■AUSTRALIA
Skaters accused of theft
Aboriginal elders accused Russian world figure skating champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin yesterday of stealing an Aboriginal dance idea and causing serious cultural offense. The Russian pair, favorites to win gold at next month’s Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, unveiled an Aboriginal-themed dance at a performance in St Petersburg three weeks ago. The performance included ceremonial dance steps and dark bodysuits adorned with indigenous painted swirls in white, red loin cloths and eucalyptus-style leaves in bunches. Domnina, 25, and Shabalin, 27, told the ice-skating Web site Golden Skate that they created the new dance routine as something different after watching Aboriginal dance routines over the Internet.
■MALAYSIA
Sex-for-sand officials busted
The anti-corruption commission has arrested scores of government employees and businesspeople for allegedly accepting bribes and sexual favors to help smuggle sand out of the country, an official said yesterday. The crackdown is the latest bid by the commission to repair its reputation, which took a big hit last year when an opposition activist died under mysterious circumstances after being interrogated by anti-graft officials. Commission officers have arrested 34 people — including political aides, civil servants and business officials — since Tuesday in a crackdown on illegal sand mining and smuggling in several states, an official said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to make public statements.
■MALAYSIA
Vandals torch prayer room
Vandals tried to torch a Muslim prayer room in southern Johor state yesterday, police said, one of the few attacks on an Islamic place of worship after nearly a dozen churches were firebombed amid a dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians. Religious tensions have risen after a court ruled on Dec. 31 that non-Muslims can use “Allah” as a translation for God in the Malay language.
■NEPAL
Leprosy eradicated
Leprosy has been eliminated in one of the last countries to rid itself of the disease, the government announced on Wednesday. The health ministry said the number of leprosy patients had been cut to fewer than one in 10,000 of the population, the WHO standard for declaring the disease eliminated. “The disease prevalence rate dropped to 0.89 per 10,000 people in November last year,” ministry official Sudha Sharma said. Sharma said the government hoped to eradicate leprosy completely within five years and had launched a major awareness program in rural areas. Leprosy has been eradicated in most countries, but remains prevalent in some areas of Africa, Brazil and India, the WHO says.
■CHINA
More moved for dam
An additional 300,000 people will be forced to move from their homes because of the Three Gorges Dam and its huge reservoir, the English-language China Daily said yesterday. The paper said the relocations were aimed at preventing pollution from adjacent communities contaminating the reservoir, and at protecting residents from possible seismic dangers, quoting government officials in Chongqing. The dam is located in Hubei Province, but most of its reservoir is in Chongqing. State media said in September that 1.27 million people had already been relocated to make way for the project.
■GERMANY
Teens felled by chili sauce
Officials said eight teenagers were hospitalized after a test of courage in which they drank chili sauce more than 200 times hotter than normal. The Red Cross in the city of Augsburg said that 10 boys, aged 13 and 14, drank the sauce on Wednesday morning. The boys complained of feeling sick, and eight were taken to a hospital, DAPD news agency quoted the Red Cross as saying. The Red Cross said that on the Scoville scale, which measures the hotness of sauce, the sauce measured 535,000 — compared with 2,500 for Tabasco sauce.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Rapist sentenced to death
A Saudi man reported to have raped more than 100 women after posing as a spell-caster to lure them into his clutches has been sentenced to death, media reported on Wednesday. The “Qatif sorcerer” was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, but after more victims came forth the sentence was changed to execution, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported. Authorities found hidden cameras and some 200 videotapes and 180 computer disks with footage of his victims in his home in the city of Qatif, Arab News said. He was caught when a man related to a woman he had unsuccessfully targeted reported the case to the religious police.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Winner loses wildlife prize
A Spanish photographer was stripped of a major wildlife prize on Wednesday after the British organizers said it was likely that the apparently wild wolf featured in his entry picture was tame. Jose Luis Rodriguez won the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in October with a stunning picture of a wolf leaping over a gate entitled “The Storybook Wolf.” However, doubts were raised about the wolf’s provenance and following an investigation, the National History Museum in London and BBC Worldwide, who jointly run the prize, said the entry had been disqualified.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Mom jailed for killing son
A mother who gave her brain-damaged son a lethal injection of heroin to end his suffering was jailed for life on Wednesday. Frances Inglis, 57, admitted killing her 22-year-old son Tom in November 2008 because she did not want to see him suffer but denied she committing murder. She told the court he was in a “living hell” after suffering severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance in July 2007 and insisted she had acted “with love in my heart.” The jury found Inglis of Dagenham guilty of murder and attempted murder — she had first tried to end her son’s life in September 2007.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Smuggler loses appeal
A British woman jailed in Laos for drug trafficking and transferred home last August to finish her sentence lost an appeal against her continued detention on Wednesday. Samantha Orobator’s lawyers had argued that her trial in Laos was a “flagrant denial of justice” and she should never have been jailed. Two judges at the High Court in London said they were in no doubt that the 20-year-old “was treated unjustly in Laos,” but rejected her claim that she was being detained in Britain unlawfully. They said she should serve at least 18 months in jail. Orobator was arrested in August 2008 at the Lao capital’s airport, trying to board a plane to Thailand, and was convicted last June of heroin trafficking. She would have faced the death penalty, but became pregnant while in jail and was instead given a life sentence. She gave birth in the UK in September.
■UNITED STATES
Snakes not welcome
Federal officials want to keep Burmese pythons and eight other kinds of large snakes out of the country, saying they threaten the environment. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the snakes escape or are released into the wild, where they threaten sensitive ecosystems like Florida’s Everglades. Salazar announced the proposed ban on importing the snakes at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. He said New York was the biggest point of entry in the country for imported wildlife. The proposal will be open to public comment before a final decision is made.
■UNITED STATES
Gatecrashers keep quiet
A couple who crashed President Barack Obama’s first state dinner, leaving the White House red-faced, refused yesterday to answer a Congressional committee’s questions about the incident. “On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully assert my right to remain silent and decline to answer your question,” Tareq Salahi told the committee, invoking his constitutional rights against self-incrimination. His wife Michaele did the same in the hearing before the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.
■UNITED STATES
Storm forces evacuations
Hundreds of homeowners in fire-ravaged areas were ordered to evacuate across California yesterday as a powerful storm battered the region, triggering warnings of flash floods and mudslides. The storm, the third to hit into the region since Monday, was expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain in some areas by yesterday, raising fears of landslides in hilly regions denuded of vegetation by last year’s wildfires. Authorities issued evacuation orders to about 750 homes in the Los Angeles area deemed to be threatened by landslides.
■CANADA
Terror suspect pleads guilty
Another member of a group of 18 alleged Islamic extremists was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty yesterday to plotting to bomb the main bourse and other targets. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 23, admitted to “knowingly participating in or contributing to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of the terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity.”
■MEXICO
Prisoners riot in Durango
Rival gangs clashed inside a notorious prison in the state of Durango yesterday, leaving at least 23 inmates dead, officials said. Army and federal troops as well as police were sent in to quell fighting between gangs which broke out shortly after breakfast at the jail housing 1,800 inmates, well over capacity, outside the city of Durango. It took 40 minutes for the security officers to quell the clashes, reportedly between members of the rival Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels using makeshift weapons but no firearms.
■MEXICO
Indians dug up graves
Archeologists have found evidence that pre-Hispanic groups in the Baja California Peninsula dug up their decomposing dead, dismembered the bodies and then reburied them. A report by the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Indians at the Conchalito site apparently did that to release the dead from what they considered a state of suffering. The report says many of the 157 graves studied since 1991 show evidence of the practice. The graves date from about 300AD to the 1500s.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
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