FINLAND
Niinistoe cruises to victory
Conservative pro-European Sauli Niinistoe won the nation’s presidential election on Sunday, easily defeating Green liberal challenger Pekka Haavisto as had been widely expected. “It looks like Niinistoe has won,” Haavisto said to public television YLE. “More than 1 million people have supported me and I’m quite satisfied with that,” he added. Niinistoe was credited with 62.6 percent of voter sympathies, while Haavisto took just 37.4 percent, the justice ministry said after all votes had been counted. The definitive results will be confirmed by election officials tomorrow, but the numbers released were in line with what opinion polls had predicted. A no-nonsense career politician, Niinistoe’s victory ends a 30-year spell of Social Democratic presidents in the small Nordic country.
NORTH KOREA
Accordion cover goes viral
A group of accordion players is proving to be an unlikely hit on YouTube, attracting nearly 320,000 viewings in five days with their spirited version of a 1980s pop song. Five students of Pyongyang’s Kum Song School of Music are seen performing the mid-1980s hit Take on Me by Norwegian group a-ha, a rare performance of popular Western music in the reclusive state. The performance in December last year was filmed by visiting Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, who posted the clip on the video-sharing Web site on Wednesday. He has invited the three men and two women to play a mixture of Korean and international hits during the Festival Barents Spektakel, a cultural event to be held in Norway. It could not immediately be confirmed that the accordion players had accepted the invitation.
CROATIA
‘Snow White’ born in village
A baby born in a village cut off by a blizzard is to be called “Snow White,” the Sata Internet news site reported on Sunday. Her mother, Marta Glavota, 30, called emergency services for help to deliver the baby, but snow, which has been falling since Thursday, closed off all access to her southern village of Vitusa. Emergency services got to within 4km of the village before being forced back. A doctor then called the pregnant woman and gave advice over the telephone to two neighbors, who assisted in Sunday’s birth of the black-haired girl Snjezana, meaning snow-white in Croatian. Both mother and daughter were doing well, Sata said.
HONK KONG
Turbaned Torpedo runs 10km
A 100-year-old British Indian man who claims to be the world’s oldest marathoner was all smiles after completing a 10km run at the Hong Kong Marathon on Sunday. Born in 1911 and affectionately nicknamed the “Turbaned Torpedo,” Fauja Singh finished the race in just over 1 hour, 34 minutes, organizers said, raising HK$200,000 (US$25,800) for the charity Seeing Is Believing. “The weather was very pleasant, I enjoyed the race very much,” he was quoted by local media as saying, as he crossed the finishing line, arms in the air. The centenarian attributed his physical fitness to his healthy lifestyle, including abstaining from smoking and alcohol and to following a vegetarian diet, according to local reports. Singh claimed to be the first centenarian to complete a marathon after finishing the Toronto Waterfront event in October last year. A 26-year-old male runner collapsed after crossing the finishing line of the half-marathon race and was certified dead after being sent to hospital.
UNITED STATES
Blast kills man, two sons
Days after a judge ruled against him in a child custody hearing, a father and his two young sons were killed in Graham, Washington State, on Sunday when police said he appeared to intentionally blow up a house with all three inside — a tragic ending to a bizarre case that began more than two years ago when the man’s wife went mysteriously missing in Utah. A social worker brought the two boys to Josh Powell’s home for what was to be a supervised visit, and Powell let his sons inside — but then blocked the social worker from entering, Graham Fire and Rescue Chief Gary Franz said. The social worker called her supervisors to report that she could smell gas, and moments later the home exploded. Sergeant Ed Troyer, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman, said e-mails that Powell sent authorities seemed to confirm that Powell planned the deadly blast.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Survivors of capsize found
Rescuers scouring the white-capped waters off the coast have found 17 bodies and 13 survivors from a boat overloaded with migrants that capsized almost two days ago, officials said. The boat carrying about 70 migrants from the Dominican Republic to the US territory of Puerto Rico capsized before dawn on Saturday morning and rescuers said hopes were fading for finding more survivors as search efforts were suspended because of darkness late on Sunday. “Tomorrow, the sea will start to return the bodies,” said Jeffrey Pimentel, head of firefighters at Sabana del Mar, 150km northeast of Santo Domingo. Navy Intelligence Director Luis Castro said the bodies of 12 men and five women have been found.
MEXICO
Female candidate chosen
A major political party has chosen a female presidential candidate for the first time, as the ruling party bet that a charismatic former congresswoman will help it erode the lead held by its powerful rival. After easily winning the National Action Party’s primary on Sunday night, Josefina Vazquez Mota vowed to unite a party battered by a bloody drug war and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000. “I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history,” Vazquez Mota, 51, told cheering supporters. The party’s vote for Vazquez Mota over two other candidates sets the race for the July 1 presidential election. The two other major parties had already selected their candidates. Vazquez Mota faces an uphill climb against former Mexico State governor Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the polls who could return the Institutional Revolutionary Party to power after a 12-year hiatus.
VENEZUELA
ALBA bloc makes deposit
Leaders of the eight-nation ALBA bloc have agreed to deposit 1 percent of their international reserves into a jointly administered bank as they seek to deepen economic cooperation. Officials announced the decision as President Hugo Chavez hosted leaders of the Bolivarian Alliance group, or ALBA, at a meeting in Caracas. The countries that have agreed to make such a deposit in the ALBA Bank includes members Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is unclear how much in total the countries plan to deposit in the fledgling bank.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees