■ CHINA
Shanghai seeks PJ limits
Community leaders in Shanghai have begun a campaign to discourage residents’ longstanding habit of wearing pajamas out of their bedrooms and on the streets, the state-run Youth Daily reported yesterday. “We’re telling people not to wear pajamas in the street because it looks very uncivilized,” community official Guo Xilin was quoted as saying. The Shanghainese habit of wearing pajamas in public emerged alongside China’s economic reforms over the past 30 years as it became a sign of prosperity, because it meant people did not sleep in tattered old clothes. For a large number of Shanghainese, wearing pajamas outside has become more a way of life than a fashion statement, and to outsiders, the phenomenon is part of the city’s charm. Guo, however, called pajama-wearers “visual pollution” and a public embarrassment to the city. But some residents still argue wearing pajamas is perfectly acceptable. “Pajamas are also a type of clothes,” a retiree surnamed Ge was quoted as saying, adding that they’re “comfortable.”
■ HONG KONG
Boy ill from tainted food
A 10-year-old child in Hong Kong has developed kidney stones after eating milk products and biscuits tainted with melamine, a chemical normally used to make plastic, authorities said yesterday. It takes the total number of melamine cases in the territory to 11. The health department said in a statement the boy had a history of exposure to melamine-tainted milk products and biscuits bought from the local market.
■ CHINA
Chinese cheer Steven Chu
Local media are cheering US president-elect Barack Obama’s pick of Chinese-American Steven Chu(朱棣文) for the post of US energy secretary, saying it bodes well for future cooperation between the two countries. Photographs of Chu, who was born in St Louis to Chinese parents, were printed on the front pages of major newspapers yesterday. The state-owned China Daily cited Chinese academics as saying Chu’s ethnic background would ease cooperation between China and the US. Chu, currently director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, has been a frequent visitor to China, which his parents left in 1943. The Nobel Prize winner in physics is a vocal advocate of more research into alternative energy, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming.
■ PHILIPPINES
Arroyo cancels trip to south
A spate of bombings has forced President Gloria Arroyo to cancel a trip to the troubled southern island of Mindanao, Presidential Spokesman Jesus Dureza said yesterday. Arroyo called off the visit on the advice of military commanders, he said. She had been scheduled to meet farmers in Cotabato City and in the province of Sultan Kudarat yesterday. A homemade bomb exploded at a busy junction on the outskirts of Cotabato City on Thursday, the latest in a series of similar incidents in recent weeks.
■ NEPAL
Bus crash kills 22: police
At least 22 people were killed and 57 injured when an overcrowded bus carrying schoolchildren back from a picnic skidded off a highway in southern Nepal, police said yesterday. The bus was carrying around 80 children, and most were around nine or 10 years old, a police officer from Nawalparasi said. “Fifteen children died on the spot late on Thursday and the rest died undergoing treatment or on the way to hospital,” he said.
■ RUSSIA
Mine explosion kills 12
Twelve workers were killed and four injured in a mine explosion in the northern Murmansk region, Interfax news agency reported yesterday, citing emergency officials. The blast took place late on Thursday when explosives accidentally detonated during excavation work at an apatite mine near Kirovsk, some 1,500km north of Moscow, the news agency said. Apatite is a mineral often used in the making of fertilizers. “A large-scale blast was being prepared at the mine for which 55 tonnes of explosives had been laid. According to confirmed figures, 12 died and four were injured,” a source at the emergency situations ministry told Interfax. Mine safety has been gravely underfunded since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
■ ITALY
Suspect appears in film
Amanda Knox, the American student awaiting trial in Italy for the murder of Meredith Kercher, has featured in a prison film reciting the “To be, or not to be” speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Knox, 21, stars alongside 11 female inmates in the 55-minute film, The Last City, which tackles prisoners’ fantasies of escape through a series of recitals to camera. Director Claudio Carini, who spent three months filming at Perugia’s Capanne jail, where Knox is held, said the film was part of a regular rehabilitation program. After more than a year in jail, Knox is due to stand trial in Perugia on Jan. 16 for the sexual assault and murder last November of Kercher, the British exchange student with whom she shared a house. Her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, also faces trial. Both deny charges. Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede has already been sentenced to jail for 30 years for his role in the murder.
■ UNITED STATES
Zoos kill elephants: study
Zoo life can be deadly for elephants, researchers concluded in a study that found wild elephants live longer than their captive sisters. The average African female elephant lived to be just under 17 in a zoo but female elephants living natural lives in Amboseli National Park in Kenya lived an average of 56 years, they found. Stress and obesity are the likely killers, Ros Clubb of Britain’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and colleagues found. “In zoos, the welfare of African elephants [Loxodonta africana] and Asian elephants [Elephas maximus] has long caused concern,” they wrote in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. “Infanticide, Herpes, tuberculosis, lameness, infertility and stereotypic behavior are prevalent, and zoo elephant populations are not self-sustaining without importation.”
■ AUSTRIA
Actor injured onstage
An actor’s suicide scene became a little too real for comfort when he accidentally stabbed himself in the neck during a performance after a stage prop was replaced with a sharp knife at an Austrian theater. Daniel Hoevels of the Thalia Theater company from Hamburg, Germany, was supposed to be using a knife blunted for use onstage, but the knife had been switched with a sharp one for the show last Saturday night. Vienna police said Thursday they were investigating “bodily injury caused by negligence.” The theater company said the original prop knife was damaged and that instructions to blunt the replacement had been “carelessly” disregarded. Hoevels received stitches for his injury at a hospital and was back on stage at Vienna’s prestigious Burgtheater the next day. He was playing the role of Mortimer in Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart.■ MEXICO
MC urged children to strip
Authorities in Puebla state detained a master of ceremonies (MC) on Thursday who allegedly offered children money to strip in front of a crowd at a town fair last month. Prosecutors said Leonardo Julian Hidalgo would be charged with corrupting minors and public indecency. A video posted online showing part of the Nov. 29 festival in the town of Hueytlalpan shows children being called into the center of an improvised bullring by someone speaking over a loudspeaker. Prosecutors said there is evidence the children were then asked to take their clothes off. “Several children participated, of whom at least two stripped completely,” the state attorney general’s office said in a statement. Media reported that the boys were 12 and 13 years old, and that they were offered about 150 pesos (US$11.30).
■ MEXICO
Kidnap toll released
More than 15,000 people have been kidnapped nationwide since 1986, the Citizen’s Council for Public Security and Justice said on Thursday, as prosecutors said they had identified the remains of a girl abducted last year. “The explosive growth in the number of kidnappings can be explained by the participation of security forces, directly or indirectly, by selling protection, as well as negligence or incompetence,” said Jose Antonio Ortega, head of the independent watchdog group. Since 1971, 856 kidnap victims have been killed, Ortega said. The state prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that a body found last week in Mexico City had been identified as that of the daughter of the former director of the National Sport Commission, who was 19 years old when she was kidnapped in September last year. Official figures show 954 kidnappings from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30 this year, but rights groups say there are two to three more cases to each one reported.
■ MEXICO
FBI director meets officials
US FBI Director Robert Mueller met with top officials in Mexico City on Thursday to coordinate the joint fight against drug traffickers, the US embassy said. Bilateral efforts to dismantle drug cartels and mafias on both sides of the border are reinforced by such meetings, US Ambassador Antonio Garza said in a statement.
■ UNITED STATES
Sect leader testifies
The leader of a religious sect testified in Taos, New Mexico, on Thursday that he lay in bed with and touched the sternums — but not the breasts — of naked 14 and 16-year-olds. Wayne Bent said he was careful that the healing exercises with the two sisters in 2006 were not of a sexual nature. “I never touched any fleshy part of the breast,” Bent said during about one hour on the witness stand. Bent, 67, a self-described messiah and leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, is charged with criminal sexual contact of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He said he was very cautious to avoid any sexual activity with the girls. They were unclothed “because that’s what they requested of me.”
■ UNITED STATES
Boston bans cigar bars
Boston officials approved some of the toughest anti-tobacco rules in the country on Thursday, extinguishing cigar bars and hookah bars and ending the sales of tobacco in pharmacies and on college campuses. The Boston Public Health Commission, however, decided to give the bars 10 years before they would have to close. The rules will take effect on campuses and pharmacies in 60 days.
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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