NEW ZEALAND
Second needle case found
A needle has been found in a punnet of strawberries sold in the small South Island town of Geraldine over the weekend, police said yesterday, the second incident to hit the nation two months after a contamination crisis erupted in Australia. Supermarket owner Garry Sheed said he had since taken all strawberries off the shelves, but would not comment on whether the punnet was from Australia or New Zealand. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) said the person who found the needle was not harmed. “The matter has been referred to the police who are leading the criminal investigation,” a ministry spokesman told reporters. “At this stage, MPI does not have any reason to believe this is more widespread than the single discovery. However, as a precautionary measure the store has removed strawberries from shelves.”
ITALY
Di Maio open to deficit cut
Vice Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio yesterday said he was open to lowering the nation’s draft budget deficit, boosting stocks in Milan on hopes it could ease a stand-off with Brussels. The European Commission has rejected the draft budget because it sharply increases spending and the deficit to 2.4 percent of GDP from the previous government’s 0.8 percent, which it says would only add to the nation’s already massive debt mountain. “If, during the negotiating process, the deficit has to be reduced a bit, that’s not a big deal,” Di Maio told Radio Radicale. “The important thing is that not one person misses out on the [pledged] measures,” he said, in reference to a universal basic income and a pension reform promised by the ruling coalition. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Economy Minister Giovanni Tria, Di Maio and his fellow vice prime minister, Matteo Salvini were to discuss the budget late yesterday.
AUSTRALIA
Bhutan twins leave hospital
Formerly conjoined twins from Bhutan were yesterday released from a hospital more than two weeks after they were separated in a delicate surgery. The 15-month-old girls — Nima and Dawa — were joined from the lower chest to just above the pelvis and shared a liver. They were separated during an operation at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital on Nov. 9 that lasted almost six hours. A major challenge had been to reconstruct their abdomens. “Thank you, everyone,” their grateful mother, Bhumchu Zangmo, said, as she wheeled her daughters from the hospital where their lives have been transformed since their arrival on Oct. 2. The hospital’s head of pediatric surgery, Joe Crameri, told reporters the twins had made an “excellent recovery” and were acting independently. Before they return to Bhutan, the girls are to continue their recovery at a retreat in the town of Kilmore outside Melbourne run by the Children First Foundation.
UNITED KINGDON
Royal Mail sending music
Children writing to Father Christmas will have a chance to hear festive jingles break out as they post their wish list. Four letterboxes in as yet undisclosed locations in London, Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh are to be installed with sensors that will trigger either the sound of sleigh bells or a jolly message from Old Saint Nick. Anyone putting mail in the special postboxes will hear the merry messages in the coming weeks. The red postboxes are adorned with snowflakes and will be in place throughout the festive season. “We enjoy any way we can add a little extra fun to posting Christmas cards this year,” Royal Mail operations director Simon Barker said.
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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