■ NEW ZEALAND
Police red-faced over pot
Police burning seized cannabis were left red-faced when a change in the wind sent smoke billowing over a primary school, the Marlborough Express reported yesterday. Officers in the South Island town of Picton were destroying cannabis and shredded paper in an incinerator at the police station when the incident occurred, the newspaper said. It said St Joseph’s School principal Peter Knowles noticed the smoke on Friday morning and complained to police, who immediately extinguished the fire. Senior Sergeant Peter Payne said a small amount of cannabis was in the incinerator when the wind changed direction and unexpectedly took the smoke over the school.
■ PHILIPPINES
Jobs planned for south
The government is to offer money and jobs to its militant-hit southern communities amid peace talks with Muslim rebels, an aide to President Benigno Aquino III said yesterday. The program would give tens of thousands of displaced people access to basic infrastructure and health services as they rebuild homes, Aquino’s peace adviser, Teresita Deles, told reporters. She said Manila was hoping to resume peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front at the earliest next month. Deles said the government would put in place an employment guarantee scheme for one member of every household affected by the conflict, while skills training would be offered to other adults.
■ SINGAPORE
Land swap with Malaysia
The government has agreed to a land swap with Malaysia to resolve a dispute that has lingered since the two countries split 45 years ago. The announcement was made on Monday by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and his Malaysian counterpart, Najib Razak, at a joint news conference. Malaysia will give up a train station it owns near downtown Singapore in return for six land parcels in the city-state to be controlled by M-S Pte Ltd — a venture 60 percent owned by Malaysian state investment fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd and 40 percent owned by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Ltd. Malaysia held on to the station after it expelled Singapore from the brief federation the two sides formed in the mid-1960s and negotiations over it have taken place for decades. A joint statement said the two sides will decide the timing of the swap by the end of this year.
■ CHINA
Tough energy standards set
The National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday that effective Nov. 1, all new factories and other investment projects must be reviewed for energy efficiency and those that are too wasteful would be denied government approval. The restrictions are part of government efforts to curb surging energy demand, pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases that many scientists believe are the cause of global warming. The assessments are to be carried out by third parties and reviewed by the government. Projects will be rejected if they fail to meet energy conservation standards, the planning agency said. Approved projects will be supervised to make sure they are hitting their efficiency targets and could be fined if they fail to do so. Beijing has committed to an ambitious energy efficiency campaign, but announced last month that it had suffered a setback as a stimulus-fueled building boom drove growth in steel, cement and other heavy industry. Beijing’s plans call for cutting energy intensity, or energy used per unit of economic output, by 20 percent from 2006 levels by this year.
■ POLAND
Anaconda slithers in toilet
A 73-year-old pensioner was shocked to find a 2m long anaconda peering up out of her toilet bowl on Monday in her apartment in Wroclaw, local police said. “After she raised the lid of the toilet seat, the lady saw a huge snake that wanted to slither out of the toilet bowl. She immediately slammed down the toilet lid and called us,” Wroclaw police spokesman Pawel Petrykowski told reporters. “She was certainly very frightened, but managed to keep her wits about her,” he said. After arriving on the scene, police and an employee from the local zoo managed to catch the reptile, native to South America. “It must have somehow gotten into the toilet bowl via the plumbing pipes,” Petrykowski said. While the anaconda was taken to the zoo, police launched an investigation aimed at identifying its owner.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Cat woman faces jail
A woman who sparked an Internet hate campaign after she was caught on camera dumping a cat into a rubbish bin was charged on Monday with causing unnecessary suffering to the animal. Mary Bale, a 45-year-old bank worker, has also been charged with failing to provide the cat with a suitable environment, a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said. Bale will appear before magistrates in Coventry, central England, on Oct. 19 to answer the charges. Both offences can carry a prison sentence and a lifetime ban from keeping animals. The cat, Lola, was believed to have been stuck in the plastic wheelie bin for 15 hours until her owners Darryl and Stephanie Mann heard her meowing. They found out what happened after checking footage from a closed-circuit television camera they had installed at their house after their car was repeatedly bumped by other vehicles.
■ FINLAND
Deaf rapper to flash mob
Deaf Finnish rapper Signmark plans to stage a flash mob event in New York as part of a seminar on the rights of the disabled, he told reporters on Monday. “We want to send a message to the UN’s leaders that everyone should have the chance to participate in decision-making, and that minorities need to be heard more in their communities,” said Signmark, whose real name is Marko Vuoriheimo. Vuoriheimo elicited the help of Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb and the UN Special Rapporteur on Disability, South African Shuaib Chalklen, to organize the “Lable Us Able” seminar at Finland’s UN mission today. The flashmob and the seminar coincide with the opening week of the UN general assembly as well as International Deaf Awareness Week.
■ UNITED STATES
Senate goes after piracy
A bill introduced in the Senate on Monday would give law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on Web sites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. The bill will give the Justice Department the “tools to track and shut down Web sites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods,” Leahy’s office said. The illegal products offered by Web sites would also include pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said.
■ BRAZIL
Painter chimp draws crowds
A retired circus chimpanzee is the Cezanne of simians, drawing crowds to a zoo to watch him paint. The 26-year-old chimp called Jimmy has been producing surprisingly lovely paintings each day for three weeks at the Niteroi Zoo near Rio de Janeiro. Trainer Roched Seba said on Monday Jimmy doesn’t like the toys and other diversions that other chimps enjoy. So three weeks ago, Seba introduced him to painting after reading about animals in zoos elsewhere that enjoyed a little canvas time. Temperamental as great artists can be, Jimmy at times declines to paint if his cage is surrounded by too many gawkers. However, for at least 30 minutes a day, he carefully dips his brush into plastic paint containers and uses broad, bold strokes to create his art.
■ UNITED STATES
O’Donnell wins support
The Republican right is swinging behind the Tea Party’s beleaguered heroine, Christine O’Donnell, despite a stream of revelations about her past, including her claim that she dabbled in witchcraft. Senator Jim DeMint, a conservative who is emerging as one of the most powerful figures in the Republican Party, is contributing US$250,000 for an ad in support of O’Donnell. His backing contrasts with the lukewarm response of the Republican Party establishment, which opposed her in the first place and appears to be squirming over the quotes being unearthed from interviews over the past decade about gay people, sexual morality and other issues. The Washington Post published an interview she gave in 2006 in which she is quoted as saying homosexuals suffer from an “identity disorder.” However, many Tea Party activists and conservative Republicans appear unconcerned.
■ UNITED STATES
Gates assures Barak
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates assured his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak, on Monday that the US shared Israeli concern about Moscow’s sale of cruise missiles to Syria. “In today’s meeting, the secretary [Gates] expressed that we share Israel’s concerns about proliferation of advanced weapons that could destabilize the region,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. Gates also addressed the issue with his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Serdyukov, when he was in Washington on Wednesday last week, the spokesman said. “Russia has a right to sell weapons to other countries but as they do so, we hope that they take into account the strategic ramifications of each sale,” Morrell said. News of the sale emerged on Friday when Serdyukov told reporters in Washington that Moscow would fulfill a 2007 contract to supply Yakhont cruise missiles to Damascus. The US$300 million sale will see Syria receiving around 72 cruise missiles, the Interfax news agency said on Sunday, citing defense industry sources.
■UNITED STATES
Rare burrowing owl rescued
A rare Florida burrowing owl was rescued from Oasis of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, where the raptor was apparently being used as a pet, officials said on Monday. Agents of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) discovered the protected bird on the golf course of the huge ocean liner. The agents were able to remove the animal and release the owl in an open field. “Never in all of my 25 years with the FWC have I seen anything like this, and I have responded to some strange calls,” FWC Lieutenant David Bingham said.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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