MALAYSIA
Textbook riles Indian party
An official says a high school text book that aims to emphasize the country’s racial harmony has riled the main ethnic Indian party by referring to the Hindu caste system. Malaysian Indian Congress Deputy President S. Subramaniam says the party wants the Education Ministry to withdraw the book Interlock or at least revoke portions that refer to the caste system. He said yesterday that the reference has hurt the minority Indians because they don’t want to be reminded of what they see as an outdated concept. The ministry says it will hear the party’s arguments before making a decision. The book is required reading for literature classes from this year.
JAPAN
Earthquake strikes north
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Niigata prefecture in the north, the Meteorological Agency said on its Web site. The quake hit at 1:45pm local time yesterday at a depth of 10km about 80km north of the city of Niigata and 330km north of Tokyo, the agency said. There were no immediate reports of damage. The epicenter was about 150km from Tokyo Electric Power Co’s -Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world’s largest, which reopened in November after it was damaged during a magnitude 6.8 quake in July 2007. Officials at Tokyo Electric were not available for comment and spokesman Katsuya Uchino did not answer calls to his mobile phone. The country, which experiences about one-fifth of the world’s earthquakes annually, lies in a zone where four tectonic plates meet and shift.
JAPAN
Rice cakes kill six
Six people choked to death and five were in a serious condition after eating traditional glutinous mochi rice cakes to celebrate the New Year in Tokyo, fire department officials said yesterday. The victims, in their 70s or older, died of suffocation over the weekend after eating the New Year delicacy, the fire department said. During the New Year period, one of the country’s biggest holidays, families traditionally cook ozouni soup and put the sticky rice cakes in the vegetable broth. “Please be aware that mochi, which is so sticky, may cause suffocation if you swallow mochi without chewing it well,” the fire department said in a statement. The fire department is advising people, especially the elderly and infants, to cut mochi into small pieces before eating it. Every year, several people in the country, mostly older people or infants, die after choking on rice cakes.
ISRAEL
Palestinian ban extended
The country on Sunday extended for six months a ban preventing Palestinians married to Israelis immigrating to the Jewish state, the prime minister’s office said in a statement. “The ministerial committee for security affairs decided tonight [Sunday] to extend for six months a text on family unification, which expired on Dec. 31,” a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. That extension until June 30 denies Palestinians the right to acquire citizenship or resident status through marriage. The so-called Family Unification provision has been the subject of an outcry from leftist movements and groups representing the country’s Arab minority, who charge the ban is “inhumane” and “racist.” The ministerial committee also asked the justice minister “to work toward early finalization of a law on family unification, which will meet the national security and long-term interests of the government of Israel,” the statement added.
SPAIN
Man nearly bins fortune
A lottery player nearly lost 9 million euros (US$12 million) in winnings after tossing tickets in the garbage, only to later discover they were winners, Spanish media said on Sunday. Ignacio Gonzalez, a lottery ticket vendor in the country’s northern Basque Country, was stunned to discover on Friday that the number he had played along with 14 friends — 48104 — had come up in a charity draw run by a Spanish organization for the blind, ONCE. However, Gonzalez’s euphoria quickly turned to despair when he could not find the winning tickets. “The New Year was off to a very good start, with a shower of millions, but on the other hand I couldn’t find the tickets,” Gonzalez told Basque radio station Radio Euskadi. After a desperate search of his home and with hope running out, Gonzalez ran out to his neighborhood garbage bin. “Without thinking about it for two seconds and in front of stunned passers-by, he dumped over the container” and began rifling through its contents, newspaper ABC wrote on Sunday. Mixed in with the garbage, Gonzalez finally found the winning tickets, no worse for wear, allowing he and his friends to collect a little more than 600,000 euros each in winnings. After the close call, Gonzalez admitted that he feared his friends would have “crucified” him if he had lost the tickets for good.
RUSSIA
Opposition leader jailed
One of the nation’s most prominent opposition leaders has been sentenced to 15 days in jail after being arrested at a New Year’s Eve protest rally. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy Russian prime minister during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, was among 68 people arrested at an unsanctioned rally in a central Moscow square. He and other protesters gathered on the opposite side of the square from an authorized protest. Nemtsov was sentenced on Sunday for failure to follow police orders, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. News agency Interfax quoted Nemtsov as saying the court refused to allow police and TV video recordings from the scene to be used as evidence. Nemtsov is one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics and a leader of Russia’s fledgling Solidarity movement.
IRAN
Valentine’s Day banned
Cupid beware: Iran says it’s cracking down on symbols of Valentine’s Day. The annual homage to romance on Feb. 14 has become popular in recent years in Iran and other places in the Middle East, but Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency reported on Sunday that a state directive now bans any cards, gifts, teddy bears or other tokens of the day — which tradition says is named after an early Christian martyr. The backlash in the Islamic Republic is part of a drive against the spread of Western culture. Other Muslim countries have also sought to stamp out Valentine’s Day, but it is celebrated widely in nearby places, such as Dubai.
UNITED STATES
Dad to stand trial for murder
An Iraqi immigrant from the Phoenix suburb of Glendale accused of killing his 20-year-old daughter because he believed she had become too Westernized is scheduled to stand trial this month. Fifty-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki is accused of slamming his Jeep into Noor Almaleki in October 2009. She laid in a coma for two weeks before dying of her injuries, causing outrage across the country about the so-called honor killing. Another woman was injured. If convicted, he will face life in prison, since prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty. The trial is set to begin on Jan. 18.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
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