AUSTRALIA
Aboriginal health improves
The nation is on track to halving Aboriginal child mortality and progress is being made in raising indigenous life-expectancy rates overall, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday. Indigenous children are twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday as other children and Aboriginal men are estimated to die 11.5 years earlier than other males. Delivering her annual report on the nation’s indigenous people, Gillard said bridging the gap on life expectancy was a 25-year project and “while the challenge is very large ... some progress is being made. The target of halving the infant mortality rates for indigenous children under five by 2018 is on track.”
INDIA
New Delhi holds quake drill
More than 40,000 people in New Delhi yesterday took part in a mass earthquake drill as the tremor-prone city of 16 million seeks to improve its disaster preparedness. “We want to find out how capable we are to deal with natural and man-made disasters. ‘Be prepared’ is the slogan for today,” said R.K. Dheer, an official at the National Disaster Management Authority in New Delhi. Students and volunteers took part in the drill in schools, colleges, hospitals, metro stations and crowded markets. Experts have long questioned Delhi’s ability to withstand a major earthquake because of lax safety standards, widespread illegal building and a lack of emergency planning.
AFGHANISTAN
New rules for TV presenters
Kabul has instructed female TV presenters to stop appearing on screen without a headscarf and to wear less make-up, officials said, raising fears about creeping restrictions on the media. “All the TV networks are in seriousness asked to stop female presenters from appearing on TV without a veil and with dense make-up,” the Ministry of Information and Culture said. “All the female newscasters on Afghan TV channels are also asked to respect Islamic and Afghan values,” it added. A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday that the ministry took the decision after coming under pressure from the Ulema council, the country’s highest religious body of Islamic scholars.
JAPAN
TEPCO eyed tsunami review
A Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) briefing paper indicates that the utility was planning a reassessment of tsunami risks just before last year’s tsunami devastated its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO presented the paper to Japan’s nuclear regulators on March 7 last year, four days before the tsunami. It promised a new risk assessment by October last year. The paper summarized recent studies that suggested the plant could be hit by a tsunami up to 10m in height, higher than the 6m surge it was designed to withstand.
MALDIVES
Nasheed rejects summons
Ousted president Mohamed Nasheed rejected a police summons to take a statement about his actions in office, his spokesman said yesterday. Nasheed’s former foreign minister Ahmed Naseem said the police had asked the former president to explain his controversial order to arrest a judge last month. Nasheed said he was forced to resign following threats of violence from rebel police and army officers. International diplomatic pressure has mounted on President Mohamed Waheed not to escalate tensions. A visiting EU delegation in a statement asked the government to stop a campaign of “political retribution” targeting Nasheed’s supporters.
UNITED STATES
Mormons apologize to Jews
Mormon church leaders in Salt Lake City, Utah, apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife, but offends members of many other religions. Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large. Mormons believe posthumous baptism by proxy allows deceased persons to receive the Gospel in the afterlife. The church believes departed souls can then accept or reject the baptismal rites and contends the offerings are not intended to offend anyone.
LIBYA
Fighters stage show of force
Thousands of fighters have held a mass parade in Tripoli, showing off heavy machine guns and rocket launchers and firing rifles in the air. The procession on Tuesday was a show of force by members of 100 militias that announced a new, unified military council the day before. It appeared intended as a warning to anyone who might stage attacks during celebrations this week of the one-year anniversary of the start of the uprising that ended with the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in October last year. Fears of pro-Qaddafi activities have mounted following a call by one of his sons for a new uprising.
FRANCE
African leaders probed
Investigators have searched the luxury Paris home of a son of the president of Equatorial Guinea. Tuesday’s search was part of a lengthy probe into claims that three African leaders have misspent public funds. Police said investigating judges were present. It wasn’t immediately clear if possessions were seized. In September, judicial officials seized 16 luxury cars, including a Bugatti Veyron, allegedly belonging to the son of Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang as part of the probe. Obiang, and the leaders of Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville, are targeted in the probe, which opened in December 2010.
RUSSIA
Jewel thieves arrested
Police arrested 10 Colombian nationals who were attempting to smuggle stolen jewelry valued at US$1.4 million out of the country, the transport police said on Tuesday. The criminals were carrying some of the jewelry in their luggage, while a female accomplice wore some on her body, the press release said. The jewelry belongs to several companies that were planning to display the pieces at an international exhibition next month. It was stolen earlier this month.
FRANCE
Tiny bird flies far
A tiny songbird weighing as much as two tablespoons of sugar migrates from the Arctic to Africa and back, a distance of up to 29,000km, scientists reported yesterday. The size of an undernourished sparrow, the northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) tips the scales at just 25g, but biologists who tagged the tawny-and-white insectivore were stunned at its flight endurance. They attached minute geolocators, each weighing just 1.2g to the legs of 46 wheatears in Alaska and on Baffin Island in northeastern Canada. The Alaskan birds spent the winter in Africa before returning, a journey of about 14,500km each way, in which they flew on average 290km a day.
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
RSS