NEPAL
One-legged man climbs peak
A Hungarian climber who lost his right leg in a climbing accident last year has scaled the world’s fourth-highest mountain with a prosthetic leg, his expedition said. Romanian-born Zsolt Eross, 43, who in 2002 became the first Hungarian to reach the top of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, reached the 8,516m peak of Lhotse on Saturday. New Zealander Mark Inglis set the gold standard among amputee climbers in 2006, when he became the first double amputee to summit Everest.
AUSTRALIA
Widow wins rights to sperm
A woman yesterday won a court battle to use her dead husband’s sperm to have a baby in a landmark case in New South Wales, where in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment is banned without consent of the donor. Jocelyn Edwards, 40, and husband Mark had discussed fertility treatment after she failed to fall pregnant and they were due to sign IVF consent forms on Aug. 6 last year. However, the husband died in a workplace accident the day before. His sperm was collected after his death and his widow has been fighting since then to win control over it. New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Robert Hulme found in her favour as the administrator of her late husband’s estate. However, she cannot have the sperm inseminated in New South Wales. “It’s the right decision. Mark would be so happy, we’re going to have our baby. That’s what I plan to do,” Edwards told reporters outside the court. “I just want to get past today, enjoy the moment. It’s been a long, long, long, difficult time,” she added.
JAPAN
UN probing nuclear crisis
A team of specialists from the UN atomic watchdog arrived yesterday to join other international experts investigating Japan’s nuclear crisis. A six-strong delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) flew to Tokyo’s Narita airport from Vienna in preparation for a fact-finding mission from May 24 to June 2. In all, a 20-member mission will compile a report on the emergency to be presented to IAEA member states next month at a ministerial-level conference in Vienna.
JORDAN
Bomb kills one, wounds four
An officer was killed and four soldiers were wounded in a roadside bombing in the Logar region of Afghanistan on Sunday, the army said. An army spokesman said an army humanitarian convoy was hit, naming the dead officer as Majed Omar Abu Kudairi. The lives of the four soldiers wounded were not in danger. The country says it has troops in Afghanistan on a no-combat humanitarian mission, and it has since last year undertaken the training of Afghan police at the request of NATO. However, it admits having fought the Taliban in Afghanistan after a suicide bombing carried out by a Jordanian militant in January last year that killed six CIA members and an officer in the country’s intelligence service.
CHINA
Mining accidents kill 13
Thirteen people were killed in two coal mine accidents on the weekend, state media said yesterday, the latest fatal incidents to strike the nation’s notoriously dangerous collieries. In Hunan Province, seven people were killed and one injured late on Sunday in a gas accident at a mine in Lengshuijiang, Xinhua reported. Earlier on Sunday, six people were killed and 27 hurt in a similar incident in Sichuan Province. Nearly 200 people were working at the mine in Rongxian county at the time, but most escaped.
FRANCE
Feminists pan sexist talk
About 500 people turned out in Paris on Sunday for a protest by feminist groups against a wave of sexist commentary generated by IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. Strauss-Kahn, who had been favorite to win next year’s French presidential election, was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping and attempted rape in New York last week after an alleged assault on a hotel maid. While he was pilloried abroad, many of his French supporters took to the airwaves, blogs and newspaper columns to defend him, attack US justice and, in some cases, to question the integrity of the alleged victim. The feminists anger was turned on male commentators in the media — one magazine editor dismissed the attack as “touching up the help.”
BELGIUM
EU condemns Sudan action
The EU on Sunday condemned the fighting in Sudan’s flashpoint Abyei district, where government troops earlier overran fighters of the south’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said it violated the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the two sides to end the civil war. EU foreign ministers would be considering the crisis at their scheduled meeting in Brussels, she added. Ashton’s statement followed an appeal earlier on Sunday by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who condemned the fighting in Abyei district, calling for an immediate ceasefire and pullout from the district. Abyei was granted special status under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended 22 years of devastating civil war between north and south, and it requires both sides to keep their troops out until a vote on its future.
EGYPT
Al-Qaeda talks about Libya
Al-Qaeda’s likely next leader says NATO’s operations in Libya are meant to topple Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi so the West can install a puppet government and control the country’s oil wealth. In a 49-minute audio recording, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man in al-Qaeda, called on Libyans to acquire weapons to use in a guerrilla war against the Western coalition. The audio was posted on militant Internet forums late on Saturday. The sites said it was recorded before US commandos killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 in his hide-out in Pakistan. Al-Zawahiri is widely believed to be a leading candidate to replace bin Laden as head of the group. He is believed to be operating from somewhere near the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier.
ITALY
Father left baby to die in car
A distraught Italian father who left his baby in a hot car for five hours after forgetting to drop her off at daycare may face manslaughter charges after the 22-month-old died early on Sunday. Elena was barely breathing when her father, Lucio Petrizzi, rushed her to hospital on Wednesday. The professor of veterinary medicine said he was convinced he had dropped her off at daycare on his way to work. An initial charge of abandoning a minor may be changed to manslaughter, ANSA news agency reported, quoting Italian prosecutor Bruno Auriemma. The toddler’s grieving mother, Chiara Sciarrini, who is eight months pregnant, publicly stood by her husband, telling reporters that what happened to him “could have happened to anyone.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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