■NEW ZEALAND
Pole loses extradition fight
A Polish man, wanted on charges relating to the collapse of his company in his homeland, has lost a five-year fight against extradition, a news report said yesterday. The Polish government sought the extradition of Slawomir Ryszard Bujak for misappropriating money, vehicles and property as his transport company collapsed in 2004, Radio New Zealand reported. The Christchurch District Court ordered him deported to face trial in 2004 and Bujak has since appealed unsuccessfully to the High urt, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. He also lost an appeal to the Supreme Court to stop Polish authorities from seizing his assets in New Zealand.
■BANGLADESH
Clocks moved forward
The country has set clocks forward by an hour in its first-ever daylight savings time, aimed at easing a national power shortage. “We are doing this to save energy and we hope that people will change their lifestyle accordingly,” said Prime Minister Shekih Hasina, adjusting clocks at her office in a brief ceremony shown live on TV at midnight on Friday. The impoverished South Asian country has an energy shortfall of more than 1,000 megawatts per day. The government hopes the daylight savings system can save 250 megawatts of power per day with less evening use of electric lights, Junior Power and Energy Minister Shamsul Haq Tuku said.
■MALAYSIA
Riot rattles rehab center
Police were looking for 23 people who escaped from a drug rehabilitation center during a riot there, an officer said yesterday. Detainees at the center in northern Penang state set fire to three buildings and several vehicles on Friday, said a local police officer who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to make public statement. People who test positive for drugs are usually convicted of drug use and sent to a rehabilitation center for at least 13 months. The officer said 30 of the center’s 522 patients ran away, but police recaptured seven. He said no one was injured in the riot.
■JAPAN
World’s oldest man dies
Tomoji Tanabe, the world’s oldest man, died in his sleep at his home in the south on Friday, a city official said. He was 113. “He died peacefully. His family members were with him,” said Junko Nakao, a city official in Miyakonojo in Kyushu. Tanabe died of heart failure, she said. Tanabe, who was born on Sept. 18, 1895, had eight children — five sons and three daughters. The former city land surveyor also had 25 grandchildren, 53 great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren, according to a statement from Miyakonojo city. Briton Henry Allingham, whose 113th birthday was on June 6, is now the world’s oldest man.
■INDIA
US plane forced to land
Air traffic controllers forced a US-chartered cargo plane carrying ammunition to Afghanistan to land at Mumbai airport after it violated Indian air space, officials said yesterday. The Russian Antonov-124 had taken off from the US base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia bound for Kandahar when it flew over the western part of the country late on Friday without authorization, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. “The plane, with its two crew and six passengers, has been moved to the parking bay of the airport under strict security and is awaiting clearance to take off,” an aviation official said.
■ SOMALIA
Politician gunned down
Another politician was killed on Friday, a day after the security minister died in a suicide car bomb attack, reports said yesterday. Mohamed Hussein Addow, a member of parliament, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen in the capital Mogadishu late on Friday, the BBC said. Fighting has spiked in the country since early May as Islamist insurgent groups al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam try to oust President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden and at least 24 others were killed in the suicide attack on a hotel in the central town of Baladweyne the previous day.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police probing expenses
Police said it had begun criminal investigations into the alleged misuse of expenses by several lawmakers. A “small number” of full inquiries of members of both houses of parliament were necessary, Scotland Yard said late on Friday. A panel of specialized detectives was to focus on politicians who allegedly deliberately misled authorities or claimed repayments for non-existing mortgages. While police did not release any names, the BBC reported that Labour members of parliament (MP) David Chaytor and Elliot Morley were among those to be investigated. Both MPs already announced they will stand down, after it emerged that they claimed interest payment on already paid mortgages.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Brown ‘hurt’ by criticism
Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted he had been “hurt” by criticism aimed at him and said he could easily “walk away from all of this tomorrow,” in an interview with the Guardian yesterday. Brown said he would not be worried if he never saw his Downing Street office again and accepted he was not the communicator he would like to be. Brown’s authority has been shaken by the resignation of several ministers, the lawmakers’ expenses scandal and a heavy drubbing for his governing Labour Party in recent European Parliament and English local elections. Though Labour is well behind in the opinion polls with a general election due inside 12 months, Brown insisted he could lead Labour to victory.
■SPAIN
Bombing kills policeman
A bomb blast blamed by officials on the Basque separatist group ETA killed a policeman on Friday, drawing condemnation from politicians, trade unions and the Catholic Church. A regional police spokesman named the victim as Eduardo Pulles Garcia, a 49-year-old inspector, whose car exploded when he started it in a parking lot in the Basque Country town of Arrigorriaga, near the city of Bilbao. A witness quoted by local media said the trapped officer pleaded for help as the flames engulfed him before he was overcome. Patxi Lopez, the head of the regional Basque government, pointed the finger at ETA in remarks to the Basque parliament in Vitoria.
■DR CONGO
Four candidates barred
Four opposition candidates were barred on Friday from running in next month’s presidential election because they had failed to meet the right conditions. President Denis Sassou-Nguesso will still face 12 challengers in the oil-producing central African state where the last presidential ballot was dismissed as a sham by the opposition. Among those banned by the constitutional court were former prime minister Ange Edouard Poungui because he had not lived in Congo for an uninterrupted period of two years, and Christophe Moukoueke because he was just over the age limit of 70.
■UNITED STATES
Swine flu deaths reach 100
Figures released on Friday by US and Canadian health authorities show that the swine flu pandemic has killed 100 people in Canada and the US. Eighty-seven people died from the disease in the US, the Centers for Disease Control reported, adding that there were 21,449 confirmed cases. The figures are a jump from the previous report on June 12, when 44 people were reported dead and 17,855 cases were confirmed. In Canada, the world’s third most affected country, health authorities reported a 13th death and 5,710 confirmed cases of A(H1N1) flu.
■UNITED STATES
Arnie ‘OK’ after plane scare
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plane made an emergency landing on Friday evening because of smoke in the cockpit. The jet was about 10 minutes away from landing at the Santa Monica Airport when the pilot reported smoke coming from an instrument panel, Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said in a statement. The pilot made a “quick, steep, but safe landing” at 6:23pm at Van Nuys Airport in California’s San Fernando Valley. City fire crews met the jet on the runway. There were no flames and no one was injured. Schwarzenegger tweeted about the incident, calling it “a little adventure,” and posting a link to a photo of the jet. “All’s ok, though,” he wrote.
■UNITED STATES
Woman lauds ‘Fowl Play’
Therapy dogs can be a comfort for seniors and those recovering from illnesses and injuries. So how about therapy chickens? Jana Clairmont of Polson, Montana, calls her therapy birds — a white rooster and Cornish game hen — “Fowl Play.” On Thursday, she took them to visit residents at Polson Health and Rehabilitation Center in Montana, the Missoulian newspaper reported. Many seniors were raised on farms, Clairmont says, and holding a chicken can bring back memories. As one man stroked the rooster, Alex, the bird stretched out his neck and rested it across the man’s forearm, like a puppy. Clairmont has arranged visits to retirement and assisted living homes, and says she’d like to take Alex and Carlita, the hen, into classrooms this fall.
■UNITED STATES
Puppy skinned to make belt
A 23-year-old woman is accused of getting a friend to kill her Jack Russell terrier and skinning the puppy to make a belt. Krystal Lewis and Austin Mullins, 26, were being held on Friday in the Muskogee County jail in Oklahoma on US$25,000 bail each. They were charged with cruelty to animals. Lewis wanted the puppy, named Poplin, killed because it was a gift from an ex-lover with whom she doesn’t get along, police said, adding that Mullins shot the terrier 10 times with a .22-caliber pistol. Lewis skinned the animal at her apartment and nailed the hide to a board.
■CANADA
Hot night at swingers’ club
Red-faced firefighters doused burning passions on Friday, stamping out a morning blaze at a swingers’ club in Montreal, the fire department said. At 6:30am, fire crews rescued 10 employees and patrons of Auberge 1082 who had been carousing and flirting inside the establishment before real sparks started flying. Five people escaped in bed sheets from a second floor of the burning building, down a fire truck ladder. Naked, or barely-clad in borrowed towels, they watched from the street for over an hour as firefighters put out the blaze, neighbors told local media. Six people were also treated for smoke inhalation, the fire department said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
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