■CHINA
Protesters clothe nude art
Internet users angered by censorship in cyberspace have dressed up images of famous Renaissance nudes in a protest against Beijing’s crackdown on “vulgar” online content. Images posted as part of the protest include Michelangelo’s statue David shown in a Mao suit while black socks and a strategically placed necktie were added to the artist’s depiction of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The protest began after a user of the social networking site Douban.com complained that images of several paintings had been deleted from an online photo album. In response, protest organizers asked Internet users to clothe artwork to “save” it from the censors.
■HONG KONG
Birds test positive for H5N1
The government says seven more dead birds have tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, bringing the total number of recent cases to 11. The government said in a statement on Saturday that the seven included a gray heron found in the Mai Po Nature Reserve, which prompted officials to close the bird sanctuary for three weeks. The H5N1 strain has killed at least 254 people worldwide since 2003.
■HONG KONG
Drunk drivers targeted
Police were yesterday preparing to carry out random breath tests on drivers for the first time as new laws against drinking and driving come into effect. From midnight yesterday drivers are being stopped at roadblocks and given random breath tests, a police spokesman said. Motorists convicted of driving while drunk can be jailed for up to three years, banned from driving and fined a maximum of US$3,200 under the legislation which comes into effect today. Until now drivers have only been breath-tested after road accidents.
■PHILIPPINES
Abducted midwife escapes
An abducted midwife escaped from his kidnappers after 10 days in captivity in Basilan Province, a military spokeswoman said yesterday. Eleazar Gumera, 45, was kidnapped on Jan. 28 in Lamitan town, 900km south of Manila, after helping deliver a baby in a village. Lieutenant Esteffani Cacho, a regional military spokeswoman, said Gumera escaped on Saturday evening. “He slipped away from his captors by pretending to answer the call of nature and [he] ran away when he had the chance,” she said. “He walked for several hours and swam in the seas.” A passing fishing boat picked up Gumera and brought him to the nearby village of Bato.
■VIETNAM
New bird flu case reported
A melee broke out in the north, when more than 100 villagers prevented authorities from destroying chickens to stop the spread of bird flu, officials said yesterday as the country announced its second H5N1 case. About 100 villagers in Thuong Tin district just outside Hanoi overwhelmed police and health authorities on Thursday and stopped them from destroying about 1,500 chickens smuggled in from China, official Vu Van Dung said. As about 30 police and health officials removed the poultry from a truck to burn in a pit, the villagers — desperate for the income the birds could provide — grabbed the chickens and ran off. “I told the villagers that the chickens had been sprayed with chemicals and were not edible, but they didn’t listen,” Dung said.
■NEW ZEALAND
PM auctions off plaster cast
Prime Minister John Key has raised NZ$18,850.10 (US$9,500) for charity by selling in an Internet auction the plaster cast that helped to mend his broken right arm. The funds will be donated to The Fred Hollows Foundation, which operates blindness-prevention programs in the Solomon Islands. “I was very surprised it got to that … but I am delighted,” Key said when the auction closed yesterday. Key broke his arm in two places when he fell at a function in Auckland on Jan. 17. During a later trip to Papua New Guinea for a Pacific Islands Forum meeting, which included a stopover in the Solomon Islands, the cast was signed by several dignitaries.
■NEPAL
Police hunt militants
Police scoured forested hills and remote gorges in the west yesterday in search of militants who attacked a police post on Saturday, killing one officer, a government spokesman said. Dozens of heavily armed men stormed the Syaulibang police post, about 240km west of Kathmandu on Saturday and looted weapons including five rifles and a pistol, in the biggest attack on police since Maoist rebels ended a civil war in 2006. The area is close to Rolpa, from where the Maoist insurgency began in early 1996. “We have mobilized police from all directions who have ringed the area and are looking for the attackers,” Home Ministry spokesman Navin Ghimire said.
■CHINA
Six killed in firework blast
An explosion at an illegal fireworks factory in Guizhou Province killed six people and injured nine, state media reported yesterday. Five died immediately in the blast on Saturday afternoon in a village in Guizhou, Xinhua news agency reported. Ten others were rushed to hospital where one more worker died, the report said, adding the incident was still being investigated.
■MADAGASCAR
Protest death toll at least 25
Police said at least 25 people were killed and 167 wounded when security forces fired on protesters in the capital. Lala Rakotonirina, chief of communications for the national police, said yesterday those figures were based on reports from the main hospital. Rakotonirina said other victims may have been taken to private clinics after Saturday’s violence. A reporter for a local broadcast station was reportedly among those killed. Security forces opened fire on protesters near a presidential palace in the capital in a dramatic escalation of a confrontation between the president and a young opposition leader.
■ALGERIA
President sets election date
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has set a date of April 9 for presidential elections, and has invited several international groups to send observers, Algiers said on Saturday. A presidential palace statement said Bouteflika had named former justice minister Mohamed Teguia to head the election commission for the voting. He also invited the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Arab League and the African Union to send observers to monitor the elections, the statement said. The setting of the election date follows the move by the parliament in November to approve a constitutional amendment permitting Bouteflika, who has served as president since 1999, to run for office again.
■IRAN
Closure blamed on economy
The government spokesman said the British Council, the cultural arm of the British government, suspended work in Tehran because of “economic problems.” Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters on Saturday that while the council had no permit to operate, yet the government did not ban it, rather it was the British themselves who shut the place down. The council said in a statement on Thursday that it had halted operations after “cases of intimidation” against the local staff.
■SOMALIA
Mortars fired at palace
Mortars were fired at the presidential palace on Saturday, hours after the country’s new president arrived in the capital for the first time since his election last week in neighboring Djibouti, a spokesman said. No one was hurt when the four mortars exploded near the palace in Mogadishu, and President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed ordered soldiers and African Union (AU) peacekeepers not to return fire, presidential spokesman Abdullahi Khadar said. Civilians are often killed in the crossfire between Islamic insurgents and troops or AU peacekeepers.
■GERMANY
Al-Qaeda suspect arrested
A suspected al-Qaeda member accused of helping get equipment and money for the terrorist organization has been arrested, prosecutors said on Saturday. The 30-year-old German citizen, identified only as Sermet I., was arrested at Stuttgart airport on Friday as he entered the country. A federal judge ordered him kept in custody pending possible charges. The man is suspected of membership in a terrorist organization and three counts of violating export laws, federal prosecutors said in a statement. They did not say where the man flew in from or if he was a resident in Stuttgart. They alleged he supplied range finders, night-vision equipment and an unspecified quantity of cash to Aleem N., a German of Pakistani origin who was arrested last February.
■CANADA
Ottawa stays mum on video
The government on Saturday refused to confirm or deny having received a videotape purporting to prove that two of its diplomats kidnapped in Niger several weeks ago were still alive. “We will not release any information that could compromise our efforts, or which could endanger the individuals in question,” Marie-Christine Lilkoff, a spokeswoman for the ministry of foreign affairs said in an e-mailed statement late on Saturday. Diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, along with their driver, went missing in mid-December when returning from a visit to a gold mine operated by Canadian company Semafo, west of Niamey in Niger.
■UNITED STATES
Obama artist arrested
The artist who created the iconic pop-art portrait that became the unofficial logo for US President Barack Obama’s insurgent White House bid has been arrested in Boston for defacing property with graffiti, US media reported on Saturday. Artist Shepard Fairey was arrested in Boston late on Friday on warrants for defacing property with graffiti, the Boston Herald and other media outlets reported. He is the creator of a popular red, white and blue poster, emblazoned with the legend “hope,” “progress” or “change” showing the then-presidential candidate gazing off into the distance. Fairey, 38, was taken into custody on his way to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art where he was being honored with a solo exhibition of his work, called “Supply and Demand.”
■UNITED STATES
Four shot and killed
Two men and a woman were shot and killed in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West side, police said on Saturday. The bodies were found in an upscale building on Saturday evening with a semiautomatic gun nearby, police Sergeant Kevin Hayes said. About four hours later, a man was shot dead outside another apartment building on the Upper West Side about a 2.5km away. The man was found wounded on Saturday night and pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. It was unclear if the shootings were connected or when the first victims were shot.
■CUBA
Passenger trains collide
Two passenger trains collided in central Cuba on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring 93 others, state media reported. Authorities were investigating why the eastbound and westbound trains hit as they were passing each other on parallel tracks at about 8:30am, outside the city of Sibanicu in Camaguey Province, said the online edition of Adelante, the province’s state-controlled newspaper. The impact knocked some of the cars from the tracks, killing three passengers and injuring 93 others, two of whom were in serious condition, state television said.
■BRAZIL
Six dead in plane crash
A private airplane with 26 people aboard crashed late on Saturday into a river in Brazil, leaving six people dead, four survivors and the rest missing, a local fire department spokesman said. The craft, an Embraer Bandeirante flown by Manaus Aerotaxi, was carrying two crew members and 24 passengers, among them seven children, the spokesman said. The plane had departed from the city of Coari en route to the inland Amazon basin’s largest city Manaus. But because of bad weather, the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in the River Manacapuru, a tributary of the Amazon, between Santo Antonio and the island of Montecristo.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS