■ SOUTH KOREA
Rice to attend inauguration
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will attend the Feb. 25 inauguration of South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak. The State Department said on Friday that Rice will also travel to China and Japan during her Feb. 23 to Feb. 28 trip. She is scheduled to meet with senior officials in all three countries to discuss stalled North Korean nuclear disarmament talks. While in Seoul, she also will discuss a US-South Korean free trade deal. The conservative Lee has vowed to improve the half-century alliance with the US.
■ AUSTRALIA
Crocodiles on the loose
Residents were warned to be on the lookout for marauding crocodiles on Friday after a monsoon storm left a northern Australian city flooded and forced the evacuation of up to 1,000 people. Mackay, a mining and sugarcane farming town in Queensland, was pelted with twice its monthly average of rain in 24 hours, meteorologists said, leaving streets and houses awash under muddy water. State officials declared the city a disaster zone and warned people not to venture out into the floodwaters. Among the dangers was the possibility that crocodiles that normally live in rivers and estuaries in the area would be swimming through the floodwaters, said state Environmental Protection Agency official Joe Adair.
■ VIETNAM
Bird flu spreads
Bird flu has killed a second man in Vietnam this week, infected a child and poultry in two provinces and a health official warned more people would fall sick of the virus, the government and state media said yesterday. The 27-year-old man died on Thursday night at a Hanoi hospital after he was taken there from the northern province of Ninh Binh on Tuesday with serious pneumonia, the official Vietnam News Agency reported. The provinces of Ninh Binh and Hai Duong, where a seven-year-old child was infected, are not on the government's bird flu watchlist, but health officials said more human infections could emerge as chicken is a popular dish at this time of the year.
■ CHINA
Ad angers passengers
An advertisement on Beijing's subway proclaiming "Squeezed in? Go and buy a car then!" has angered passengers who said it only encourages traffic jams, a state newspaper said on Friday. The advertisement is also contrary to the Beijing city government's aim of getting more people to take public transport, the official Beijing Daily said. "Isn't this out of tune with environmental protection?" it quoted a subway passenger surnamed Yang as saying. "The company sees subway passengers as potential customers, but the scornful tone of the advertising language exposes a lack of interest in human feelings behind a meticulous design," a female passenger surnamed Liu said.
■ INDIA
Taj Mahal to get face-lift
Indian archeologists have started giving a face-lift to the 17th-century Taj Mahal by applying a mud pack to the marble exteriors of the country's most famous monument. Last year, an Indian parliamentary committee said airborne particles were being deposited on the monument's white marble, giving it a yellow tinge. The mud pack will remain on the marble for about two or three days before it is peeled off and rinsed with distilled water.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Crystal meth use rising
Use of the drug crystal meth is growing fast in Britain and could become as widespread as crack cocaine in just four years, leaks of a report written by the country's police chiefs said. Specialists say that even occasional recreational use of the drug -- a form of amphetamine which is crystallized in order for it be smoked -- is dangerous. The internal report by the Association of Chief Police Officers found that despite its low use, growth levels in Britain matched those already experienced in Australia and the US, the BBC reported.
■ GERMANY
Deutsche Post chief resigns
The country was on the brink of its biggest tax scandal on Friday after one of its best known business leaders resigned after being investigated for 1 million euros (US$1.47 million) in suspected tax evasion. It emerged that up to 1,000 individuals including Deutsche Post chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel, are suspected of siphoning hundreds of millions of euros to Liechtenstein to escape tax authorities. Spiegel Online reported that about 125 cases would be launched next week, with 900 raids planned and that the sums involved could range from 300 million euros to 4 billion euros.
■ NETHERLANDS
'Herbal' remedies seized
Chinese herbal impotence remedies intercepted by Dutch customs officers contain such high doses of chemicals that they could cause heart failure or impaired vision, the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate said on Friday. "Taking the pills could be dangerous because they contain two and a half times the daily dosage" of chemicals found in prescription impotency pills, the inspectorate said in a statement. "Such a high dosage has never been tested on humans. It can't be ruled out that these so-called herbal pills could lead to serious health problems such as heart failure and reduced vision."
■ FRANCE
ETA suspects arrested
Two men suspected of involvement in the deadly 2006 ETA bombing at Madrid's airport have been taken into custody in France, a news report said on Friday. Spain's El Pais newspaper said the men were arrested at a house in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in southwestern France on Friday. A third man was also detained on suspicion of involvement with the armed group, the paper said. The massive truck bombing on Dec. 30, 2006, at Terminal 4 of Madrid's airport destroyed a multi-story parking garage and killed two Ecuadorean immigrants who were sleeping in cars inside the building. El Pais named the two suspects in custody in France as Joseba Iturbide and Mikel San Sebastian.
■ DENMARK
Arson attacks continue
A wave of arson attacks continued yesterday as youths set fire to cars, waste bins and doorways across the country overnight. No injuries were reported in the attacks. The riots have been attributed by police mainly to groups with an immigration background. Five arrested suspects were due to face a custodial judge yesterday. On Friday, a 15-year old was sentenced to two weeks in custody because he had spoken out on public TV for a continuation of the riots. Justice Minister Lene Espersen has called for tough measures against the rioting youths. The riots had broken out before the renewed dispute over the controversial Mohammed cartoons published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
■ BOLIVIA
Morales followers want guns
Bolivian President Evo Morales on Friday said supporters across the nation want weapons to defend his government's populist reforms. "The phone calls come at night, in the wee hours," Morales said at a coca farmers' union meeting in the central city of Cochabamba. "`You're president, you must make them respect you,'" he said his supporters tell him. "`If you can't, give us arms to make them respect you.'" Morales said he was encouraged by their devotion, without saying whether he obliged the requests. The president's comments are likely to heighten tensions between Morales and four opposition governors, who refuse to recognize his new, still-pending constitution granting greater voice to Bolivia's indigenous groups.
■ UNITED STATES
Man on bird killing spree
Around 3pm on Friday, several people walking in Battery Park, New York, called 911 to report curious goings-on -- a man driving a Parks Department golf cart was tearing erratically through a city park. As the calls came in, the police said, it emerged that the cart's driving pattern may have been reckless, but it was not without purpose. The driver was apparently trying to run over as many birds as he could. Officers responded, "and over the course of the investigation we uncovered videotape," a Police Department spokesman said. Five birds were killed, the police said, three pigeons and two seagulls. The authorities said the man at the wheel of the golf cart was Martin Hightower, a 45-year-old Parks Department employee. He was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors, reckless endangerment and intentional injury to animals.
■ MEXICO
Migrants hold mass wedding
Nearly 600 Mexican couples tied the knot in a mass Valentine's Day wedding by the US border on Thursday, many of them undocumented migrants who met while working illegally in the US. As a live band blasted out sugary Mexican love songs in the border city of Tijuana, a short walk from the busy San Ysidro crossing to California, a judge simultaneously married a crowd of couples whose ages ranged from 16 to 65. More than three-quarters were migrants returning from, or trying to get into, the US.
■ UNITED STATES
Diplomat HIV rules changed
Under pressure from a lawsuit, the State Department is changing rules that had disqualified HIV-positive people from becoming US diplomats. Effective on Friday, the department removed HIV from a list of medical conditions that automatically prevent foreign service candidates from meeting an employment requirement that they be able to work anywhere in the world. The change was made after consultation with medical experts and in response to a lawsuit filed by an HIV-positive man who was denied entry into the foreign service despite being otherwise qualified, the department said.
■ UNITED STATES
Fossett declared dead
Steve Fossett, the wealthy, record-setting adventurer who for years blithely sailed, soared and drove through all manner of danger before disappearing in September during what was meant to be a routine short flight, was declared dead on Friday by a Chicago court. He was 63, and had homes in Chicago, Beaver Creek, Colorado and Carmel, California. Fossett was declared legally dead by Judge Jeffrey Malak of the Circuit Court of Cook County, said Mary Downie, a lawyer for Fossett's widow.
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges were assisting with emergency cases as more than 1 million doctors were expected to strike Hospitals and clinics across India yesterday turned away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals began a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata. More than 1 million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralyzing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases. The strike, which began at 6am, cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, the Indian Medical Association said in a statement. The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied