Wed, Jan 14, 2009 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■JAPAN

  Ex-minister quits party

  A former Cabinet member quit Prime Minister Taro Aso’s ruling party yesterday, a rare defection that reflects growing dissent in the party’s ranks as public support for Aso plummets. Lawmaker Yoshimi Watanabe said he quit the ruling Liberal Democratic Party because its policies were increasingly aimed at maintaining the status quo, not at solving problems. “Prime Minister Aso’s political judgment, which is only based on his desire to hold on to power, is the very problem that is delaying measures on crucial issues,” Watanabe said. “I fear that he might invite tragedy to the country and its people.” Watanabe said he had no plans to start a new party, but added that there were many within the ranks of the Liberal Democrats who share his views and said he expected they would cooperate with him.

  ■INDONESIA

  Ministry trims search

  The government yesterday scaled down the search for around 230 people still missing two days after a ferry capsized in heavy seas off Sulawesi, as investigators began probing the cause of the disaster. High winds and rough seas continued to pound the Makassar Strait,where the 700-tonne Teratai Prima capsized and sank with some 267 people on board early on Sunday. Smaller vessels were ordered to give up the search and only four navy warships and two patrol boats continued to look for survivors in the treacherous strait, known for strong currents and unpredictable seas. “We are facing very bad weather and rough seas. We don’t want to take any risks by sending small boats,” transport ministry maritime official Sunaryo said. He said 34 people had been rescued since the alert was raised late on Sunday and only one body had been found, leaving 232 people missing feared dead.

  ■VIETNAM

  Bird flu virus found

  Authorities have found the H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry illegally imported from China, said Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of the Department of Animal Health. Nam said the animal health department in Lang Son province had tested 16 samples of illegally imported chicken seized by police at the Chinese border. Eight tested positive for the H5N1 virus. The department asked Lang Son’s animal health officials to strengthen their inspections of imported poultry, Nam said. Five people in Vietnam died from avian influenza early last year, but no cases have been reported since March. On Jan. 2, an eight-year-old child in Thanh Hoa province was admitted to hospital and confirmed by health officials as the nation’s first human case of the H5N1 virus this year.

  ■THE NETHERLANDS

  Court: Bemba used rape

  War crimes prosecutors have accused former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba of using systematic rape to intimidate civilians during a bloody power struggle in neighboring Central Africa Republic. Prosecutors are laying out their case against Bemba in a pretrial hearing in the Hague meant to assess whether there is enough evidence to put Bemba on trial. In an opening statement on Monday, deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda previewed the testimony of one man who said he was sodomized in front of his family, then watched his wife and children abused.

  ■ZIMBABWE

  Mugabe rejects meeting

  President Robert Mugabe won’t meet Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai because the request for the meeting was communicated through the wrong channels, a government official said. Tsvangirai, who asked for the meeting on Friday, should have submitted his request through former South African president Thabo Mbeki, said Patrick Chinamasa, an aide to Mugabe, by phone from Harare yesterday. Mbeki is the facilitator of Southern African Development Community-mandated talks aimed at resolving Zimbabwe’s political crisis. Mugabe would not meet Tsvangirai because the request for a meeting did not come through the facilitator, Chinamasa said.

  ■POLAND

  Man arrested for dove killing

  A 54-year old dove-keeper was arrested in northern Poland when he starved some 100 birds to death, Polish Radio reported on Monday. The man identified only as Zbigniew R, told police he lost the key to his loft and couldn’t feed the birds for a week. He faces up to a year in prison. Police were informed of the case by a neighbor, who had earlier forced the loft doors open in an attempt to rescue the doves.

  ■MOZAMBIQUE

  Floods kill 25 people

  Torrential rains have killed 25 people in the central part of the country in the last two weeks and flooding could devastate the region by March, authorities said on Monday. The victims, mostly children, drowned while trying to swim through raging waters, said Belarmino Chivambo, spokesman of the country’s National Institute of Disaster Management. “We expect the worst to come by March, which is the peak of the rainy season due to heavy downpours in both Mozambique and neighboring countries,” he said. Thousands of homes have been destroyed and authorities are setting up emergency shelters, said Chivambo. Roads, bridges and electricity pylons in four provinces have been damaged. The Zambezi River in central Mozambique, which stretches 500km through four provinces, is now above flood alert levels, swelled by rains in neighboring Malawi and Zambia.

  ■RUSSIA

  Suspected gas blast hurts 17

  Officials say a suspected gas blast badly damaged a government building in Russia’s violence-plagued Ingushetia Province and injured at least 17 people. A spokeswoman for the regional branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee said one of the injured was in a critical condition. Svetlana Gribakova said preliminary information pointed to a gas explosion and not terrorism at the bailiffs’ headquarters in Ingushetia’s main city, Nazran. Marat Prokopenkov of the Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in southern Russia also said gas was suspected, but that other causes could not be ruled out. Attacks on law enforcement officials are common in Ingushetia.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Writer accused of assault

  At least four women have accused the Academy Award-winning songwriter of You Light Up My Life of luring them to his home and sexually assaulting them while they auditioned for movie roles, police said. Police were investigating whether director Joseph Brooks, who won an Oscar for Best Original Song for the 1977 Debby Boone ballad, advertised upcoming film roles on Internet postings as a ploy to assault women. When a woman responded to an audition call, Brooks would tell her she’d be playing a prostitute and would have her drink shots and perform sex acts on him, police said. Some women believe they might have been drugged, police said. At least four incidents are alleged to have happened in March and May last year, police spokesman John Sweeney said. One woman told authorities she had sex with Brooks after drinking wine with him, Sweeney said. Another woman, from Seattle, said she responded to an ad and Brooks demanded she have sex with him, Sweeney said. Another woman told police Brooks sodomized her, Sweeney said. Brooks, 70, hasn’t been charged, Sweeney said.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Black Hawk crash kills one

  An Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into a field on the campus of Texas A&M University during a field training exercise on Monday, killing one person and injuring four others aboard. The Army UH-60 helicopter crashed near the Corps of Cadets field on the school’s College Station campus, about 160km northwest of Houston. No students were among the injured. A crew of four from the Army National Guard and an Army lieutenant assigned to the school’s ROTC unit were the only ones aboard the Black Hawk, Texas A&M spokesman Lane Stephenson said. Sheila Rinard with College Station Medical Center said two of the crash victims were in critical condition and a third was in stable condition.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Peace Corps architect dies

  Maurice Albertson, an architect of the Peace Corps and a Colorado State University (CSU) professor emeritus, died on Sunday. He was 90. Albertson died at Columbine Care Center West, said family friend Mims Harris. He fell ill following a trip to Indonesia in November and did not recover. Albertson and fellow CSU researchers Andrew Rice and Pauline Birky-Kreutzer responded to a request in 1960 from the federal government for a model to encourage young Americans to serve in Third World countries. The three wrote a book that set up the basic design of the Peace Corp. The program was officially launched in 1961 by former US president John F. Kennedy. It now has more than 190,000 volunteers serving in 139 developing countries.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Victim calls for end of case

  The victim in the Roman Polanski statutory rape case has urged prosecutors to drop the decades-old charges against the Hollywood director, court records revealed on Monday. “I was the 13-year-old girl Roman Polanski took advantage of on March 10, 1977,” wrote Samantha Geimer, now a 45-year old mother of three. “I have urged that this matter come to a formal legal end. I have urged that the district attorney and the court dismiss these charges. True as they may be, the continued publication of those details causes harm to me, my beloved husband, my three children and my mother. I have become a victim of the actions of the district attorney,” she wrote in a brief filed with the court. However, Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that there were “no legal grounds for disqualification.”
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