■Bangladesh
Man sets sail in jute boat
A Frenchman has set sail in an eco-friendly boat partly made of jute in a bid to promote the natural fibre and highlight the plight of Bangladeshi fisherman. Corentin de Chatelperron said the journey from Bangladesh to France will take around six months. “I am making this journey to highlight the problems facing Bangladeshi fishermen, for whom the sea is becoming increasingly dangerous due to the global warming,” he said on Wednesday. “It will also raise awareness about the natural fibre, jute, which has been facing some tough competition from synthetic fibres.” Chatelperron’s 9m boat is made of 40 percent jute and 60 percent fibre glass.
■Australia
Toads face death by cat food
A plague of poisonous cane toads may finally have met its match — and it comes in a tin of cat food. After years spent trying to exterminate the toads, scientists say just a dollop of Whiskas could stop the warty horde. The cat food attracts carnivorous meat ants, which swarm over and eat baby toads. “We went out and put out a little bit of cat food right beside the area where the baby toads were coming out of the ponds,” University of Sydney professor Rick Shine said. “The ants rapidly discovered the cat food and thought it tasted great. The worker ants then leave trails back to the nest encouraging other ants to come out there and forage in that area, and within a very short period of time we got lots of ants in the same area as the toads are.”
■Indonesia
Pregnant rhino gives hope
Conservationists yesterday hailed a breakthrough in efforts to save the endangered Sumatran rhino after a female called Ratu became pregnant in captivity. Tests on Tuesday revealed that Ratu was carrying a calf after mating with Andalas, one of only three Sumatran rhinos born in captivity in more than a century, experts said. “We were quite pessimistic as Andalas was aggressive and unfriendly towards the female rhinos,” Widodo Ramono of the Indonesian Rhino Foundation said. “He chased and fought Ratu or the other females and suffered quite serious wounds ... But suddenly on Nov. 16, Andalas softened his attitude towards Ratu and he tried to mate with her for the first time, but he didn’t do it properly.” The pair finally got it right on their fourth attempt when Ratu conceived.
■Thailand
Brit to be extradited to UAE
A court agreed yesterday to extradite a Briton to Dubai on embezzlement charges in a case that has possible implications for fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Michael Bryan Smith, 43, was arrested in Bangkok after eight months on the run from charges that he siphoned off the cash from a United Arab Emirates (UAE) property company. “The court has decided to extradite him to the UAE,” a judge at Bangkok criminal court said. “Even though Thailand and the UAE do not have an extradition treaty, the UAE has expressed the willingness to do favors if Thailand asks in future.” The decision has political overtones as Bangkok has long pushed the UAE over the fate of Thaksin, who spends alot of time in Dubai.
■Japan
Child porn busts hit record
Child pornography cases have surged by almost 40 percent to a new record, police said yesterday. Police said they took action in 935 child porn cases last year — the highest number since data was first compiled in 2000, and up 38 percent from the previous year. A total of 411 children fell victim to porn, and cases involving 650 people were sent to prosecutors, the National Police Agency said.
■SOUTH KOREA
Exercise to be scaled down
The US and South Korea will go ahead next month with a major annual military exercise but fewer US troops than last year will take part, officials said yesterday. North Korea denounces the exercise and other annual military drills in the South as a rehearsal for invasion, a claim denied by Seoul and Washington. The Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise, slated for March 8 to March 18, will draw 18,000 US troops including 10,000 stationed in South Korea and 8,000 from abroad, said Combined Forces Command spokesman Kim Yong-kyu. Some 26,000 US troops took part in the exercise last year. “An aircraft carrier which came last year will not participate this time,” the spokesman said, adding that the scaling-down of the exercise was governed only by operational considerations.
■CANADA
Social network slammed
The nation’s privacy commissioner accused Google on Wednesday of breaching privacy laws when it launched its new online social network Buzz last week, and demanded compliance. “We have seen a storm of protest and outrage over alleged privacy violations and my office also has questions about how Google Buzz has met the requirements of privacy laws in Canada,” commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a statement. Buzz was added last week as a feature on Google’s Gmail. Some Gmail users complained that they were automatically assigned a network of “followers” based on those with whom they communicated with most using Google’s e-mail and online chat services, without notice or consent. The list of “followers” was also included in a widely available online profile. Stoddart said she reminded Google officials that the company must abide by Canadian privacy laws when launching products in Canada.
■CHILE
Astronomers find old stars
European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers said on Wednesday they had uncovered the oldest stars in our galactic neighborhood thanks to a massive telescope in Chile. Finding the most primitive stars outside the Milky Way galaxy “is crucial for our understanding of the earliest stars in the universe,” ESO said in a statement. ESO’s Very Large Telescope, which measures 8.2m in diameter and is installed in the Atacama desert, located the stars. According to cosmologists, primitive stars, also called “extremely metal-poor stars,” formed shortly after the Big Bang, around 13.7 billion years ago. These extremely rare stars had been difficult to locate. But a new technique allowed the European astronomers to “uncover the primitive stars hidden among all the other, more common stars,” said Else Starkenburg, lead author of the paper reporting the study.
■CANADA
Terror plot man gets life
A judge sentenced a man to life in prison on Wednesday for his role in a terror plot against Germany and Austria. Said Namouh, a Moroccan who has lived in Quebec since 2003, was found guilty in October of four terrorism-related charges stemming from a plan to bomb targets in Germany and Austria. Namouh, 37, was arrested in 2007 for his alleged role in making threats in an Internet video that warned Germany and Austria would be attacked if they did not pull their troops out of Afghanistan. Namouh was found guilty of one count each of conspiracy to detonate an explosive device, participating in a terrorist act, facilitating an act of terrorism and committing extortion for a terrorist group.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
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