﹥CHINA
Quake city replaced
Work on building a new town called ※Eternal Prosperity§ will begin next month to replace one of the cities destroyed in last year＊s Sichuan earthquake, state media reported on Monday. Billions of dollars will be spent on the new seat of Beichuan County that will be built 23km from the old town and well away from geological fault lines, Xinhua news agency said, citing one of the planners. Beichuan was one of the worst-hit towns in the May 12 quake because it lay at the juncture of two fault lines. Roughly half of Beichuan＊s 26,000 residents died during the May 12 quake.
PHOTO: AFP/AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMS
﹥JAPAN
Prince to visit Vietnam
Crown Prince Naruhito will make a week-long visit to Vietnam next month to promote bilateral ties while his sick wife stays at home, officials said yesterday. The prince will leave Tokyo on Feb. 9 for Hanoi and return on Feb. 15, the imperial household agency said. His first trip to Vietnam marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. During his stay the prince will make a courtesy call on Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet in the capital.
﹥CHINA
Two HIV drugs rolled out
Beijing will provide two imported HIV drugs to patients who develop resistance to cheaper, domestic alternatives, state media said on Monday, going some way to meeting a key demand of AIDS treatment activists. The decision to hand out the new drugs means that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available to patients, the China Daily said. Treatment with Tenofovir, marketed by Gilead Sciences Inc under the brand Viread, and Kaletra, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, cost over US$1,500 a year each. Other drugs already available cost as little as US$730.
﹥AUSTRALIA
Men survive 25 days in box
Two men from Myanmar told rescuers they survived for 25 days floating in a large icebox in waters off the north coast after their fishing boat sank, authorities said yesterday. The men were spotted in the cooler on Saturday by a routine aerial border patrol over the Torres Strait off Cape York, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. The men described seeing the other 18 crew members on board the Thai boat go into the water without life vests or any flotation devices as it sank, she said. There was no chance they could have survived until now and the agency had decided no search would be launched, Jiggins said.
﹥CHINA
Beijing blocks more porn
Authorities have blocked 244 new pornographic Web sites over the last week, Xinhua news agency said, bringing the total number of sites shut down in a campaign against ※vulgar§ content to over 700. Many of the targeted Web sites were unregistered and broke laws about distribution of sexual content, the report said. China promised last week that the campaign, which Xinhua said was scheduled to last a month, would be no ※flash in the pan.§ It has been extended to cover content in mobile phone games, online novels and radio programs.
﹥COSTA RICA
China free trade talks start
China and Costa Rica on Monday began talks for a free trade treaty under which the Central American nation hopes to export meat, plants, fruit and coffee to the Asian giant, officials said. Chinese President Hu Jintao (?党啈) announced the talks in November, during the 〝highest-level visit by a Chinese official to Costa Rica, a little over a year after San Jose gave up six decades of ties with Taiwan. The first round of talks in San Jose are due to end today and the process is due to end before President Oscar Arias leaves office in May next year.
﹥CANADA
Former radical denied entry
William Ayers, a former US radical who featured prominently in Republican efforts to thwart incoming US president Barack Obama＊s campaign last year, has been denied entry to Canada. The University of Toronto＊s Centre for Urban Schooling issued a statement on Monday saying Ayers was denied entry on Sunday night because of a 1969 conviction during an anti-war demonstration. Ayers, now a professor, was to deliver a speech at the center. Forty years ago Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the early 1970s. Ayers became an issue in last year＊s presidential race after Republican claims that Obama was ※palling around with terrorists,§ as Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin put it. Ayers told Canada＊s Globe and Mail newspaper that he has traveled to Canada more than a dozen times in the past.
﹥GABON
Foreigners caught in jail riot
Two French, a Chinese and a Thai prisoner were taken hostage on Monday during a day-long jail riot that saw two people killed during a police siege in Libreville, a government source said. Rioters seized ※women and foreign [detainees],§ the source said. ※The toll is two dead and several wounded, who have been taken to hospital. We were close to catastrophe,§ Interior Minister Andre Mba Obame said. ※There could have been many more deaths§ save for dozens of special forces who fought their way into Libreville＊s main jail, according to an AFP correspondent and locals who reported hearing gunfire.
﹥MOLDOVA
Poet dies in car crash
Poet Grigore Vieru, admired for his courage in promoting Romanian, the country＊s native language, when Moldova was a Soviet republic, has died. He was 73. Vieru died on Sunday in a hospital in Chisinau. He had been in a car crash there on Friday. President Vladimir Voronin declared yesterday a day of national mourning.
﹥UNITED STATES
Detroit razes fixer-upper
There are thousands of buildings that should be demolished in Detroit. Eric Roslonski says his house wasn＊t one of them. Roslonski filed a lawsuit against the city on Monday, more than two years after a house he was restoring was suddenly destroyed. He said he put more than US$30,000 into the property on the east side of Detroit after buying it for US$7,000. One day in summer 2006, he couldn＊t find 13405 Flanders. His lawyer, Jeffrey Dworin, said the house was taken off a demolition list, then apparently reinstated without Roslonski＊s knowledge. A message seeking comment was left with the city＊s law department, which was closed for a federal holiday on Monday. Roslonski is suing Detroit for his losses under a federal civil rights law. He fixed another house on the same street and sold it for US$85,000.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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