■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.
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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
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