■AUSTRALIA
Tourism official found
Victoria state Tourism Minister Tim Holding was found alive yesterday after spending two days lost in sub-zero temperatures in high country north of Melbourne. The 37-year-old went missing on Sunday after setting off on a solo overnight hike to the summit of Mt Feathertop.
■PAKISTAN
Khan now really a free man
Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, said yesterday that restrictions on his movements have been lifted. A court declared Khan a free man in February, five years after he was put under house arrest. The 72-year-old Khan complained to a high court last week that his movements were still being restricted.
■AUSTRALIA
Marriages on the rise
The number of people tying the knot has hit a 20-year high, reversing a downward trend, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Monday showed. The figures show 118,756 marriages were registered last year, up 2.1 percent on 2007 and more than 12 percent on the recent low of about 104,000 in 2001. Divorces hit a 20-year low of 47,209 last year. Almost 80 percent of couples lived together before marriage and the average age of people getting married is now 29.6 for men and 26.3 for women.
■INDIA
Man faces rape charge
A 36-year-old businessman will face trial for raping a German teenager 12 years ago in Germany, police said yesterday. Jaswant Singh was arrested in New Delhi on Sunday after the police spent more than eight months looking for him, New Delhi’s deputy commissioner of police Neeraj Thakur said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police quell Belfast riot
Police fired plastic bullets late on Monday night to stop a riot involving around 200 people in East Belfast. Pro-Irish nationalists and pro-British unionists lobbed missiles at each other and the police in a clash sparked after nationalists held a rally to mark the closing of a local police station. A police spokesman said there were no arrests and no reports of injuries. Monday night’s riot was in a so-called “interface area” of Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic communities live in close and uneasy proximity.
■RUSSIA
Bomb kills one, injures 13
A man who was stopped by traffic police in the southern region of Dagestan detonated explosives in his car yesterday, killing a passer-by and injuring 13 other people. Dagestan Interior Ministry spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said the blast occurred at a traffic checkpoint on the outskirts of Dagestan’s capital city, Makhachkala. Tolchinsky said the police post was partly destroyed in the blast. In stopping the car, the traffic police managed to avert a large-scale terrorist attack in Makhachkala, Dagestani Interior Minister Ali Magomedov said in a statement. Russian news agencies reported a separate blast in Chechnya yesterday that injured three troops belonging to the region’s Interior Ministry. The director of Russia’s main security agency, the Federal Security Service, told Russian news agencies yesterday that he had received a presidential order to “prepare and realize additional measures to neutralize the terrorist threat” in the region. It was unclear what that meant.
■SWEDEN
First A(H1N1) death reported
Plans for mass vaccinations will continue after the country reported its first death from the A(H1N1) virus, or swine flu, officials said. Test results late on Monday confirmed that a man had become the first known Swedish fatality of the disease, Uppsala University Hospital said. The patient was in his late 30s and had “other underlying risk factors,” head physician Ulf Hanson said. The man died on Friday at his home near Uppsala. Sweden has reported 915 swine flu cases. A week ago, the Swedish government said it would allocate 1 billion kronor (US$142 million) for mass vaccinations and other measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic flu virus.
■NORWAY
Prostitute victim fined
A 28-year-old man was fined after he complained to police that he had been cheated by a prostitute. The Nordlys newspaper says he was fined 8,000 kroner (US$1,300) as the first person in northern Norway’s Troms Province charged under a new law forbidding the purchase of sexual services. Station Chief Kurt Pettersen said the man had given partial payment to a Russian prostitute in the northern city of Tromsoe, but she left with the cash when they failed to agree on a final price. Pettersen says “he contacted the police because he felt his did not get the services he paid for.” The incident took place in February but was not reported until Monday.
■GERMANY
Incandescent bulbs hoarded
Germans are hoarding energy-guzzling incandescent light bulbs ahead of a looming EU-wide ban, the GfK market research agency said. The Nuremberg-based GfK reported sales of incandescent bulbs had soared about 35 percent in the first half of the year ahead of a ban that started yesterday — even though it was proposed by German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel in 2007.
■CANADA
Broadcaster must apologize
The nation’s broadcast regulator said on Monday that the country’s French-language broadcaster broke television regulations and should apologize to the public for airing a comedy sketch that suggested US President Barack Obama would be easy to assassinate because he would stand out against the White House. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said it received more than 250 complaints about a popular New Year’s Eve show that featured wisecracks about the US president.
■COLOMBIA
FARC releases videos
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Monday handed over proof of life of six police officers and three soldiers they have been holding hostages, in some cases for more than 10 years. Relatives received nine videos on Monday from Senator Piedad Cordoba — who has for years been involved in mediation efforts with FARC — in northern Bogota. The videos, each lasting about three minutes, show that two police officers have been held in chains for over two years. The messages in the videos were to be made public after their relatives accessed them.
■PUERTO RICO
Migrants likely to stay
Ten Cuban migrants landed on a small island west of Puerto Rico on Monday and will likely be permitted to remain in the US, authorities said. Smugglers apparently dropped the migrants overnight on Monito Island, a mountainous speck about 100km west of the US Caribbean territory’s main island, authorities said. All 10 were in good health and released to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection for processing. They were expected to be released yesterday. Under a US policy known as “wet-foot, dry-foot,” Cubans intercepted at sea are mostly sent home, while those who reach US soil are usually allowed to stay.
■BRAZIL
Visitors swamp Lula blog
A new blog launched on Monday by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became inaccessible within hours after aides sorely underestimated the number of Internet readers it would attract. “We set up a structure so the blog could receive 6,000 simultaneous hits, but this forecast was greatly exceeded,” an official in the president’s communication service said. The blog is designed to showcase Lula’s comments directly to the public, bypassing the news media.
■JAMAICA
US asks for extradition
The US has asked Jamaica to extradite a suspected crime boss to face federal drug and weapons-trafficking charges in New York, officials said on Monday. A US indictment accuses Christopher “Duddus” Coke of leading the “Shower Posse” — a gang with agents in Jamaica and the US that was named in the 1980s for its members’ tendency to spray victims with bullets. The indictment has become a sensitive topic for the government because Coke, a businessman in the island’s violence-wracked capital, Kingston, is known for loyalty to Jamaica’s governing party. The political opposition says it is watching to make sure he does not receive favorable treatment. A businessman known for his work as a show promoter, Coke has kept a high public profile in the ghettos west of Kingston, reportedly handing out cash and school supplies to needy children. He is also credited with helping to keep order by using his authority to punish thieves and other criminals in an area where the government has little presence.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
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