■INDONESIA
President releases album
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has taken a break from battling rampant corruption and mutinous coalition partners to compose another album of romantic pop songs. Ku Yakin Sampai Di Sana” (I’m Certain I’ll Get There) was released on Sunday and features some of the nation’s best-known singers and musicians. Like the 60-year-old former general’s previous two albums, Ku Yakin deals with themes such as love, loyalty and patriotism. “In my spare time from fulfilling the people’s mandate as president, I like to express my feelings in works of art,” the president writes on the album cover, which features an image of children running with the national flag. “The songs were written from the belief that nothing can change the fate of a nation except the people themselves, and the conviction of a noble purpose.”
■CHINA
Mountain named after film
A craggy peak in a scenic part of Hunan Province has been renamed after floating mountains featured in Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, with the province hoping to cash in on the movie’s massive success. The “Southern Sky Column” in Zhangjiajie formally had its named changed to “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in a ceremony yesterday, the Zhangjiajie government’s official Web site said. The government said the floating “Hallelujah Mountains” in the movie were inspired by the “Southern Sky Column,” as a Hollywood photographer spent time shooting there in 2008. Avatar has so far made around US$80 million in China, and has become the country’s most popular film ever.
■SOUTH KOREA
Police probe exam cheating
Police are investigating a local cram school suspected of using paper cutters and electronic devices to copy questions from the leading US college entrance Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and passing them to students. Police have questioned four people working for an expensive cram school that guarantees high scores for its students taking the SAT, that can determine entry into a top-notch US university. “The four smuggled paper cutting blades in erasers into the test center and worked together to systematically cut out questions from the test sheets,” a police official said. The group includes an instructor at the school and three college aged-students who were paid 100,000 won (US$87) to cut out various exam questions and record others on calculators that are allowed into test centers, the official said. The group used the questions to help other students prepare for upcoming tests.
■VIETNAM
Zen master slams leaders
One of the world’s most famous Zen masters made a plea yesterday for religious freedom in his homeland, saying its communist leaders have lost touch with their revolutionary ideals and Buddhist traditions. Thich Nhat Hanh, who helped popularize Buddhism in the West and has sold millions of books worldwide, portrayed the nation’s leaders as corrupt and out of touch with regular people. Authorities forcibly evicted Nhat Hanh’s followers from the Bat Nha monastery on Sept. 27 and from the Phuoc Hue temple late last month. “All we want is to practice — why can’t we?” Nhat Hanh wrote. “Why is it that in other countries people can practice this tradition freely, and we can’t?” The 83-year-old Zen master shared his thoughts in a nine-page Buddhist koan, a sort of Zen riddle meant to inspire meditation, reflection and enlightenment.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Aliens are greedy, too
Extra-terrestrials might not only resemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others’ resources, says Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University. While aliens could come in peace, they are quite as likely to be searching for somewhere to live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel, Conway Morris was scheduled to tell a conference at the Royal Society in London yesterday. His lecture was part of a two-day conference at which experts will discuss how we might detect life on distant planets and what that could mean for society. “Extra-terrestrials ... won’t be splodges of glue ... they could be disturbingly like us, and that might not be a good thing — we don’t have a great record,” he says.
■POLAND
Big freeze causes blackout
The Interior Ministry said that more than 18,000 people across the country were without electricity during the coldest weekend so far this winter. Ministry spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said the outages were caused by icy trees and branches that damaged power lines in many places. She said people without electricity were being offered shelter over the weekend in heated public buildings. Temperatures across much of the country on Sunday were about minus 15ºC. In some places, they fell as low as minus minus 19ºC.
■ITALY
Mozarella maker resigns
The head of a buffalo mozzarella makers’ consortium, put under watch after inspectors discovered traces of cow milk in samples of the product, said on Sunday he was planning to resign. Luigi Chianese said he would wait until the end of the three-month watch period before leaving as cooperation was the only way “to eliminate doubts over an affair totally distorted by the media.” The consortium’s mozzarella is sold around the world under the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) label, meaning a product must be produced in a given geographical area using recognized procedures. However, analysis of buffalo mozzarella under the PDO label detected the presence of traces of cow milk in about 100 samples out of the 530 purchased at points of sale throughout the country. Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia passed a decree last week placing the consortium under watch. The investigation will involve inspections at all 130 members of the consortium, of whom about 15 have already been identified as breaking the rules — including Chianese.
■UNITED STATES
Gary Coleman arrested
Actor Gary Coleman has been booked into a Utah jail after police received reports of a civil disturbance at his Santaquin home, news reports said. Utah County Jail records show the 41-year-old former Diff’rent Strokes actor was booked on Sunday on suspicion of domestic assault, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. But the paper said the Santaquin police wrote in a press statement that Coleman was arrested on a warrant alleging he failed to appear in court in a previous case. KSL-TV said that as of Sunday night, Coleman’s US$1,725 bail had not been posted. The Santaquin police and the county sheriff’s office did not immediately return calls from reporters. The actor was arrested in Utah in 2008 after a man claimed Coleman tried to run over him in a parking lot when he tried to take a picture with the child star. The case was reportedly been settled out of court.
■UNITED STATES
Picasso painting torn
A Picasso painting, worth more than US$130 million by some estimates, was gouged on Friday at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art when a museumgoer fell into the artwork, leaving a 15cm gash. The 1904-1905 painting The Actor, depicting a graceful, gaunt male figure in a dusty pink costume on stage, was hung in a second-floor gallery among a display of early Picasso artworks. An unidentified woman attending a museum class “lost her balance’’ and fell into the artwork, the museum said in a statement. The woman was not injured, said Elyse Topalian, a museum spokeswoman. The painting received a vertical tear in the lower right hand corner, the statement said.
■UNITED STATES
Flight fright man released
Authorities have released a man who tried to open an exterior door on an airplane while it was in flight with more than 100 people aboard. The United Airlines jetliner was en route from Washington to Las Vegas when it was diverted to Denver International Airport on Saturday. FBI spokeswoman Kathy Wright said the man, whose name has not been released, tried opening one of the front doors of the airplane and may have tried to open the cockpit door before passengers restrained him. Wright said the man was taken into custody, questioned and released for a medical evaluation after investigators determined the incident was not a “terrorism matter.” Wright said the authorities would review the incident and decide what charges to file. Passengers told Las Vegas television station KTNV-TV after the plane landed that the man said he was from California and was on the wrong plane. The FBI said his last known address was in New York state but declined to release additional information citing privacy rules.
■UNITED STATES
Antler crashes in kitchen
An Illinois man said it didn’t take him long to decide not to mess with the uninvited, antlered guest he found in his kitchen. Belleville resident Mark Page and his wife were sleeping Saturday when the sound of breaking glass and — “was that hooves?” — woke them up. Page went downstairs to find a large buck in the kitchen with its head in the sink. He says he looked at the animal for “not even a fraction of a second” before turning tail and heading back upstairs, KSDK-TV reported. The animal also was spooked and barreled through a closed window to escape. Page said the deer jumped through a different window to get into his home. He said the animal was injured, but police couldn’t find it.
■BERMUDA
Government tackles violence
The government is proposing measures to curb youth crime that would include confiscating hooded sweat shirts and holding parents legally responsible for bad-acting children. Police Commissioner Michael DeSilva said last year was the “worst year in Bermuda’s history when it comes to firearms and gang violence.” Tackling lawlessness and aggression by youngsters — including gun violence, vandalism and intimidating behavior — is necessary to make sure islanders and tourists feel safe, Prime Minister Ewart Brown and his Cabinet ministers said. “Bermudians are afraid and wonder what is happening to the Bermuda they once knew,” Brown said. “We know that when we have this level of serious crime, we must deal with the criminals. We must stop their behavior.”
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
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
FIREWALLS: ‘Democracy doesn’t mean that the loud minority is automatically right,’ the German defense minister said following the US vice president’s remarks US Vice President JD Vance met the leader of a German far-right party during a visit to Munich, Germany, on Friday, nine days before a German election. During his visit he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy and said there is no place for “firewalls.” Vance met with Alice Weidel, the coleader and candidate for chancellor of the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, his office said. Mainstream German parties say they would not work with the party. That stance is often referred to as a “firewall.” Polls put AfD in second place going into the