■ Australia
Writer going blind
Australian writer Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds and a dozen other acclaimed novels, has revealed she is going blind and may soon no longer be able to write her own books. McCullough, 67, told a television interviewer she had already lost sight in one eye due to hemorrhagic macular degeneration, an irreversible and progressive illness that causes blindness. She said learning she would lose her sight was more frightening than an earlier brush she had with cancer. An inveterate smoker, McCullough said she would not kick the habit even though it is known to accelerate her condition. "The words are in the cigarettes," she said.
■ Indonesia
Cookie jar explodes
A bomb hidden in a cookie jar exploded yesterday at a busy market in the strife-torn Indonesian city of Ambon, killing one person and injuring 17 others. The explosion in a Christian area came two days after a similar blast wounded five people, raising fears that religious clashes would increase in the run-up to July presidential polls. Police chief Leonidas Braksan said three other bombs were found in Christian neighborhoods, but they were destroyed without incident. President Megawati Sukarnoputri visited the region on Saturday, insisting her government was doing enough to stop a recent outbreak of sectarian fighting in which 39 people died.
■ Malaysia
Thieves raid playgrounds
Thieves have raided playgrounds in a central Malaysian city, stealing equipment to sell for scrap iron and leaving children with nothing to play on but concrete blocks and otherwise empty lots, a newspaper reported yesterday. The New Straits Times cited an unnamed council official in Ipoh, 170km north of Kuala Lumpur, as saying that several playgrounds had recently been stripped of metal equipment. The official said the high prices being paid for scrap iron were believed to behind the crimes.
■ Hong Kong
Hostess robotized by attack
A nightclub hostess is seeking US$230,000 in damages after an attack by a customer left her unable to have sex, a news report said yesterday. Hau Siu-mui, 32, was left with heavily swollen legs after being kicked and punched by a customer when she refused to have sex with him three years ago. She is now suing her former employers at the Bauhina Night Club in Hong Kong's Mongkok district over her injuries, according to the South China Morning Post. "I have swelling in my legs because the blood cannot circulate properly and I walk like a robot," she told the court on Monday.
■ Australia
Spies linked to Cabinet leak
Australia's main spy agency has been linked to a damaging federal Cabinet leak -- a water leak, that is. A parliamentary committee was told yesterday that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization had recommended a special pipe fitting for the high-security room where Cabinet ministers meet, but that it failed, flooding the room with enough water to fill a backyard swimming pool. ASIO Director-General Dennis Richardson said the agency recommended that a transparent sheet of plastic be fitted to a steel water pipe above the Cabinet room during construction of Parliament House in the 1980s.
■ United States
Doctors' ties a health threat
Beware well-dressed doctors. A study in New York suggests that doctors' sartorial habits make them carriers of potentially dangerous infections. Researchers found that 47 percent of ties worn by medical staff at one hospital harbored bacteria and that clinicians were eight times more likely to have bugs in their ties than security staff. "Senior physicians and hospital administrators often encourage staff to wear neckties in order to help promote this valuable relationship, but in so doing, they may also be facilitating the spread of infectious organisms," said Steven Nurkin, of the New York Hospital Medical Center in Queen's, who presented the findings to the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans.
■ United States
Nichols could face death
Oklahoma prosecutors can seek the death penalty in the state murder trial of Oklahoma City conspirator Terry Nichols for the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people at the US federal building, a judge ruled on Monday. In a ruling before closing arguments, Judge Steven Taylor said prose-cutors may seek the death penalty if jurors find Nichols guilty of any of the 160 first-degree murder counts against him. The ruling came after two months of testimony from about 250 witnesses. The jury has the option of sen-tencing Nichols to life in prison if found guilty. Prose-cutor Lou Keel said Nichols bore greater responsibility for the bombing than Timothy McVeigh because he financed the deadly blast and procured key compo-nents for the bomb.
■ Bosnia
New mass grave found
Forensic experts in Bosnia have discovered a new mass grave believed to contain the remains of some 15 Muslim civilians killed the beginning of the country's 1992 to 1995 war, an official said on Monday. The grave is located in a field near the eastern town of Bratunac, according to an official of the Bosnian Muslim commission for missing people quoted by the ONASA news agency. The remains are thought to be of civilians killed by Bosnian Serbs in May 1992, the agency said. Since the war ended 18,000 bodies have been exhumed from over 300 mass graves throughout the country, most of them Muslims, according to forensic teams.
■ Sweden
King honors King
Legendary blues singer and composer, B.B. King received the Polar Music Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the Stockholm Concert Hall on Monday. B.B. King, credited for "his significant contribu-tions to the blues" shared the prize worth 2 million kronor (US$263,000) with Hungarian-born composer Gyorgy Ligeti. The 81-year-old Ligeti, whose compositions were used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey did not attend the ceremony because of poor health.
■ United kingdom
21-year old sperm effective
A British woman gave birth to a baby boy using sperm from her husband that was frozen 21 years earlier, their doctor said yesterday. Dr. Elizabeth Pease of Man-chester, where the baby was born two years ago, said the father had five vials of his sperm "cryopreserved" in 1979 at the age of 17, before treatment for testicular cancer that left him sterile. . In 2001, his wife conceived during the couple's fourth attempt at IVF.
■ United States
Bush abuses name of prison
Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech on Monday
were not enough to keep US President George W. Bush from mangling the name of the Abu Ghraib prison that brought shame to the US mission in Iraq. Bush mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it while announcing plans to tear down the infamous jail. The prison is usually pronounced by English speakers as "abu-grabe." But Bush, long known for verbal and grammatical lapses, stumbled on the first try, calling it "abugah-rayp." The second version came out "abu-garon," the third sounded like "abu-garah." White House aides said Bush practiced twice on Monday before leaving for the venue at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
■ United States
`Doonesbury' lists US dead
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the man behind the Doonesbury cartoon, will devote one of his strips to listing the US military war dead in Iraq. The strip, to be published this Sunday, will list the more than 700 US military personnel who have been killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led campaign over a year ago. The final panel of the six-strip cartoon will include a note that reads: "List as of April 23, 2004." The cartoon, which is syndicated to thousands of newspapers in the US and around the world, has been notably critical of the war in Iraq.
A strip published last month depicted one of the cartoon's characters, BD, a media officer with the US army, losing a leg in Fallujah.
■ Iraq
Speculation over Sanchez
The Pentagon late on Monday dismissed as "speculation" reports that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez would be relieved from top command of US troops in Iraq. ABC broadcast news reported earlier in the evening that Sanchez would be replaced by General George Casey, vice chief of staff of the Army. "If we had something like that we would announce it," said a Pentagon spokesman. "Any speculation would be irresponsible." Sanchez testified recently before the US Congress on the scandal over mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. He accepted responsibility for the abuses, and vowed to punish those responsible. He said the investigation would examine the entire military chain of command, "and that includes me."
■ France
Airport woes continue
Ominous cracking sounds were heard on Monday inside a futuristic new terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, a day after four people were killed when a 30m section of its glass, steel and concrete roof collapsed. Investigators and workers inside terminal 2E, which opened only 11 months ago, were evacuated. Similar cracking noises had been reported in the minutes before a section of the long, tube-like structure collapsed just before 7am on Sunday. Airport chairman Pierre Graff told the Le Parisien newspaper that no risks would be taken with safety.
■ African Union
Security Council launched
The pan-continental African Union (AU) yesterday launched a new Peace and Security Council which it hopes will become a robust guarantor of stability in Africa, much like the
UN Security Council. The establishment of the council was formally proclaimed by Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, the current chairman of the AU, at a ceremony at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Sri Lanka’s fragile economic recovery could be hampered by threatened trade union strikes over reduced benefits for government employees in this year’s budget, the IMF said yesterday. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s maiden budget raised public sector salaries, but also made deep cuts to longstanding perks in a continuing effort to repair the island nation’s tattered finances. Sri Lanka’s main doctors’ union is considering a strike from today to protest against cuts to their allowances, while teachers are also considering stoppages. IMF senior mission chief for Sri Lanka Peter Breuer said the budget was the “last big push” for the country’s austerity
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