Mon, Sep 08, 2008 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ CHINA

  Space walk planned

  Beijing will launch its third manned space mission later this month, featuring its first-ever space walk, Xinhua news agency said. The Shenzhou 7 launch is to take place between Sept. 25 and 30, Xinhua reported late on Saturday. The spacecraft will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, the agency said, citing a spokesman from the center. It will carry three astronauts into space, one of whom will conduct a space walk, the report said. The space walk will be broadcast live using cameras mounted on the inside and outside of the spacecraft, Xinhua said. In 2003, China became the third country in the world — along with the US and Russia — to send a human into orbit.

  ■ PHILIPPINES

  Dual landslides kill nine

  Nine people were killed and 14 missing when two landslides struck a mining village in the south, police and local officials said yesterday. The first landslide in Masara village in Maco town, Compostella Valley Province, 930km south of Manila, occurred on Saturday after three days of continuous heavy rains. Six people were killed in the first landslide, including two children, Senior Superintendent Ronald Dela Rosa said. Yesterday, another landslide struck the village before dawn, killing three more, including village chairman Jovencio Anquera, who was overseeing rescue operations for the first accident.

  ■ SOUTH KOREA

  City councilors indicted

  State prosecutors have indicted more than a quarter of Seoul’s city councilors for corruption in the biggest crackdown on local legislatures, officials said yesterday. Twenty-eight members of the 106-strong city legislature were officially accused on Saturday of taking money from one of their own, who was vying for the body’s top post, Seoul prosecutors’ office said. The colleague, who was elected to head the city council in June, was arrested last month for buying votes from fellow councilors, the office said. The city councilors involved, all from the governing Grand National Party, had received kickbacks of up to 5 million won (US$4,500) each, it said.

  ■ INDONESIA

  Polish diver missing

  Search teams failed to find any sign of a Polish tourist who went missing eight days ago while scuba diving off the easternmost province of Papua, local media reports said yesterday. Kemal Abbas, chief of the Cenderawasih Bay National Park, said Robert Zsupuru, along with 10 other Polish tourists, left for the Auri Islands, near Matas Island off the Papua province on Aug. 27. “On their third day, all of them went diving, but since then Robert has not been found,” Kemal said. Search teams said Robert had most likely run out of oxygen while diving at a depth of greater than 80m.

  ■ THAILAND

  Backpackers hit protests

  Though some tourists have opted not to visit amid a state of emergency and anti-government protests, the demonstrators’ campground has attracted one type of visitor: budget travelers. Backpacking tourists, curious about emergency rule in Bangkok, have toured the Government House complex, where 5,000 protesters have squatted in tents for nearly two weeks. Daniel, a 25-year-old Mexican, tucked into a bowl of free bright pink sugared ice with condensed milk while showing his father around the stalls selling plastic clappers and other souvenirs for 10 baht (US$0.29).

  ■ EGYPT

  Former minister passes on

  Former defense minister Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala, who was touted in the late 1980s as a contender to succeed President Hosni Mubarak, died in hospital on Saturday after a long struggle with throat cancer, security sources said. Abu Ghazala, who was 78, was to receive a military funeral yesterday, the state news agency MENA said. Abu Ghazala was one of the Free Officers who staged a coup that overthrew the monarchy and fought in every major action from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to the 1973 war against Israel. After serving as military attache in Washington in the late 1970s, Abu Ghazala was appointed defense minister in 1981 and promoted to field marshal in 1982. He championed military reform and a strong alliance with Washington and set to work during his tenure building up a defense manufacturing and industrial base. In April 1989, Mubarak moved Abu Ghazala from defense minister to the ceremonial position of “presidential adviser.”

  ■ UNITED KINGDOM

  Strange book titles awarded

  Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers benefited from a late surge in public support to win first place on Friday for oddest book title of the past 30 years, The Bookseller magazine said. The book — a comprehensive record of Greek postal routes by Derek Willan — grabbed 13 percent of the 1,000 international public votes cast to chose the oddest title from the winners of the annual competition that began in 1978. It beat People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead and How To Avoid Huge Ships into second and third places. “The pre-tournament favorite was the prize’s first ever recipient, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice,” said Horace Bent, custodian of the Diagram Prize. Another favorite, How To Bombproof Your Horse, also failed in the final count.

  ■ UNITED KINGDOM

  Teens know little about sex

  The extent of teenagers’ ignorance about sex and the truth about their sexual behavior has been revealed in a survey of almost 2,000 teens. Almost half of those surveyed admitted having had sex without a condom. Two-thirds have had sex under the age of consent and one in six is unaware there is no cure for AIDS. The survey, commissioned by TV Channel 4 for its new program, The Sex Education Show, which starts tomorrow, found that 10 percent of 17-year-olds have had a one-night stand. More than one in six aged 16 has had more than one sexual partner. The research also reveals that one in five teenage girls has kissed another girl in a sexual way, and that one in five had had a sexual experience aged 13 or younger. It found that three-quarters of girls said they would not consider having an abortion.

  ■ ISRAEL

  Leader opposes strike

  President Shimon Peres said yesterday he would oppose a military strike on Iran and preferred the use of international economic sanctions to persuade Tehran to halt its nuclear enrichment program. “A military operation is not necessary. I do not think the Americans think in these terms because they have many other cards to play,” Peres told public radio after a meeting with US Vice President Dick Cheney in Italy. “If the Americans manage to form a coalition to unify their positions with those of Europeans, they have sufficient means to exert pressure on the Iranians,” Peres said.

  ■ UNITED STATES

  Anita Page dies at 98

  Anita Page, an MGM actress who appeared in films with Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford and Buster Keaton during the transition from silent movies to talkies, has died. She was 98. Page died in her sleep early on Saturday morning at her home in Los Angeles, said actor Randal Malone, her longtime friend and companion. In 1929, the New York-born Page was co-star of The Broadway Melody, the backstage tale of two sisters who love the same man. The film made history as the first talkie to win the best-picture Oscar and was arguably the first true film musical. For a short time Page was married to composer Nacio Herb Brown, but the marriage was annulled within a year. Page stopped acting in 1936 when she fell in love with Herschel House, a Navy aviator. The couple married six weeks later and Page happily adapted to life as an officer’s wife. They had two daughters, Linda and Sandra. After House died in 1991, Page went on to return to films. In 1994, she appeared in the suspense thriller Sunset After Dark. Most recently, she had a cameo in the horror film Frankenstein Rising, due out later this year.

  ■ UNITED STATES

  Desert tortoise needs a lift

  Sadie the desert tortoise needs a ride to an adoptive home in the Mojave Desert — the sooner the better. The 25cm reptile, found at a highway rest stop in Idaho, has thrived at the Kiwani Wambli wildlife rehabilitation center north of Spokane, Washington, since July but is unlikely to do so well with the onset of fall. To survive a winter in Cusick, Washington, Sadie would have to be kept indoors for months. She can’t be released in the wild because of the possibility that she’s acquired a disease that could be passed on to others of her kind. Coincidentally, Wayne and Lee Ann Cusick happened to read a newspaper story about the tortoise living in Cusick. The couple said they would like to adopt Sadie, but are reluctant to drive from their home in Blythe, a desert city in southern California, to pick up the tortoise. Cooper and Cusick are hoping a big-hearted southbound traveler can give Sadie a ride.

  ■ MEXICO

  Storm forms off coast

  The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tropical Storm Lowell has formed off the southwest Pacific coast. The center said late on Saturday that Lowell took shape as a tropical storm about 426km south-southwest of the port city of Manzanillo. Forecasters said Lowell was moving toward the northwest at about 19kph with maximum sustained winds of nearly 64kph. The center said Lowell was expected to strengthen and could become a hurricane by today. Forecasters say rainfall could total 5km to 10cm in mountainous areas of the southern regions of the country before Lowell gradually drifts away from the coast.

  ■ HONDURAS

  Judges give 1,051-year term

  A court has sentenced a former prison official to 1,051 years in jail for the deaths of 69 people in a 2003 prison massacre. The three-judge panel announced its largely symbolic verdict against prison official Dimas Antonio Benitez on Saturday. State law says people can’t be jailed for more than 30 years. Benitez was one of the directors at the El Porvenir prison where 65 inmates, a guard and three visitors died in an intentionally set fire in 2003. The court sentenced Benitez, 10 other prison employees and 10 inmate trustees for having helped set fire to cells holding inmates who belonged to a violent “Mara” street gang. The other defendants were sentenced to lesser jail terms.
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