■ SRI LANKA
Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90
Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary science fiction writer who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died yesterday at age 90. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome for years, died after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said. Clarke was also credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
■ JAPAN
Killer mother gets life
A woman was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for killing her nine-year-old daughter and another child in a case that stunned the nation, court officials said. Suzuka Hatakeyama, 34, fell to her knees in court to apologize to the boy's parents after the judge handed her the life term. The court ruled that Hatakeyama killed her daughter Ayaka, 9, in April 2006 by dropping her from a bridge into a river in Akita prefecture. She had been finding Ayaka a nuisance and snapped when the girl insisted on taking her to look at the river, prosecutors said. She later strangled to death Goken Yoneyama, a seven-year-old in the neighborhood, in a bid to cover up her daughter's killing, the court ruled.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Whale poachers arrested
Marine police said on Tuesday they had arrested a boat skipper and two others in connection with the country's largest whale poaching case. They were the first arrests since police broke a whale poaching racket in the southeastern city of Ulsan in January, confiscating more than 50 tonnes of minke meat. The 47-year-old skipper and the two sailors were charged with poaching whales at least three times between May and August last year.
■ THAILAND
Gypsy arrested for murder
A 31-year-old man was arrested early yesterday over the killing and attempted rape of a Swedish tourist last weekend on the resort isle of Phuket, police said. Akradet Tankae was arrested in Ranong Province after his relatives contacted police. Akradet is a sea gypsy, part of a community that wanders across Thai and Myanmar islands in the Andaman Sea. He had fled to Myanmar to avoid arrest, but his father convinced him to return to Thailand and turn himself in, police said. Hanna Charlotta Backlund, 27, was stabbed to death on Saturday when she left her bungalow to take a swim.
■ EGYPT
Mubarak issues warning
President Hosni Mubarak has warned that continuing insults to the Prophet Mohammed will send those critics into a dangerous abyss, while also criticizing the extremists who use these insults to justify their actions. Mubarak's comments come during an address on Tuesday broadcast live on state television in honor of the prophet's birthday. The president has not said who his remarks were specifically targeting, but they came amid renewed controversy over the reprinting by Western newspapers of a Danish cartoon deemed insulting to the prophet.
■ GAZA STRIP
Symbolic graveyard opened
Palestinians inaugurated a symbolic graveyard on Tuesday for factories forced to close by an Israeli blockade that they say is killing jobs. "The Main Gaza Cemetery for Factories" contains some 40 graves covered with the Palestinian flags and flowers. "The Plastic Tools factory, 190 workers became jobless," the inscription on one headstone reads. "The Print House, 150 workers lost their source of living," reads another. The cemetery was established by the Popular Anti-Siege Committee, a group campaigning against the border restrictions that Israel tightened after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.
■ GERMANY
Swan separated from boat
A long love story is over in Muenster: Petra the swan and her swan-shaped paddleboat are parting ways. Petra, a black swan, became a minor celebrity in 2006 when she became so attached to the boat -- which is shaped like an oversized white swan -- that she refused to leave its side. City officials decided to let her stay with the boat over the winter, bringing both bird and boat into a city zoo. However, Petra met a live swan this winter. Zoo director Joerg Adler says she and her new mate are building a nest together.
■ ISRAEL
Police tighten security
Police say they are beefing up forces around the country in light of the upcoming Purim holiday and fear of attacks following the end of the mourning period for a senior Hezbollah figure killed last month. Police were to raise the security alert yesterday to one level before emergency, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Police have canceled vacations and brought in extra forces to guard the festivities, which were to start at schools yesterday, he said. The country is also concerned that militants might launch attacks following the end of the 40-day mourning period for a senior Hezbollah militant killed in a car bomb last month, Rosenfeld said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Teens to sign contracts
Troubled minors as young as 10 would be hit with anti-social behavior orders under a government plan unveiled on Tuesday to fight youth crime. About 1,000 of the country's "most challenging" children will be forced to sign good behavior contracts under the ?218 million (US$435 million) program, Children's Secretary Ed Balls said. Under the expansion of the Family Intervention Projects, failure to abide by the contract will lead to a criminal record, or a so-called "baby ASBO." Critics have said such orders do not properly tackle anti-social behavior. The announcement comes just days after a senior Scotland Yard officer called for a national child DNA database to stamp out youth crime.
■ UNITED STATES
Power returns to Las Vegas
The power has returned to four Las Vegas Strip casino resorts after a blown transformer near an intersection caused outages and left dozens of people stuck in elevators for more than an hour. Clark County Fire Department spokesman Scott Allison said the transformer blew shortly before 8pm on Tuesday, leaving the hotel towers at Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur and Four Seasons Hotel without power for 90 minutes. No injuries were reported. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the transformer failure.
■ UNITED STATES
New York hits tax jackpot
The governments of India, Mongolia and the Philippines must pay New York City a total of US$57.6 million in real estate taxes after a federal judge ruled that diplomatic privileges do not exempt the countries from tax obligations. US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff issued the order on Monday in a case that reached the Supreme Court. Rakoff said it was clearly stated that only the home of the head of a mission is exempted from taxes in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
■ UNITED STATES
Flight diverted due to odor
An Alitalia cargo flight that was diverted to a Boston airport after the crew reported a possible problem with hazardous materials has been declared clean. The crew on the flight from Milan, Italy, to Miami, Florida, had reported an odor and possible damage to a cargo door. Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella says the four-member crew of Alitalia Flight 9180 used oxygen masks and landed safely. He said the crew was examined by medical personnel at the scene and taken to a hospital as a precaution. No injuries were reported. A hazardous materials crew found no damage and no hazardous material leakage.
■ UNITED STATES
Sea lions to be culled
Washington and Oregon can start killing sea lions that feed on migrating salmon to help preserve dwindling US Pacific Northwest salmon populations, a federal agency said on Tuesday. The National Marine Fisheries Service granted permission to the states to target as many as 85 sea lions a year near the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. About 100 California sea lions make the trip upriver to feast on spawning salmon channeling into the dam's fish ladders each year, Oregon officials said. Before sea lions are killed, they must be trapped and held for 48 hours while fisheries managers try to find them a home at a zoo or aquarium.
■ UNITED STATES
Bag Day still going strong
Paul Murphy came all the way from Glasgow, Scotland, to stand in The Irish Pub in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a paper bag on his head. This year, the pub celebrated the 24th anniversary of the holiday it created: Bag Day, March 18. The tradition was started by waitresses upset that they had to work on March 17. "We said: `We didn't have too much fun on St. Patrick's Day; let's start our own holiday,'" pub owner Cathy Burke said. "The bartender had just brought out a pile of bags that they use behind the bar and we put some on our heads and said: `We declare today Bag Day, the official holiday of The Irish Pub and anyone who has to work on St Patrick's Day.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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