■ CHINA
Song mocks Western media
Chinese frustrated at what they say are biased Western media reports of recent unrest in Tibet now have a new source of succor — a song circulating online called Don’t Be Too CNN. Written and performed by somebody calling him or herself Mu Rongxuan and backed by a music video showing, among other things, supposedly biased media dispatches, the song’s lyrics attack what it says are distorted reports. “CNN solemnly swears that everything on it is the truth, but I’ve gradually discovered this is actually a deception,” the female singer croons. As the song continues, images shown repeatedly in the Chinese press of burnt-out shops and smoke rising over Lhasa are flashed up on to the screen.
■ CHINA
Beijing backtracks on ban
Beijing has backtracked on a proposed public smoking ban ahead of this summer’s Olympics, with a city official saying yesterday that restaurants would no longer be included owing to concerns it would hurt their business. Lighting up in restaurants will be allowed after the citywide ban goes into effect on May 1 as long as they have separate smoking and nonsmoking areas, said Zhang Peili, an official with Beijing’s municipal government supervising the ban. Restaurants that do not comply will be fined 5,000 yuan (US$714), Zhang said, though she added that implementing the regulation would be “extremely difficult.”
■ SOUTH KOREA
Court clears gamblers
Two farmers fined for gambling after playing cards to settle a lunch bill have won their appeal to the nation’s highest court, the Hankyoreh newspaper reported yesterday. The Supreme Court overruled a lower court decision to fine the farmers about US$500 each for playing poker to determine who should pay for lunch. “What is equivalent to a one-off entertainment ... is a trivial act, not harmful to sound work ethics and social customs,” it quoted Sunday’s ruling as saying. The men were caught by police in the southern town of Cheongdo last year. A district court had fined them 500,000 won (US$506). South Koreans can legally gamble on card games only at one casino in the country.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Crackdown on dog meat
Seoul officials said yesterday they would launch their first health inspection of illegal dog meat restaurants this month. From late this month, the city plans to take dog meat samples from about 530 such restaurants to examine whether they contain heavy metals or other harmful substances. “We do not intend to regulate the selling of dog meat but to examine their safety,” a food safety official said on condition of anonymity. Seoul will conduct regular inspections, publicize a list of restaurants that serve unhealthy meat and suspend their operations, he said.
■ INDIA
British girl’s organs missing
A fresh row has erupted over the death of a British teenager in Goa state after her organs were found to be missing following a new autopsy in Britain, a lawyer said yesterday. The autopsy, the third since 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling was raped and murdered in Goa in February, revealed that her stomach, uterus and both kidneys had been removed, a lawyer representing the teenager’s mother said. Indian investigators — who have been accused by the girl’s mother of a coverup — had conducted two autopsies. A doctor who conducted the first autopsy — on the basis of which police initially dismissed the death as a drowning — has been suspended.
■ NETHERLANDS
Two men face extradition
The Labour party wants an emergency debate in parliament to debate whether or not two men can be extradited to Brazil to serve a prison sentence of, respectively, 21 and 17 years. In 2003, the two men had already been convicted in Brazil for producing child porn and for having sexually abused 24 girls. The local court sentenced them to 11 years and eight years imprisonment respectively. But the Netherlands and Brazil do not share an extradition agreement. The men’s applications to the Dutch consulate in Rio de Janeiro for an emergency passport was granted that year, enabling the men to travel from Brazil to the Netherlands and avoid serving their jail terms.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Two on trial for blackmail
Two men accused of trying to blackmail a member of Britain’s royal family with sex and drug allegations were due to go on trial in London yesterday. Ian Strachan, 30, and Sean McGuigan, 40, deny demanding £50,000 (US$99,400) “with menaces” from the royal. The case reportedly centers on a video that shows a royal aide allegedly taking drugs and boasting of engaging in a sex act with the royal. A court order bars journalists from naming the alleged victim or any potential witnesses in the trial. Buckingham Palace has refused to comment on the case, but British media have reported that the blackmail target was not a senior member of the royal family.
■ KENYA
President appoints PM
President Mwai Kibaki named opposition leader Raila Odinga as prime minister, implementing a power-sharing deal the two rivals signed more than a month ago. The deal, signed on Feb. 28, was aimed at resolving a political crisis and nationwide bloodshed that followed the disputed results of December’s presidential vote. It gives the country both a president and prime minister for the first time since the country’s 1963 independence. Legally, the coalition will last until either the current parliament’s term ends in 2012 or a new constitution — to be negotiated in the next 12 months — is enacted.
■ SOMALIA
Islamist militants kill two
Islamist militants killed two Somalis holding British passports and two Kenyans at a school in the central town of Baladwayne overnight, local residents said yesterday. “Al Shaabab fighters entered the town and suddenly attacked houses of government officials,” resident Ahmed Elmi said. “Then they attacked a school where they killed two Kenyans, a British woman and a Somali man with a British passport.” Al Shabaab is a militant Islamist group that the US put on its list of foreign terrorist organizations in late February, for what Washington says is links to al-Qaeda. It is leading an insurgency against the Somali interim government and its Ethiopian military allies in the capital Mogadishu.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
TV presenter found dead
The body of BBC children’s television presenter Mark Speight was found in a remote area of Paddington train station in west London on Sunday. British Transport Police said it had launched an investigation into how the 42-year-old died. Unconfirmed media reports said rail maintenance workers discovered the body hanging from the station roof. Speight was reported missing last week, two months after his fiancee was found dead at their London flat. The Westminster court heard last week that Natasha Collins, 31, died in a scalding hot bath after taking cocaine and sleeping pills and drinking vodka.
■ ECUADOR
Crash kills British teens
A truck slammed into a busload of tourists, killing five young British women and injuring 15 other people, officials said on Sunday. The victims, in their teens and 20s, were participating in a four-month language and volunteer program that was to take them through the Andes Mountains, said Mark Davison, director of VentureCo Worldwide, the tour company that organized the trip. The crash took place on Saturday evening when a truck carrying a load of sand smashed into the left side of the bus near the town of Jipijapa. The truck driver fled the scene. The injured include 12 British tourists, an Ecuadorean tour guide and driver, and a French citizen, a police officer said. At least seven of the injured remain hospitalized.
■ UNITED STATES
Rowling heads to court
British author J.K. Rowling is eager to tell a judge this week that one of her biggest fans is in fantasyland if he believes a Harry Potter encyclopedia he plans to publish does not violate her copyrights. The showdown between Rowling and Steven Vander Ark is scheduled to last most of the week in US District Court in Manhattan. Rowling was scheduled to testify yesterday. Her lawyer had arranged with the judge to have a private security guard for Rowling in the courtroom and for the author to spend breaks in the seclusion of a jury room — away from any die-hard Potter fans in attendance. Rowling brought the lawsuit last year against Vander Ark’s publisher, RDR Books, to stop publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon. She is a big fan of the Harry Potter Lexicon Web site that Vander Ark runs. But she draws the line when it comes to publishing the book and charging US$24.95 for it.
■ VENEZUELA
Defense group wanted
President Hugo Chavez said his government is working to create a South America defense council along with Brazil and other countries. In a speech on Sunday night, Chavez said the council would unite the region to “design our own defense policies.” He said officials would discuss the idea with Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim when he visited Caracas yesterday. Chavez said he brought up a similar proposal at the start of his presidency in 1999 but that it encountered opposition in the region.
■ URUGUAY
Montevideo hosts big BBQ
More than a thousand barbecue fanatics grilled up 12 tonnes of beef on Sunday, setting a new Guinness world record while promoting the country’s succulent top export. Army personnel set up a grill nearly 1.6km long and firefighters lit 6 tonnes of charcoal to kick off the gargantuan cookout. Some 1,250 people grilled the beef and about 20,000 spectators cried with joy when a Guinness judge confirmed the barbecue record had been broken. “I’m very proud to be Uruguayan. We have the best beef and now we have the world’s biggest barbecue,” one cook said.
■ UNITED STATES
Spears causes accident
Britney Spears triggered a minor accident on a freeway in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley on Saturday evening, but no one was injured and no tickets issued, a California Highway Patrol (CHP) official said. The 26-year-old pop singer rear-ended a car in stop-and-go traffic after she failed to stop her Mercedes in time, CHP Officer Patrick Kimball said. The rear-ended car in turn pushed forward into another car.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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