SOUTH KOREA
Energy shortage faced
The country’s president has turned down the thermostat in his office and donned warmer underwear to save energy, he said yesterday, urging fellow citizens to do the same to avoid a supply shortage. The warmer underwear was initially uncomfortable, President Lee Myung-bak said in a fortnightly radio address. “But after a while, I got used to it, and now I am very warm and comfortable wearing it,” he said. Lee said the country faces an uphill battle to meet fast-rising electricity demand and could face an emergency this winter. He urged people to turn down the temperature in homes and offices, switch off unnecessary lights and use high-efficiency appliances. In September, unseasonably high temperatures caused brief but widespread rolling blackouts that hit more than 2 million homes or other premises. Officials said they had to cut off supplies because electricity reserves were too low. This month, the government announced a series of power-saving measures to take effect during the normally severe winter. Big consumers will have to cut power consumption by 10 percent compared with a year earlier during peak days that will be announced later.
PHILIPPINES
Bomb kills three, wounds 27
Suspected Islamic militants detonated a powerful bomb that killed at least three people and wounded 27 in a budget hotel packed with wedding guests in the south, officials said yesterday. Investigators believe the blast and ensuing fire that gutted the two-story Atilano Pension House in downtown Zamboanga City late on Sunday was a terrorist strike and that it was not linked to the wedding, Zamboanga Police Director Edwin de Ocampo said. Still, many of the victims were from a group of more than 20 people who occupied six of the hotel’s 35 rooms for a planned ceremony. The tragedy forced the wedding to be postponed, Zamboanga Mayor Celso Lobregat said. The blast was believed to be one of two simultaneous bombings planned by Abu Sayyaff militants. The other would have been on nearby Basilan Island, where two explosives were separately found and safely defused by authorities in Isabela City on Sunday.
BELGIUM
Cabinet might be named
The country might have a government next week, the country’s chief negotiator in charge of forming a Cabinet, Elio Di Rupo, said on Sunday, after political parties clinched a deal on next year’s budget under pressure from rising borrowing costs. The budget agreement was seen as the last major obstacle to forming a government among six parties and came hours after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Belgium’s credit to “AA” from “AA+,” pressing the country to act. The country has set a modern-day record for being without a formal government. It has been about a year-and-a-half since elections were held last June and the lack of a government at a time of bond market turmoil was one of the reasons it was downgraded.
MEXICO
UNESCO lists mariachi music
The country celebrated on Sunday as mariachi music was named to UNESCO’s list of “intangible cultural heritage” in need of preservation. The announcement will help to enhance the traditional music that has become an emblem of the country, according to a statement from the National Institute of History and Anthropology. The music was among the new entries chosen by envoys at a meeting in Indonesia to be inscribed on the UN cultural agency’s list of intangible heritage items.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
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