■SWEDEN
Noko Jeans hits stores
North Korea is making an unlikely foray into designer denim with the “Noko Jeans” label. The brand is Swedish, but the jeans are manufactured in North Korea. More than 1,000 pairs are going on sale online on Friday, while Stockholm’s PUB department store said it would start selling the brand this weekend. Two officials at North Korea’s embassy in Stockholm confirmed that the jeans are made in their country. The chances of seeing the brand on the streets of Pyongyang are small. Choi Eun-suk, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said jeans are banned in North Korea as they are considered a symbol of US imperialism.
■EGYPT
ElBaradei eyes presidency
The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he would consider running for Eygpt’s presidency but only if the election process were democratic. ElBaradei, who ended his 12-year stint as the UN agency on Nov, 27, said he had been closely following calls for him to stand, the independent daily al Dustur reported. But the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner conditioned the move on “guarantees of fairness,” and for the 2011 presidential and parliamentary elections to “follow the process in democratic countries.”
■NAMIBIA
SWAPO wins polls
The ruling SWAPO party won a resounding victory in parliamentary polls, giving it the chance to change the Constitution at will, final results showed on Friday. Results of 107 contested constituencies showed SWAPO won 75.27 percent of the vote — a clear two-thirds majority — and returned President Hifikepunye Pohamba for the second term in office. SWAPO’s nearest rival, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), won 11.31 percent of the vote. Three African observer missions have declared the Nov. 27 to Nov. 28 elections transparent, peaceful and fair.
■SWITZERLAND
Polanski back at chalet
Filmmaker Roman Polanski settled down with his family at his snowbound chalet in Gstaad on Friday, after being placed under house arrest while he fights extradition to the US in a child sex case. Two cars with dark tinted windows swept into the chalet’s basement garage, just before authorities confirmed that the 76-year-old Oscar winner had been released on bail. Shutters were open at the chalet, which was bedecked with Christmas lights. Sources said Polanski’s actress wife Emmanuelle Seigner and their two children, Morgane and Elvis, were waiting to welcome him at the home. A court granted Polanski bail last week on condition that he surrender his passport and wear an electronic bracelet.
■SUDAN
Peacekeepers killed
Two Rwandan peacekeepers were shot dead and three wounded in an ambush by unidentified gunmen near a market in Darfur on Friday. The attack was a reminder of the vulnerability of the under-equipped joint UN and African Union UNAMID mission and brought the number of its personnel killed by hostile action in two years to 19. The attackers opened fire on a group of 20 Rwandan soldiers escorting a tanker to a water point on the outskirts of the north Darfur settlement of Saraf Omra at about 4:45pm, UNAMID said. The survivors were airlifted to a hospital in El Fasher. The attackers, armed with automatic weapons, escaped on foot, Saiki said.
■PHILIPPINES
Police station bombed
Suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants set off a powerful homemade bomb outside a police station and an adjoining building used for a US-funded peace-building project in the south, killing a janitor and wounding eight other people, police said. The pre-dawn blast yesterday destroyed the police station and severely damaged the adjacent building housing the Area Coordinating Center, which coordinates humanitarian projects on Jolo island, said Usman Pingay, the police chief of Jolo township. Regional military commander Lieutenant General Benjamin Dolorfino said the cell phone-triggered bomb left a crater 5m wide and 2m deep. He said a military bomb squad inspecting the site had not yet disclosed the type of explosives used. No group claimed responsibility.
■CHINA
Swine flu death toll rises
The official swine flu death toll in China has hit 200 with almost all of the deaths recorded last month, the health ministry announced. A statement posted on the ministry’s Web site on Friday said 194 of the deaths from the influenza A(H1N1) virus had been reported last month. A ministry official quoted yesterday by the Beijing News said cold weather was behind the rapid rise in fatalities. A total of 92,904 cases of swine flu were reported by the end of last month, when China had vaccinated nearly 27 million people, the ministry said. Beijing aims to vaccinate up to 65 million people by the end of the year.
■JAPAN
US military teens arrested
Police said yesterday that they arrested four children of US military personnel on suspicion of attempted murder after a woman crashed her moped when it hit a rope that was stretched across the road. The 23-year-old suffered a fractured skull after being thrown from her motorbike near western Tokyo’s US Yokota Air Base on Aug. 13. The woman later told police she saw four foreigners shortly before the incident, local media said. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested the four — three boys and one girl aged between 15 and 18 — when the US military handed them over, a spokesman for the police department said. Jiji Press, quoting police sources, reported that all four suspects admitted the allegations but said they did not think they could be charged with attempted murder.
■NORTH KOREA
Guards to shoot defectors
Pyongyang has ordered its border guards to open fire on anyone who crosses its border without permission, in what could be an attempt to thwart defections by people disgruntled over its recent currency reform, a news report said yesterday. The National Defense Commission — the top government body headed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il — recently instructed soldiers to kill unauthorized border crossers on the spot, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing unidentified sources. Last year, about 2,800 North Koreans arrived in the South, up from about 2,500 in 2007.
■NEPAL
Five killed in land clash
One police officer and four activists were killed on Friday in a clash between police and Maoists in the west, a government official said. The clash came after police tried to evict thousands of activists who were squatting on government-owned land in the remote Kailali region. The Maoists, who fought a decade-long civil war with the state before winning landmark elections last year, had reportedly occupied the area and told the squatters they would be given free land.
■UNITED STATES
Chicken stuffed with cocaine
Customs inspectors at Dulles International Airport said a man from Guatemala was detained after he tried to carry a cooked chicken stuffed with more than US$4,000 worth of cocaine. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Steve Sapp said agents decided the fully cooked chicken that 32-year-old Wagner Mauricio Linares Aragon brought with him on a flight yesterday from El Salvador warranted closer inspection. Inside the chicken’s cavity they said they found two small, clear bags that contained about 60g of powder cocaine.
■UNITED STATES
Tweet interrupts wedding
A groom who loves social networking as much as his bride pulled out a cellphone during their wedding to “tweet” and update his Facebook page. YouTube footage shows Dana Hanna, from Maryland, whip out a telephone from his suit, interrupting the minister. Thoughtfully, he then produces a second phone and hands that to the bride. “Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where a second ago she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride,” Hanna wrote on his Twitter account from the altar steps. He also updated his status on Facebook to “married.”
■VENEZUELA
Mafia captain extradited
Caracas on Friday deported an Italian citizen wanted in Rome on charges of trafficking heroin and accused of working with the Sicilian mafia to smuggle drugs to Europe and Africa. The accused, Walter Carapacchi, has been a fugitive since 2001 and had lived undocumented in Venezuela for nine years, police said. Arrested last month, Carapacchi, 54, is the 14th person deported by Venezuela this year on drugs charges. Many of the alleged mafia captains were sent to Colombia or the US. Venezuela is a major transit country for Colombian cocaine to Europe and to a lesser extent the US. It has stepped up its drugs fight after a surge in trafficking a few years ago.
■UNITED STATES
White House crashers sued
A Maryland county is suing the couple who got into last week’s state dinner at the White House without an invitation after it said they bounced a nearly US$24,000 check for a liquor purchase. The Montgomery County government, which conducts all the wholesale liquor sales on its territory, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Michaele and Tareq Salahi in Montgomery County District Court. The Salahis purchased wine and beer for a charity polo event they held in Montgomery County in May. Court documents state the couple returned more than US$10,000 in merchandise, but they still owed more than US$13,000 from the bounced check.
■UNITED STATES
Crist in sex-line blunder
Oops! In an embarrassing blunder, Florida Governor Charlie Crist directed parents of uninsured children to call a toll-free sex line. People calling the governor’s office heard an on-hold recording of Crist promoting the toll-free Florida KidCare line. Except two numbers were transposed. Anyone calling the number Crist gave out was told to call another number. The recording on that second phone number begins, “Hey there sexy guys” and says the caller can have a more graphic conversation with a woman for US$2.99 a minute. The Palm Beach Post discovered the mistake. Crist quickly fixed it.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
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