■NEW ZEALAND
Korean fishermen detained
Three South Korean fishermen were fined and two boats seized after being caught with hundreds of tonnes of fish caught illegally in territorial waters, officials said yesterday. The South Koreans earlier pleaded guilty to providing “false and misleading” declarations for more than 700 tonnes of fish, a Fisheries Ministry official said. The offenses occurred during eight fishing trips last year. Kim Dae-geun, Pyon Se-hun, and Bae Gap-joo were fined a total of NZ$360,000 (US$221,000) earlier this week. The two fishing boats were forfeited to the New Zealand government.
■SRI LANKA
Troops capture rebel town
Troops captured a rebel-held town in the island’s north following heavy fighting that killed a “large” group of guerrillas, the defense ministry said yesterday. Security forces took the town of Maniyakkulam, 25km southwest of the military’s primary target of Kilinochchi, the political capital of the Tamil Tiger rebels, the ministry said. It did not say how many guerrillas were killed in Thursday’s fighting. The violence forced the return of a food convoy that the UN was trying to escort into the rebel-held Wanni region, the organization said. The UN office said it would immediately seek “renewed security assurances from the two sides” before attempting to resend the 50-truck convoy with 750 tonnes of aid.
■HONG KONG
HIV rates in gays rising
Up to a third of gay and bisexual men in the territory may be infected with HIV by 2020 if prevention programs to reduce new infections and promote safe sex fail to work, experts warned. HIV is primarily passed from person to person through sex. The number of gay and bisexual men confirmed with the virus has risen sharply every year since 2003. The figure rose from 50 in 2003 to 67 in 2004, 96 in 2005 and 112 in 2006, while newly confirmed infections among heterosexuals stayed within a range of 110 to 116 each year. Rising numbers of gay and bisexual men are becoming infected in many countries, perhaps because of the availability of HIV drugs, which can control the virus but not cure the infection.
■INDIA
Woman beheads man
A woman chopped the head off a man who allegedly tried to attack her and then paraded the head through a market in northern India, police said yesterday. Police arrested the woman late on Thursday after receiving calls from frightened witnesses who reported a blood-soaked woman holding a severed head who was walking through the village, police officer Ram Bharose said. The woman, 35, told police she had gone to a nearby forest to cut grass for fodder for her cattle when a man attacked her from behind. The woman also told police that the man had been harassing and stalking her for three months and she had no regrets about killing him.
■JAPAN
Aso skips shrine visit
Dozens of politicians visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine to war dead yesterday, but new Prime Minister Taro Aso — who supported the shrine visits in the past — stayed away, lawmakers’ offices said. Forty-eight parliamentarians — 21 upper house members and 27 lower house politicians — visited the shrine on the first day of its four-day annual autumn festival. No Cabinet members were seen at the shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14 top war criminals from World War II.
■GERMANY
Police stop cyclists
A lovesick teenager who cycled more than 10km on the highway and a mother who pedaled around with her naked baby on the backseat were stopped by police in separate incidents on Thursday. Police in Stralsund said a 16-year-old girl claimed to on her way to visit her boyfriend in hospital and she did not know that it was illegal to cycle on the motorway. In Munich, police intervened when a 32-year-old was seen cycling with her naked 18-month-old baby in the child seat in temperatures of just 11ºC. The woman, a lawyer, told police officers the child had refused to let itself be dressed. She now faces charges of abuse.
■GERMANY
Mosque opens in east
The first mosque with a minaret and a dome in the formerly communist east opened on Thursday with a Muslim ceremony, police roadblocks and protesters demonstrating. As police blocked off the street, the Ahmadiyya Muslim community celebrated the construction of the Khadija Mosque, a white, two-story structure capped with a 13m silver dome in Berlin’s Pankow district. Several blocks away, some 300 people joined a protest organized by a grass-roots group called “We Are Pankow.” Most of Germany’s more than 3 million Muslims come from Turkey and live in the west. Berlin has some 70 mosques, mostly tucked away in old warehouses or other nondescript buildings in western parts of the city.
■SPAIN
Police break up ‘cell’
Police have arrested 12 north Africans suspected of links to the 2004 Madrid bombings in which 191 people died, the interior ministry said on Thursday. The arrests broke up an “Islamist terrorist cell” that was supporting al-Qaeda, it said in a statement. Eight of the suspects, all Moroccans, were detained in raids carried out overnight in the northeastern province of Catalonia, around Madrid, and in Andalucia in the south, the ministry said. The suspects are believed to have helped five people implicated in the Madrid bombings to escape, it said.
■ENGLAND
Bird journey meets sad end
It flew 5,000km across the Atlantic and was entitled to a bit of relaxation and a hearty meal of insects. This, after all, is a bird with a rarity value described by one Web site as “mega.” But the hardy common nighthawk — common, that is, in the US — ended its odyssey when it was hit by a car shortly after touching down on the Isles of Scilly. Pub manager at the Scillonian Club Dave Chodkiewicz said: “Some birdwatchers picked it up dead and brought it into the club. It was examined on the pool table in the middle of the bar and identified. I’d never seen anything like it before. They all gathered around like vultures.”
■ITALY
Parent killer inherits home
A man who confessed to murdering his parents has inherited their home, the one in which he shot them dead. Ferdinando Carretta, who was released from a mental hospital two years ago, reached an out-of-court settlement on Wednesday with his aunts, who had contested his ownership of the property. Carretta will inherit the property, valued at 310,000 euros (US$404,000). Carretta was arrested in 1998. He said he had long hated his father, an accountant, and murdered his mother because she was a witness. He then shot his brother because he was convinced he would turn against him. All three bodies have never been found.
■UNITED STATES
CDC warns against ‘surfing’
Health officials warned young people on Thursday against “car surfing” in which a person rides on top of a moving vehicle, and said at least 58 people had died doing it since 1990. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report that injuries or deaths were reported in 31 states. Head injuries killed 45 of the 58 victims. “We strongly recommend that teens not engage in this type of behavior. It’s just too risky. It’s just too dangerous,” the CDC’s John Halpin said in a telephone interview. People were killed when falling off cars driving at speeds ranging from 8kph to 130kph, the CDC said.
■UNITED STATES
Judge rejects God lawsuit
A judge has thrown out a Nebraska state legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Senator Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God. He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward. Chambers, who has served a record 38 years in the Nebraska legislature, is not returning next year because of term limits. He skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians.
■UNITED STATES
Hobbled Hubble in recovery
The Hubble Space Telescope was in the final stages of recovery on Thursday after NASA successfully bypassed a faulty computer and resurrected an 18-year-old spare from orbital hibernation. The faulty computer, which is needed to collect and process data from science instruments, prompted NASA to delay a long-awaited space shuttle mission to service the telescope. The flight has been rescheduled for February, when the crew will attempt to replace the computer. Science observations were expected to resume yesterday morning, NASA said.
■BRAZIL
Police clash with police
Riot police clashed with striking ordinary police officers in Sao Paulo on Thursday as they blocked the latter from forcing their way into the state government building, live television pictures showed. Black-clad military police were seen massed behind riot shields, occasionally firing teargas canisters and flashbombs to keep uniformed and plainclothes civilian state police from entering the building. At least 22 people were injured in the clash, media reports said. Civilian police officers in the state of Sao Paulo have been on strike for a month to demand a 15 percent pay rise.
■IRELAND
Bookies pay on Obama win
The race is over as far as Ireland’s biggest bookmaker is concerned. Paddy Power PLC says it is so sure Senator Barack Obama will win the US presidential election next month that on Thursday it paid off on all bets it had taken backing the Democratic candidate. It said it shelled out more than 1 million euros, about US$1.35 million. “We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama — your winnings await you,” the company said in a statement. Paddy Power said the most visionary bettor was the “punter” who won 2,550 euros after putting down 50 euros on Obama in 2005.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
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