■FRANCE
Paris debates Maori heads
The National Assembly on Thursday began debate on returning up to 20 Maori heads to New Zealand, setting the stage for a vote next week to give back the tattooed warrior heads. Between 15 and 20 mummified heads of Maori warriors are stored in several museums, notably seven or eight at Paris’ Quai Branly, home to a big collection of tribal art set up by former president Jacques Chirac. A museum in Rouen in 2007 got the ball rolling when it offered to return its Maori heads to New Zealand, but the government stepped in and put the decision on hold to look at a broader national restitution of the artifacts. The Senate voted in June last year to return all of the heads under a bill that marks the first time that an entire group of artifacts will be taken from museums, as opposed to one disputed object. A vote in the National Assembly is scheduled for Tuesday and all parliamentary leaders have said they will support restitution.
■INDONESIA
Treasure hunter investigated
The government is investigating treasure hunter Michael Hatcher for allegedly plundering an undersea trove and trying to smuggle porcelain, an official said on Thursday. Fisheries ministry official Adji Sularso said the probe came after authorities seized 2,360 items dating from the Chinese Ming dynasty. “There are strong indications that Michael Hatcher has been involved in an illegal shipwreck salvage in Blanakan waters,” he told reporters. The porcelain was loaded in two ships that were intercepted in waters off West Java in September, he said. Hatcher, who was reportedly born in Britain but grew up as an orphan in Australia, has excavated shipwrecks in Indonesia since the mid-1980s. “If he’s proven guilty, he could be jailed for five years and fined 50 million rupiah (US$5,500),” Sularso said.
■INDONESIA
Monkey meat sellers nabbed
Police have arrested a couple who made meatballs from the flesh of protected monkeys, an animal conservation group said on Wednesday. The pair poached dozens of rare Javan langurs, also known as silver-leaf monkeys, from Baluran National Park on Java island, a statement animal protection group ProFauna said. “Police found 30kg [of] meat estimated to come from 20-25 individuals, two rifles and a live langur,” the statement said. “The couple admitted that they had known what they did was against the law and they hunted the monkeys for their meat because beef and chicken were more expensive than the protected monkeys.”
■AUSTRALIA
Officials sorry over graffiti
Officials apologized on Wednesday after cleaners scrubbed graffiti by famed British street artist Banksy from a city wall. Melbourne’s city council said the cleaners were simply carrying out orders to remove graffiti from unauthorized sites when they destroyed the stencil of a parachuting rat. “It is very unfortunate that this Banksy artwork has now been removed,” council chief Kathy Alexander said. “We will now be acting to implement retrospective legal street art permits to ensure other famous or significant street artworks within the city are protected.” Reports said the piece was one of several created during a 2003 visit by Banksy, whose distinctive style and provocative slogans have made him one of the world’s best-known graffiti artists.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Show boosts lingerie sales
Sales of sultry lingerie among older women are booming thanks to the glamorous 40-somethings of Sex and the City 2 and Cougar Town, retail chain Debenhams reported on Thursday. The hit TV show and forthcoming movie featuring the bedroom antics of women in their 40s and 50s and their much younger partners is being credited with a rise in demand for lingerie from women of the same age, Debenhams said. The department store said a nationwide analysis of the most popular lingerie styles from October to last month revealed that women over 40 have given the more seductive side of the lingerie industry a big boost.
■IRAQ
Flight turns into nightmare
The first commercial flight between Baghdad and London in 20 years has turned into a nightmare for Iraq after its national airline boss had his passport seized and a chartered plane was impounded. The transport ministry in Baghdad on Thursday confirmed that Iraqi Airways chief Kifah Hassan’s travel document was taken after papers were served by lawyers acting for Kuwait Airways, which says it is owed US$1.2 billion. The dispute dates back to now executed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when, according to the oil-rich emirate, 10 of its planes were plundered after its airport had been seized.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Man goes round in circles
A man who thought he was sailing along the coast of southern England had to be rescued by emergency services after his motor boat ran out of fuel while repeatedly circling a small island in the River Thames estuary. The man, who had no nautical guides and only had a roadmap to navigate by, had been trying to sail from Gillingham, about 60km east of London, to Southampton on April 19 by following the southern coast of England, but he ended simply doing laps of the Isle of Sheppey a short distance away in the mouth of the Thames. Eventually a lifeboat and coastguard were sent to rescue him after he used up all his fuel and ran aground, officials said on Wednesday. He told them he had been trying to navigate by keeping the coastline to his right.
■EUROPEAN UNION
Liquids ban to end by 2013
The EU will end restrictions on liquids in air passengers’ hand luggage by April 2013 in an overhaul of aviation security, the EU’s executive said on Thursday. European airports will have to install new technology capable of detecting liquid explosives as a result of the move. The ban on liquids came into force in Europe in 2006 after British police uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to blow up transatlantic airliners bound for North America using bombs made from liquid explosives. Three Britons were jailed for life in September for their plan to destroy at least seven planes — carrying more than 200 passengers each — using explosives hidden in soft-drink bottles. The security rules have led to scenes of frustration at airport security desks when passengers have been forced to throw away drinks containers, bottles of perfume and even tubes of sun cream before boarding planes. As a preliminary step from April next year, bottles of duty free drinks and perfumes bought at third country airports or on board third country airlines and carried in tamper-proof bags will be allowed and will be screened. Currently, these liquids are only allowed in cabin baggage if they come from four countries — the US, Canada, Singapore and Croatia.
■UNITED STATES
Man backs car through wall
A 67-year-old Oklahoma man had quite a fright after backing his car at high speed through a seventh-floor exterior wall of a parking garage. Ralph Hudson said his foot got stuck between his Mercedes’ brake and gas pedal, as he was backing up in a towering parking garage in downtown Tulsa on Wednesday. The car burst through the building’s exterior wall and sprayed debris on a parking lot below before stopping just in time. The car’s trunk and part of its back wheels were left hanging precariously out of the building, but officials were able to drive it safely back inside. Police officer Jason Willingham said Hudson was not ticketed over the incident.
■ARGENTINA
Chavez sends first tweet
President Hugo Chavez, known for his long-winded speeches, will be forced to express himself much more succinctly in his new Twitter postings, the first of which was sent out on Wednesday. “Hi, how’s it going? Here I am, just like I said I would be, at midnight,” read the firebrand leader’s first post shortly after the stroke of 12 midnight, received by some 36,000 people who follow his site. “I’m going to Brazil,” he tweeted. “I’m very happy to work on behalf of Venezuela,” he said alluding to a brief summit he had planned later on Wednesday with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Chavez posted his first tweet under the profile @chavezcandaga, which roughly translated from colloquial Venezuelan dialect, means “wild” or “naughty” Chavez.
■UNITED STATES
Whale grabbed trainer’s hair
A final sheriff’s report says a SeaWorld Orlando trainer was lying on her stomach, nose-to-nose with a killer whale when her long hair floated on the water into the animal’s mouth and she was dragged to her death. The report on Wednesday by homicide detectives said 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau had managed to free herself at first and tried to swim to the surface after she was dragged underwater by the whale named Tilikum, but the orca thwarted her attempts by striking her at least twice. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said she was then dragged to her death at the end of a Feb. 24 Dine with Shamu show. Another SeaWorld trainer told detectives he sounded an alarm when he noticed Brancheau struggling to free her hair. When he turned back, she had disappeared underwater.
■UNITED STATES
Prison finds new help
Two members of the work detail at a Connecticut state prison are expected to be penned there for life, working on the fence line to remove weeds and poison ivy. They seem to like the work and actually find the poison ivy delicious. Nibbles and Bits, a pair of goats, were taken to the Corrigan-Radgowski prison in a rural patch of southeastern Connecticut just over a year ago after being rescued as kids from separate area farms that didn’t want them. Joe Schoonmaker, the corrections officer who oversees landscaping at the 1,500-inmate prison, heard about the goats and asked the warden. “We threw the idea at him that we could use them to get into the hard-to-get areas, like the hillside and the fence line,” he said. So when it’s impossible or impractical to get a weed trimmer or lawnmower somewhere on prison property, Schoonmaker calls in Nibbles and Bits. Schoonmaker and Officer Jason Ware pay the US$20-per-month cost of feed — oats — from their own pockets. Everything else the animals need has been built by prisoners or donated.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
As violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Iran is walking a tightrope by supporting Hezbollah without being dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands. With a focus on easing its isolation and reviving its battered economy, Iran is aware that war could complicate efforts to secure relief from crippling sanctions. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, has intensified, especially after last week’s sabotage on Hezbollah’s communications that killed 39 people. Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon followed, killing hundreds. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket barrages. Despite the surge in
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