■CHINA
Little Mermaid leaves home
For nearly 100 years, the heartbroken Little Mermaid has sat on a rock looking out over Copenhagen’s port but now the sculpture based on the famous fairy tale is heading back out to sea, set for China. The small bronze statue, unveiled in 1913, was lifted from the harbor this week, boxed and shipped to Shanghai where she is the star guest in the Danish Pavilion at Expo 2010 which runs until Oct. 31. Copenhagen Mayor Frank Jensen said in a statement that the loan of the Little Mermaid was part of a cultural exchange between Denmark and China even though the plan created a heated debate in Denmark when announced. “I am convinced that she will be an excellent ambassador of Denmark, particularly since the Chinese already are very fond of Hans Christian Andersen and his fairytales,” he said in a statement.
■FINLAND
PRC vice president visits
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) arrived in Finland on Thursday for a three-day visit that will include meetings with top officials, the business community and Santa Claus. Xi, who is tipped to become China’s next president, was to meet Finnish President Tarja Halonen yesterday to discuss bilateral relations as well as international issues, a Finnish foreign ministry statement said. No press briefings are scheduled for the trip, which is part of events to mark the 60-year anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
■AUSTRALIA
Electronics pants launched
Simativa yesterday rolled out what it said were the world’s first electronic underpants, saying the product could send text messages if the wearer became incontinent. Designed for the elderly and infirm, the SIMsystem will be used in homes for the aged across New South Wales state to monitor incontinence after successful trials in Victoria, Simavita said. It said the underpants have a disposable element similar to a regular incontinence pad and include a detachable transmitter that relays readings from the pad’s sensor strip over a wireless network to a central computer.
■CHINA
Student stabber sentenced
A university student who stabbed his sleeping roommate to death because he snored too much was given a suspended death sentence, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The court in Changchun, Jilin Province, handed down the sentence to 24-year-old Guo Liwei, who confessed to stabbing his roommate to death in November, Xinhua said. A suspended death sentence is usually changed to life in prison after two years, if the person shows good behavior.
■NETHERLANDS
Coffee shop pays high price
A court fined the owner of the country's biggest cannabis-vending coffee shop 10 million euros (US$13.4 million) on Thursday after police seized more than 200kg of the drug on its premises. Meddy Willemsen, 58, was tried with 15 others, including former employees and suppliers of his Terneuzen-based coffee shop, for drug trafficking and involvement in a criminal organization. The other sentences ranged from mere warnings for those who “rolled the joints” to six-week jail terms for the manager and three vendors. Though technically illegal, the Netherlands decriminalized the consumption and possession of under 5g of cannabis in 1976 under an official “tolerance” policy. Cannabis cultivation and mass retail remain illegal. About 700 licenced coffee shops countrywide are permitted to stock no more than 500g of the drug at any given time.
■RUSSIA
Officers sent to prison
Two officers were sentenced by a military court on Thursday to prison terms of 13 and 15 years for passing military secrets to Georgia ahead of the 2008 war between the neighbors. A Georgian citizen was also sentenced to 11 years after being convicted of heading a spy ring after travelling to Russia on a false passport, the North Caucasus Military Court said in a statement. The three passed state secrets to the Georgian government in 2007 and 2008, the court said. It said the spy ring was broken up after Russian forces crushed an assault by Georgian troops on the breakaway South Ossetia region and drove deep into the nation in a five-day war in August 2008. Russian officers Khvichi Imerlishvili and Marlen Bogdanov were found guilty of passing information about Russian military installations, intelligence operations and the location of peacekeeping forces, the court said in a statement.
■RUSSIA
Airforce denies violation
An airforce spokesman on Thursday denied London’s report of two Russian bombers violating British airspace this month, RIA Novosti news agency reported. “The Tu-160 strategic bombers did indeed do an overflight over the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic on March 10, but did not violate any country’s airspace,” Vladimir Drik was quoted as saying. Britain’s ministry of defense on Thursday said that two RAF Tornado F3 fighters were sent to shadow the Russian Blackjack bombers after intercepting them off the coast of Scotland on March 10. The British jets followed the bombers as they flew south, before they turned north just north of the Northern Ireland coast, leaving British airspace, the ministry said.
■CROATIA
Love overcomes distance
A male stork proved once again that distance is no bar to true love as it flew thousands of kilometers back to its handicapped mate, local media said on Thursday. This is the fifth year in a row that the stork, named Rodan, has made the epic journey of some 13,000km from South Africa to the village of Brodski Varos, the Jutarnji List daily reported. “This year he came a bit earlier,” Stjepan Vokic, who cares for the female stork, named Malena, unable to fly since hunters shot through her wing, told the paper. Every year the couple has raised a brood of chicks which Rodan has taught to fly since Malena cannot, Vokic said. This year is expected to be no different. In August, Rodan and the young will start to prepare for their long journey to winter in South Africa while Malena remains in Brodski Varos until the return of her mate in the spring.
■UNITED STATES
Beware online ‘servicemen’
Online scammers are posing as US servicemen posted overseas and promising love and marriage to cheat women out of thousands of dollars, the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID) has warned. Special CID agents cautioned that they had learned of multiple incidents in which people online posed as US soldiers and got “romantically involved ... with female victims and prey on their emotions and patriotism.” Army CID spokesman Chris Grey said the scammers often used information about real soldiers, including their names and ranks, and found photographs of soldiers online to create a false identity. These individuals promise “true love, but only end up breaking hearts and bank accounts,” the CID said. “These perpetrators, often from other countries, most notably from Ghana, Angola and Nigeria, are good at what they do and are quite familiar with American culture,” Grey said.
■UNITED STATES
Walmart teen charged
A teenager who allegedly made a loudspeaker announcement earlier this month ordering all black people to leave a southern New Jersey Walmart store has been charged in a similar incident at the same store just after Christmas. The 16-year-old Atlantic County boy, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, was charged last week with harassment and bias intimidation in the March 14 incident. Walmart has apologized and made changes to the store’s intercom system to prevent future incidents.
■UNITED STATES
Series to feature Palin
Sarah Palin, widely considered to be weighing a run for US president, will be the subject of a US television series by British producer Mark Burnett, Discovery Communications Inc said on Thursday. The show, called Sarah Palin’s Alaska, will be an eight-part series about the former governor of Alaska and her home state to premiere on The Learning Channel. Burnett produced the US reality shows Survivor and The Apprentice.
■UNITED STATES
Horses rampage in suburb
It was a different kind of rush hour as a herd of horses galloped wildly through a Southern California town for up to two hours before they were lassoed. Ranch hand Abel Canales at the OK Corral in Otay Mesa says wild horses from neighboring Mexico apparently coaxed about a dozen horses and colts out of their stalls on Wednesday afternoon. Police and Border Patrol trucks and news helicopters followed as they loped down suburban streets in the Eastlake area of Chula Vista and through the local Olympic Training Center. Canales says he eventually lassoed the lead horse and managed to guide the tired herd back.
■UNITED STATES
Suspect a ‘nice hacker’
He’s unemployed and isn’t much of a computer expert. The Frenchman accused of infiltrating Twitter and peeping at the accounts of US President Barack Obama and singers Britney Spears and Lily Allen says he wanted to reveal just how vulnerable online data systems are to break-ins and he says he didn’t mean any harm. “I’m a nice hacker,” suspect Francois Cousteix told France 3 television on Thursday, a day after he was released from police questioning, adding that his goal was to warn Internet users about data security. Officials say it appears Hacker Croll did not tweet in other peoples’ names or try to make money out of his information.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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