■INDIA
Purification ritual probed
Hindu priests in an eastern state are under investigation for conducting a purification ritual soon after a minister belonging to a lower caste visited a famous temple, officials said yesterday. Minutes after Orissa State Minister Pramila Mallick prayed at the temple this week, Hindu priests shut the doors and threw away holy offerings, washed the floors and changed the idol’s clothes, one official said. “Some priests opposed the minister’s entry into the interior chamber of the temple,” Upendra Mallik, a senior government official said. “We are investigating.” In India, millions of people formerly known as “untouchables” remain oppressed at the bottom of the ancient Hindu caste system.
■NEW ZEALAND
Fiji appeals for aid
New Zealand and Australia yesterday announced new emergency aid packages for Fiji as officials said nearly 12,000 people were homeless after floods wreaked widespread havoc. As cleanup efforts began after a week of heavy rains swept torrents of water through towns and villages, killing at least 11 people and ruining 300 businesses, Fiji’s military government appealed to 20 countries for help. The damage was so bad in the tourist center of Nadi that there were calls to bulldoze shops and restaurants, which have been flooded to roof height twice, and rebuild the town entirely, Radio New Zealand reported from the capital Suva. Earlier, Fijian Foreign Affairs Secretary Ratu Isoa Gavidi told Radio New Zealand that it could be two or three weeks before fresh water supplies could be restored to some flood-stricken areas and clothing, bedding and tents were also needed. New Zealand and Australia, which had imposed sanctions on Fiji’s military regime which seized power in a coup two years ago, have so far supplied aid only to the Red Cross and nongovernmental relief organizations.
■THAILAND
Visa waiver considered
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said his government may waive visa fees for all tourists for three months in a bid to boost visitor numbers following last year’s siege of Bangkok’s airports. Abhisit said late on Thursday there could also be discounts on aircraft landing fees. “The plan to revive the tourism sector will be tabled at the cabinet meeting next Tuesday and will include a three months’ waiver for visa fees and discounting landing fees,” he told a seminar. “I hope these measures will help the tourism sector one way or another.” Nationals of 41 countries, including the US, most European nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand already do not require a visa to enter Thailand if their stay does not exceed 30 days.
■SOUTH KOREA
Spousal rape a crime
A district court in the southern city of Busan yesterday, making a landmark decision in this male-dominated society, found a husband guilty of raping his wife. The decision marked the first time that a South Korean court has recognized the existence of sexual coercion in marriage, Yonhap news agency said. The court found the 42-year-old man guilty of raping his 25-year-old Filipino wife and passed a 30-month suspended jail sentence. “The accused, who should have taken good care of the victim with love and sincerity, put her through numerous hardships and threatened her with weapons to satisfy his desire, in breach of her right to self-determination on sexual acts,” it said in a statement. The man was charged with forcing his wife to have sex by threatening her with a stun gun or a knife in July last year.
■MALAWI
Beijing promises aid
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) said Beijing would not abandon Africa, despite the global recession. Yang told reporters on Thursday the rich world should do the same. He was in the country during what has become China’s traditional New Year’s tour of Africa. Yang signed an agreement to build a US$90 million hotel conference center in the capital, Lilongwe. China is also building a parliament house and a highway linking the north to Zambia. Chinese Ambassador Lin Songtian (林松添) said Chinese businessmen who accompanied Yang discussed buying tobacco from the country for what he said were 350 million Chinese smokers.
■MOROCCO
Caracas embassy closed
Rabat said on Thursday it had closed its embassy in Venezuela in protest over Caracas’ support of the Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state in Western Sahara that Rabat claims as its territory. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the decision followed “increasing hostility by the Venezuelan authorities regarding the Kingdom of Morocco’s territorial integrity and recent measures to support [Polisario].” The ministry gave no details on the new measures taken by Venezuela to back the Polisario Front, which had enjoyed diplomatic support from Caracas even before Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez came to power.
■MOZAMBIQUE
Scores die from cholera
At least 38 people died in a cholera outbreak in the northern province of Nampula, SAPA news agency quoted a state-controlled newspaper as saying yesterday. The outbreak began late last month and 210 people have been diagnosed with the disease in that province, the Maputo-based Daily Noticias said. Poor hygienic conditions were cited as the major cause of the disease.
■SPAIN
Bomb explodes in north
Police said a bomb exploded at a television retransmitter outside a town in the northern Basque region, causing damage but no injuries. A spokesman for the Ertzaintza Basque regional force said the blast occurred around 1am on a hill outside the town of Hernani. He said the installation was not located near houses. The official was speaking yesterday on customary condition of anonymity in keeping with department regulations. He said no group had claimed responsibility. The armed separatist group ETA has planted several bombs at television retransmitters. The group has killed more than 825 people since 1968.
■SPAIN
Too many TV commercials
The main association of advertisers on Thursday urged the government to limit the number of commercials that TV stations could air because it said “saturation advertising” was hurting the effectiveness of their messages. In a statement, the Spanish Association of Advertisers asked the government to enforce an EU-wide limit of 12 minutes of adverts per hour. In May the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, warned Madrid that it faced court action for failing to comply with the advertising limits, which aim to prevent viewers from having their shows interrupted excessively and promote television quality across Europe. The Commission monitored local television in 2005 and 2006 and found the 12 minutes per hour limit was regularly broken.
■ECUADOR
Most of nation loses power
A power failure on Thursday plunged 70 percent of Ecuador in darkness starting at 5pm, a spokesman for the National Center for Energy Control (CENACE) said. “It’s a national problem. About 70 percent of the country is without electricity,” Ivan Morales told Ecuadorian radio station Sonorama. In Quito, power returned slowly to some neighborhoods in the early evening before failing again at about 8pm. The power failure, CENACE said, apparently came after a problem on powerlines linking Ambato in central Ecuador to Quito that serves the northern part of the country.
■UNITED STATES
Pedro Aguilar dies at 81
Pedro Aguilar, whose innovative style of mambo dancing made him a legend at the Palladium ballroom in Manhattan and a one-man encyclopedia of Latin dance, died on Tuesday in Miami. He was 81 and lived in Hallandale, Florida. The cause was heart failure, said Barbara Craddock, his dance partner for the last 11 years. Aguilar, known as Cuban Pete, translated his footwork as a boxer and his childhood tap-dance training into a rhythmically complex, visually arresting dancing style that electrified audiences at the Palladium, the premier showcase for Latin music in the 1940s and 1950s.
■UNITED STATES
Cernan donates his papers
Former astronaut Eugene Cernan, a 1956 Purdue University, Indiana, graduate and the most recent person to walk on the moon, is donating his personal papers to the school’s flight archives. The Purdue collection also includes the papers of Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 became the first to walk on the moon, and Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and a Purdue staff member in the 1930s. Cernan, one of 14 astronauts selected by NASA in 1963, went into space three times. As a pilot on Gemini 9, he became the second person to walk in space in 1966. He was a lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 in 1969 and he was commander of Apollo 17 in 1972, when he became the last to walk on the moon’s surface.
■COLOMBIA
Hostages found unharmed
Ten Colombians kidnapped nearly a month ago by leftist rebels have been released, apparently unharmed, near the capital city Bogota, police said on Thursday. “We have information that they were freed and are in the hands of the army,” a police spokesman said. The former captives, rural laborers, were abducted on Dec. 20 by rebel fighters with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The exact date of their release was not immediately clear. The freed hostages were taken to a military base in western Bogota, where they were to receive medical check-ups. They were said to have traveled on foot after having been abandoned by their FARC captors.
■MEXICO
Cops accused of paint attack
Four teenagers say police spray-painted their hair, shoes and buttocks to teach them not to paint graffiti on public property. Emilio Alfaro of Nuevo Leon state’s Human Rights Commission said on Thursday the youths have filed a complaint alleging that police in Guadalupe slapped, kicked and painted them with spray cans after detaining them for vandalism. The youths are aged between 14 and 16. They presented paint-stained shoes and photos of their painted heads as evidence. Guadelupe’s police department says several officers have been suspended while the matter is being investigated.
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,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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