■ANTARCTICA
Ozone hole may be smaller
The World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday that the ozone hole is expected to be smaller this year than a year ago. “The meteorological conditions observed so far could indicate that the 2009 ozone hole will be smaller than those of 2006 and 2008 and close to that of 2007,” the UN agency said in a statement. The hole in the layer over the Antarctic was discovered in the 1980s. It regularly tends to form in August, reaching a maximum size late September or early October before it fills again in December. The size is dependent on weather conditions. This year, the hole began forming “earlier than before,” said the organization’s expert on the ozone Geir Braathen. On Wednesday, it stood at 24 million square kilometers, he said. Last year, the maximum was 27 million square kilometers, while in 2007, the maximum was 25 million square kilometers. Experts have warned that the damage to the ozone layer may only recover in 2075.
■AUSTRALIA
Father charged with rape
A man allegedly raped his daughter almost daily for 30 years and fathered her four children in a case that echoes the notorious incest crimes of Josef Fritzl in Austria, a report said yesterday. The man, now aged in his 60s, allegedly began abusing his daughter in the 1970s when she was 11 and continued for three decades even after authorities received warnings about his behavior, Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper said. Police reportedly decided to prosecute after receiving DNA evidence that the man was the father of his daughter’s children, all of whom were born with birth defects in major Melbourne hospitals. One of them later died. It said the woman reported the abuse to police in 2005, but then refused to cooperate further because she feared for her safety.
■SPAIN
Insult okay at work
Calling your boss “son of a whore” — once the ultimate insult — is no longer a sacking offense because the term is so common, El Mundo newspaper said on Wednesday, citing an employment tribunal. The newspaper said the Catalan employment tribunal ordered that an employee who was dismissed for insulting his manager should not only get his job back, but also receive 6,500 euros in compensation. The panel said the company failed to take into account the workplace atmosphere and the changing trend in language, which meant that the phrase was now “common usage in conversations.”
■FRANCE
Calais ‘Jungle’ to close
The government said on Wednesday that it would this week close a wasteland district of Calais known as “the Jungle,” where hundreds of migrants trying to get to Britain have set up home. Immigration Minister Eric Besson said some of the migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and other troubled or impoverished nations would be sent home from the notorious zone in the Channel port. Besson said a police operation in the scrub land near the main port would be staged this week. Hundreds of mainly male migrants try to jump on trucks going onto ferries or to get on trains going through the Channel tunnel to get to Britain.
■BULGARIA
Same lotto numbers again
Sports Minister Svilen Neykov ordered on Wednesday a special review of the national lottery after the same numbers were picked in straight draws. The numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35, and 42 were drawn on Sept. 6 and again on Sept. 10 in consecutive lottery rounds. The probability of this happening is 4.2 million to one, mathematician Mihail Konstantinov said. Three of the numbers also appeared in the Sunday draw. Lottery deputy chairwoman Maria Yaneva excluded any possibility of manipulation, telling the 24 Hours newspaper that the numbers were drawn in different order each time.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Patient posts hospital food
A hospital patient is so disgusted with the quality of his food that he has taken photos of the meals, posted them on the Web and asked people to guess the meal, reports said yesterday. His followers have failed to identify half of the 35 meals he has posted on the Hospital Food Bingo game on his blog. The patient describes one attempt at macaroni and cheese as something that “could have been used as wallpaper paste.” “You could have slapped a splattering of the stuff on to a pair of white overalls, stuck them on the underside of a plane and then zipped a man into them before taking off for a spin,” he wrote. The patient, who has only identified himself as Traction Man, has been in hospital since February suffering from a rare bone infection, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said.
■UNITED STATES
Color blindness targeted
Two squirrel monkeys that were color-blind from birth have had their vision restored after receiving gene therapy. The experiment paves the way for the treatment of a range of genetic eye disorders in humans, including some that cause full or partial blindness in millions of people. The therapy targets cone cells in the eye. Genetic damage to cone cells, which causes color blindness, is the most common type of gene disorder in humans. The condition affects 5 percent of men. “We’ve shown we can cure a cone disease in a primate,” said William Hauswirth at the University of Florida.
■UNITED NATIONS
WFP calls for more cash
The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) says it needs more money to cope with rising food prices, droughts and conflict. The WFP said on Wednesday that levels of food aid are at a 20-year-low and warned that more than 1 billion people will go hungry worldwide for the first time. The organization said it plans to feed 108 million people this year with a budget of US$6.67 billion, but has only US$2.6 billion of funding confirmed. It said it would have to cut services worldwide. It said it is reaching just one-fifth of needy people in Bangladesh, who have been hit by rising food prices, and half of Kenyans who need help coping with drought.
■GUATEMALA
Plea for help answered
Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela are responding to Guatemala’s plea for help in coping with a food shortage. Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said Venezuela and Mexico offered to send rice and other basic grains and that Brazil also offered to help, but did not give details. Guatemala estimates 400,000 families are “at risk of food insecurity” because of adverse weather, poor soil and economic troubles. The government said 25 children have died since January from malnutrition. Colom announced the new offers of help on Wednesday, a week after he declared “a state of public calamity” to help mobilize resources.
■BRAZIL
Green car emissions studied
Cars running on sugarcane ethanol can produce as many harmful pollutants as those using ordinary gasoline, a study published by Brazil’s environment ministry said. The report on the emissions of the cars on Brazil’s roads, however, does not count carbon dioxide emissions. The study ranked emissions based of a scale of “green grades” that measured three pollutant gases that do not produce climate change, but do affect the health of a country’s population: carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide. The green grade scale, ranging from zero to 10, does not count carbon emissions, which are the main driver of global warming, because emissions from burning ethanol are offset by the carbon dioxide that sugar cane absorbs as it grows, the study said.
■UNITED STATES
Henry Gibson dies aged 73
Henry Gibson, the veteran comic character actor best known for his role reciting offbeat poetry on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, has died. He was 73. Gibson’s son, James, said Gibson died on Monday at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer. Gibson — born James Bateman in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1935 — for three seasons on Laugh-In delivered satirical poems while gripping a giant flower. Gibson went on to appear in several films, including The Long Goodbye and Nashville, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. His most memorable roles included playing the menacing neighbor opposite Tom Hanks in The ’Burbs, the befuddled priest in Wedding Crashers and a neo-Nazi leader in The Blues Brothers.
■UNITED STATES
Reynolds finishes rehab
Burt Reynolds has been released from a drug rehabilitation center where he was being treated for an addiction to painkillers, his manager said on Wednesday. The star of Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance and Boogie Nights began struggling after recent back surgery and “realized that he was in the prison of prescription pain pills,” his manager Erik Kritzer said in a statement.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
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