CHINA
Police try polishing image
Police appear to be trying to improve their often harsh public image. One city is trying to do it with more fashionable red raincoats for their female traffic officers. State media yesterday said the new raincoats made their debut on Sunday in the heart of Chongqing. The makeover is one of the more colorful efforts police are making to reach out to a public long angry over corruption and abuse of power. It will take far more than surface changes if cases in recent years are any indication: One Shanghai man who killed six policemen in a stabbing spree in 2008 drew widespread public sympathy with allegations that he lashed out to avenge torture in police custody. Police are also reaching out to the public online. The Xinhua news agency on Tuesday reported that at least 500 police bureaus have started communicating with the world’s largest online population via social networking Web sites similar to Twitter, which is banned by Beijing. Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱) told a national police conference last month that police should master the tool for better interaction and to hear complaints.
SRI LANKA
Cricket trumps elections
Colombo yesterday postponed council elections near three cricket World Cup venues as the nation seeks to put on a flawless show as co-hosts of the prestigious event. The Colombo Municipal Council will not go to the polls as scheduled in March, while four other councils in the central and southern provinces will also be delayed to avoid clashing with the tournament. “There will be no elections in these areas while World Cup matches will be played,” an information department official said.
CHINA
Cold snap affects thousands
Frigid weather in the south and center of the country has forced the emergency evacuation of about 58,000 people and caused 1.35 billion yuan (US$204 million) in economic losses, the government said yesterday. Snow and sleet that pelted a broad swathe of the country from Sichuan Province to Jiangxi Province also destroyed 1,200 homes and damaged 6,600 buildings, the Civil Affairs Ministry said. Only one fatality has been attributed to the cold weather, but more than 3.8 million people were affected by the sleet and ice that clogged roads in the area over the New Year holiday, the ministry said in a statement. More than 142,000 hectares of crop land was also damaged in the cold snap, it said. Earlier media reports said tens of thousands of people were stranded on roads in the region over the New Year holiday, while prices for perishable food items skyrocketed as supplies could not been shipped into urban areas.
KYRGYZSTAN
Putin might be immortalized
Already known for his flinty gaze and rock-hard muscles, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could find himself immortalized as the name of a mountain peak in Kyrgyzstan. The government of the Central Asian state has put forward a bill proposing that an as-yet unnamed peak in the Tian Shan mountain range be called the Peak of Vladimir Putin, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. At 4,446m, the peak towers over its diminutive inspiration. Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev has signed the bill, which must then be approved by the parliament. Putin himself has spoken against a cult of personality, although his portrait along with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hangs above the desks of many Russian officials.
LITHUANIA
National perfume launched
The government is pioneering a new type of national symbol to convey the character of the ex-Soviet Baltic state in a fragrant way with a bottle of perfume. The foreign ministry has already sent bottles of the new fragrance to all ambassadors accredited to Vilnius. The project with olfactory appeal is “a good example of how to communicate Lithuania to the public in an innovative way,” a ministry statement said. “We wanted to create something special, representing Lithuania and the Lithuanian character,” Mindaugas Stongvilas, an expert in emotional communication behind the project, told the daily Vilniaus diena. The perfume “Lithuania” is a blend of sandalwood, cedar and musk intended to connote the Indo-European origins of the Lithuanian language as well as Lithuanian strength of character, its designer said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Schooner coming to pubs
Pubgoers could soon ditch their traditional pint in favor of a “schooner,” a smaller measure of beer used in Australia, under government changes announced on Tuesday. At the moment, pubs and restaurants are limited to selling alcoholic drinks in certain measures, but the government wants to introduce a new range in response to changing trade practices and consumer tastes. Instead of choosing between halves or pints, drinkers would also have the option of a schooner, the equivalent of two-thirds of a pint. Wine glasses would also see a change. “We have listened to consumers and businesses. They have called for fixed quantities to be kept but with greater flexibility. That is what this change will deliver,” Science Minister David Willetts said in a statement. Under the proposed change, a glass of wine could be sold in measures under 75ml, much lower than the current limit of 125ml.
UNITED KINGDOM
Turtles swim up to 150 days
Leatherback turtles swim for thousands of kilometers across the South Atlantic to get to their feeding grounds, a trip that takes some of them 150 days to complete, researchers said yesterday. The findings are important for conservationists looking to protect the turtles from threats such as fishing nets and hooks, which have been blamed for the dramatically depleted population of leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean, researchers said. The five-year study followed the movement of female turtles from the world’s largest breeding colony in Gabon, central Africa, as they swam to feeding grounds across the South Atlantic. Researchers attached electronic satellite tracking equipment to the backs of 25 female turtles, as they finished nesting on beaches and were returning to the sea. One female was tracked making a 7,563km journey traveling in a straight line across the South Atlantic from Africa to South America, said Matthew Witt, a marine biologist who took part in the study. At a pace of 50km a day, that trip took about 150 days of consistent swimming, he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Quake rocks Yorkshire
The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded a magnitude 3.6 tremor in North Yorkshire at 9pm on Monday. It followed another nearby quake of the same magnitude on Dec. 21. “It is significant by UK standards but nothing to worry about, absolutely nothing to worry about. You don’t get damage until magnitude 5s and they are very rare in the UK,” said Julian Bukits, a seismologist at the BGS. The largest tremor in Britain was the 1931 Dogger Bank earthquake, which measured 6.1 on the Richter scale and was felt in France and Belgium.
UNITED STATES
Twins born in different years
A couple welcomed their new daughter to the world in the last minute of last year — and a twin son in the first minute of this year. Ashley Fansler gave birth to Madisen Carin Lewis at 11:59am on New Year’s Eve in Machesney Park, 135km northwest of Chicago. Aiden Everette Lewis was born a minute later, at 12am on New Year’s Day. The Rockford Register Star reports that Fansler wasn’t due until the end of this month, but doctors at Rockford Memorial Hospital scheduled a cesarean section for Friday evening to avoid complications. The father, Brandon Lewis, says one of the doctors was counting the minutes down before the births. Lewis says it was “definitely the best” New Year’s countdown he’s had.
GUATEMALA
Teen held after bus blast
Security forces have arrested a 19-year-old female gang member suspected of placing a bomb on a city bus which killed seven people and wounded 15. Police and Public Ministry agents who captured her on Tuesday said they had been unable to firmly establish the identity of the suspect, in part because she has identified herself to authorities using at least two different names. Authorities picked up the young woman in a series of searches after the blast, which ripped through a packed public bus in Guatemala City late on Monday. Tattoos on the suspect identify her as a member of “a large criminal gang,” Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz said late on Tuesday. Authorities have been cautious in asserting what caused the blast, as a technical report was expected by today but government communications officer Ronaldo Robles described it as a “reprehensible terrorist attack since it was committed against innocent people.” Criminal gangs would be the obvious suspects as bus drivers paid US$1.5 million in extortion money last year.
UNITED KINGDOM
Japan bassist Karn dies
Mick Karn, former bass player with British art rock band Japan, has died. He was 52. “It’s with profound sadness that we have to inform you that Mick finally lost his battle with cancer and passed away peacefully,” said a statement on his Web site posted on Tuesday. He died at his home in London surrounded by family and friends, it said. Karn was born Adonis Michaelides in Cyprus, and according to a biography on his Web site, arrived in London at the age of three. He played the mouth organ as a young boy before taking up the violin, bassoon and, eventually, the bass guitar. Along with a group of friends, he formed the band Japan and performed for the first time in June, 1974, when he was just 15. Japan were best known for its final album Tin Drum, released in 1981, which featured the haunting, minimalist track Ghosts, their biggest chart hit.
GERMANY
Hagens to show own corpse
The German anatomist dubbed “Doctor Death,” who has turned stomachs worldwide preserving and displaying dead bodies, said yesterday he is terminally ill and plans to exhibit his own corpse. Gunther von Hagens, 65, told the Bild mass circulation daily he is suffering from incurable Parkinson’s disease and intends to have his dead body put on display to “welcome” visitors to his exhibition. “My wife Angelina Whalley, the curator of the Body Worlds exhibition, will plastinate my body. We are already making preparations for this,” he told Bild. “My plastinated corpse will then stand in a welcoming pose at the entrance of my exhibition. I want to be able to welcome my guests even after I am dead.”
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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