■ JAPAN
US warns over Roppongi
The US embassy in Tokyo has issued an unprecedented warning to Americans to avoid bars and clubs in the Roppongi district amid a reported surge in drink-spiking incidents. The embassy warned of a “significant increase” in the number of people who had been served drinks laced with drugs and then had their credit cards stolen as they lay unconscious. It said it had encouraged its employees to avoid Roppongi’s bars and advised other US citizens to do the same. Though the embassy did not say how many people had been drugged, the incidents had reportedly occurred at 11 establishments. Britain and Australia had already issued gentler warnings about the potential hazards of a boozy night out in Roppongi. A Tokyo Police spokesman said no claims had been filed about such incidents in recent weeks.
■ CHINA
Shooting sparks manhunt
A sentry on duty outside a People’s Liberation Army garrison in Chongqing was shot dead and an unknown number of attackers remain at large, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The attack was carried out by an unidentified assailant or assailants, who fled with the 18-year-old guard’s submachine gun after the shooting late on Thursday, Xinhua said, citing police. A special team has been set up between the military and Chongqing police to find the attackers, it said. The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights in China said several thousand soldiers and police were looking for the perpetrators.
■ AUSTRALIA
Loose trousers bring fine
A teenager wearing baggy trousers and no underwear was fined after his pants fell down just as a female police officer was walking past, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported on Thursday. Trent Joseph Wroe, 19, was fined A$250 (US$168), and ordered to wear a belt, after the Feb. 28 incident in Mooloolaba, Queensland, the paper said. Police told a magistrate’s court that Wroe deliberately bared his buttocks, but Wroe said he was wearing a pair of borrowed pants that were too big and fell down in the wrong place at the wrong time. He said he would apologize to the police officer, and promised to wear a belt and underwear in future.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Driver crashes, has a beer
A woman lost control of her car on a bend, crashed into a house — and then opened a bottle of beer, a newspaper reported yesterday. Vicky Johnson told the Dominion Post that she was sitting in her garden when the car ploughed into the side of her house in the Napier suburb of Maraenui. Johnson said she asked the woman driver if she was okay: “She said, ‘Yeah,’ then cracked open a bottle of Tui [a local beer], right in front of all the kids, too. It was unbelievable.” Johnson called the police, who arrested the 40-year-old driver and charged her with drunk driving.
■ HONG KONG
No Internet, no life: poll
Life would be meaningless and not worth living without the Internet, nearly one in seven youngsters said in a survey released yesterday by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups. Just under 14 percent of 1,800 respondents aged 12 to 25 insisted they could not live without the Internet while 80 percent described it as essential. One-quarter of respondents said they used the Internet for more than four hours a day. Youngsters who spent too long online slept badly, engaged in too little exercise and risked failing eyesigh, the federation said.
■ IRAQ
First Western group tours
Iraq has received its first group of Western tourists since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said on Thursday. The group of eight holidaymakers — five Britons, two Americans and a Canadian — arrived on March 8 and toured landmark historic sites, including the Biblical city of Babylon. Their three-week trip was organized by a British adventure tour operator, ministry spokesman Abdul-Zahra al-Telagani said, but he declined to name the company. “We expect these tourists will convey a positive message to their citizens back home that the situation in Iraq is good,” he said. Their itinerary included the Castle of Arbil — a relic of the Ottoman empire in the northern Kurdish region — as well as the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, in Mosul, a dangerous city still crawling with Sunni Arab insurgents. They also visited the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites of Shiite Islam, whose devastation in a bomb attack in 2006 unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Maggots heal leg ulcers
In a study testing treatments for leg ulcers, British doctors found that a surprising, yet perhaps revolting, option works just as well as standard treatment: maggots. Europeans first began using maggots to treat wounds about 700 years ago. Researchers at the University of York studied 267 patients with leg ulcers in the country from 2004 to 2007. Patients were either treated with a gel commonly used for ulcers or with maggots. The maggots were bred in sterile conditions and were about the size of a grain of rice. The insects were either packed into a teabag-sized packet or corraled into the wound with bandages. Patients who got the maggots healed just as quickly as those who got the gel, but suffered a little more pain in the process. The research, along with another study that said maggots were as cost-effective as the gel, was published yesterday in the British Medical Journal.
■ NIGERIA
Slogan promotes patriotism
The government is hoping a new patriotic slogan emblazoned on T-shirts and baseball caps can restore self-confidence and overturn Nigeria’s battered reputation. Under the slogan “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation,” the government hopes to eschew that image and “entrench a culture of moral re-armament,” President Umaru Yar’Adua said in a speech. “At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked person,” Dora Akunyili, information minister and self-styled chief image maker said at the launch of the re-branding campaign this week. “We are pulled aside for questioning. We are seen as potential drug pushers or fraudsters. We are unfortunately denied the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
■ GREECE
First ‘green’ island
The tiny island of Agios Efstratios located in the Aegean Sea would soon become the country’s first “green” island, entirely powered by renewable energy sources, Development Minister Kostis Hatzidakis said on Thursday. The island’s 250 residents would use only solar and wind-generated energy to move around the 43.3km² island, located northwest of Limnos, on bicycles and in electric cars. The US$13 million project would go into effect next year and serve as an international model, Hatzidakis said. The island’s residents are reportedly thrilled at the idea, with one inhabitant telling Greek radio that “our island will soon become paradise.”
■ UNITED STATES
School accused of fights
The Dallas school system was rocked by allegations on Thursday that staff members at an inner-city high school made students settle their differences by fighting bare-knuckle brawls inside a steel cage. The principal and other employees at South Oak Cliff High knew about the cage fights and allowed the practice to continue, according to a report last year by school system investigators. The report, first obtained by the Dallas Morning News, describes two instances of fighting in an equipment cage in a boys’ locker room between 2003 and 2005. It was not clear from the report whether there were other fights. No criminal charges were ever filed, and there was no mention in the report of whether anyone required medical attention or whether any employees were disciplined.
■ BRAZIL
Amazon Indians win case
The Supreme Court sided on Thursday with Amazonian Indians in a land dispute that some have called critical for determining the future of the rainforest that sprawls the size of Western Europe. The court ruling upholds the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation for 18,000 Indians who lay claim to their ancestral land, despite a handful of large-scale farmers who also occupy the territory in the northernmost reaches of Amazon jungle bordering Venezuela. The dispute over the 1.7 million hectare reservation turned violent last year when authorities tried to evict the farmers. The Supreme Court president said it was a precedent-setting ruling for Indian land rights.
■ VENEZUELA
Chavez opponent wanted
A prosecutor on Thursday called for the arrest of a prominent political opponent of President Hugo Chavez on a corruption charge. Manuel Rosales has been accused of illegal enrichment while he was Zulia state governor between 2002 and 2004, prosecutor Katiuska Plaza said. Rosales, currently the mayor of Maracaibo, maintains he is innocent and says the accusations are politically motivated. His attorney, Alvaro Castillo, said his client is accused of embezzling public funds, but he did not offer details.
■ UNITED STATES
Suspects dump cash
San Diego police say some narcotics suspects led officers on a wild chase, throwing cash out of their truck’s windows as passers-by ran onto the roadways to grab the bills. Police say the pursuit began on Thursday on southbound State Route 15. The driver took officers on a circuitous route over several streets and freeways, eventually getting onto Interstate 5. At several points during the pursuit, the suspects flung cash out of the truck’s windows, prompting passers-by to run onto the roadways to grab the money. The driver finally stopped in the middle of the highway and the suspects were arrested.
■ UNITED STATES
Cookie caper crumbles
A plan to stash more than 100kg of marijuana in a shipment of cookies has led to federal drug charges. Acting US Attorney Marietta Parker announced on Thursday that a federal grand jury meeting in Topeka had returned an indictment against three men accused of possessing the pot. Prosecutors allege that agents watched last month as the men picked up a shipment of cookies in Kansas City, Missouri, and took it to the garage of a residence that Morales was renting in Kansas City, Kansas. A search of the cookies uncovered 104kg of pot packaged in 221 bundles.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
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