiding place not far from the Colosseum, the daily La Repubblica reported. Railway police discovered the children along with 98 other people, including other Afghans, the report said, adding that they were being cared for by the city’s social services.
■SOMALIA
Ships hijacked off Somalia
A German-flagged cargo ship and a French-flagged yacht were hijacked over the weekend. Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Program, did not name the vessel but said it had a crew of 24, according to the Spiegel Online Web site in Germany. Described in one news report as a container vessel, the ship was seized about 750km off the southern Somali port of Kismayo, between the Seychelles and Kenya, Spiegel Online reported. Meanwhile, Ecoterra International, an organization monitoring piracy in the region, said yesterday that the French yacht with four crew members was attacked on Saturday “around 640 kilometers off Ras Hafun in northeast Somalia.” There was no immediate confirmation from the French naval forces engaged in anti-piracy operations in the area but Ecoterra said brief satellite phone contact was made with the ship on Sunday.
■IRAQ
Blasts kill 10 people
Four car bombs exploded across the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing 10 people and wounding dozens, police said. A car bomb parked in a busy central Baghdad street next to a group of casual laborers queuing for work killed five people and wounded 15, police said. Two others were parked in two popular markets. One in Husseiniya, on Baghdad’s northern outskirts, killed two people and wounded eight. Another in the eastern Sadr City slum killed one person and injured at least five. A fourth bomb in east Baghdad targeting the convoy of an interior ministry official killed two bystanders.
■MOLDOVA
Communists lead vote
Moldova’s ruling Communists, led by President Vladimir Voronin, won 50 percent in a parliamentary election, preliminary official results, with just more than 91 percent of votes counted, showed. The new parliament will vote in a president to replace Voronin, the only Communist leader in Europe. In power since 2001, he cannot stand for a third consecutive term. The results posted on the Central Election Commission’s Web site did not make clear whether the Communists could gain the 61 seats out of 101 in the assembly needed to choose their own candidate.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Rubber band fine proposed
Postmen should face on-the-spot fines for dropping the red rubber bands they use to bundle letters, a litter watchdog said yesterday. Keep Britain Tidy said Royal Mail staff should not be above the law and be subject to the same £80 (US$120) spot fine for littering as the public. “Elastic bands may not be as visually offensive as dog dirt or half-eaten pizza, but they are most definitely litter,” the charity’s Dickie Felton said. “Is it really too much to ask them to put the rubber bands in their pocket as they do their daily rounds?”
■UNITED STATES
Knowledge of Islam lacking
More than half of Americans acknowledge having a poor understanding of Islam but support President Barack Obama’s plan to seek improved relations with the Muslim world, according to an opinion poll released on Sunday. The survey by the Washington Post and ABC News showed that 55 percent of those polled said they lacked a good understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam. Forty-eight percent said they had an unfavorable view of Islam, while nearly three in 10, or 29 percent, said they saw mainstream Islam as advocating violence against non-Muslims. At the same time, 58 percent said Islam was a peaceful religion, according to the poll. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said Obama would handle this diplomacy “about right.”
■UNITED STATES
Photographer Morabito dies
Photographer Rocco Morabito, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his shot of a utility worker saving the life of a fellow lineman, died on Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida. He was 88. His dramatic photograph, tagged “Kiss of Life” by a Jacksonville Journal copy editor, appeared in newspapers around the world in 1967. The photo showed an electrical lineman who had come into contact with a 4,160-volt line being resuscitated by a fellow lineman as he dangled from the top of the pole. His Pulitzer Prize was for Spot News Photography.
■UNITED STATES
Texas hit by wildfires
Firefighters from the Texas-Oklahoma border to the Gulf Coast struggled on Sunday to contain wildfires that have destroyed homes, killed cattle and charred thousands of hectares. The largest of those fires, a 6,070 hectare blaze near the Texas town of Wheeler, destroyed eight homes and 26 outbuildings, including barns and garages. An unknown number of cattle were killed, the Texas Forest Service said. Four houses, two businesses and six outbuildings were destroyed in a fire in Aransas County on the Gulf Coast on Sunday afternoon.
■UNITED STATES
Dead whale found on beach
A dead gray whale calf has washed up on a Southern California beach. Marine biologist Alisa Schulman-Janiger said the three-month-old male calf was estimated to have been dead for about 10 days when it washed ashore on Sunday off Orange County. The 7.62m long whale has three deep parallel cuts in its side, indicating it was hit by a ship propeller. Further testing will determine whether the injuries occurred before or after death.
■MEXICO
Worshippers protest policy
About 200 worshippers marched on Sunday to protest the government’s destruction of “Death Saint” shrines, saying the country’s fight against drug cartels had veered into religious persecution. “We are believers, not criminals,” the protesters chanted as they marched to the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown. At shrines, chapels and small churches across the country, tens of thousands of people worship the Death Saint, which is often depicted as a skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper. In crime-ridden neighborhoods, people of all walks of life believe the saint protects against violent death. But it is popular with drug traffickers, too. Last month, army troops accompanied workers who used back hoes to topple more than 30 shrines in the city of Nuevo Laredo. Many were elaborate, one-story, marble-clad constructions with electric lighting and statues of the skeletal Death Saint.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
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