■INDIA
Talk about hygiene ‘not cool’
Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn’t cool. “People demand a TV, not a toilet, because it is not aspirational or charismatic,” said Sim, who does not hesitate to talk in graphic detail about the dangers of poor sanitation. “Governments and people are not very receptive to being told they’re dirty, that they need more toilets,” Sim said on a visit to Mumbai, where more than half its 18 million residents live in slums and where the average ratio of people to toilets is 81:1.
■INDIA
Landmine kills one soldier
A senior security force officer was killed and two others wounded yesterday in Kashmir when their jeep ran over a landmine along the border with Pakistan, police said. The deputy inspector general from the Border Security Force (BSF) was killed in southern Samba sector near the border, said a police officer, who requested anonymity. “We are collecting more details,” he said, adding senior BSF, police and army officers had rushed to the scene to “take stock of the situation.” “We suspect the militants had planted the landmine,” he said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Drilling for scotch whisky
A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage scotch whisky that has been on the rocks since a century ago. The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co whisky that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition. Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct scotch. Workers from the Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.
■APEC
Obama expects skirts
US President Barack Obama invited fellow leaders in the APEC to a summit in Hawaii in 2011, but may have alarmed them with the dress code. The APEC summit, which concluded on Sunday in Singapore, is an annual meeting best known for a tradition whereby presidents and prime ministers don outfits that are typical of the host country. “I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts, because today I’m announcing that we are bringing this forum to my home state of Hawaii in 2011,” Obama told his assembled counterparts on Sunday. At APEC’s first summit, held in Seattle in 1993, heads of state sported leather bomber jackets. Other outfits have included traditional Korean and Vietnamese tops, batik shirts and an Australian outback coat.
■CAMBODIA
Swedish man murdered
A Swedish businessman visiting the country has been murdered and his body dumped outside Phnom Penh, reportedly after he met a woman with whom he had corresponded online, national media reported yesterday. The Swedish embassy in Phnom Penh confirmed the victim was Jan Ola Jordansson, 45. Embassy counselor Karl-Anders Larsson said he believed Jordansson was visiting the country when he was killed, but had previously lived in Cambodia. “He had been managing a hotel in Sihanoukville but I understand he was living in Sweden and was on a short visit to Cambodia,” he said.
■EGYPT
Christians to die for murder
Two Egyptian Christians have been condemned to death for the murder of a Muslim man who married one of their relatives after she converted to Islam, a judicial source said on Sunday. The source said Rami Atef Khella and Raafat Khella, the brother and uncle of Mariam Atef Khella, had broken into the northern Cairo home of the couple armed with a gun. Rami riddled the husband, Ahmed Salah, with bullets, killing him on the spot, while Mariam and the couple’s daughter Nur were wounded, security officials said at the time of the attack more than a year ago. The mufti, Ali Gomaa, has to approve the court’s death sentences against the two men. His ruling was expected yesterday.
■IRAN
Rapist hanged in public
The Kayhan newspaper yesterday reported on the public hanging of a convicted rapist in the northern city of Qaemshahr in the Caspian Sea Mazandaran province. The report identified the man hanged on Sunday as A.B., aged 24, who was convicted of raping his victim after posing as a taxi driver. The report also said he had a prior criminal record that included robbery, kidnapping and engaging in an illicit relationship. The reported public hanging comes despite a statement in January last year by then judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi that such executions would only be carried out with his approval and “based on social necessities.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Prisons breeding radicals
A local think tank says prison policies have failed to stop Muslim inmates being radicalized, and the government should set up a special center to “deprogram” extremists. The Quilliam Foundation said on Sunday that imprisoned preachers Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada were seeking to recruit inmates and had smuggled pro-jihad propaganda out of jail. It said extremists radicalized in prison take several years to “graduate” to violence, so jails could be breeding a new generation of terrorists. The group said the government should set up a de-radicalization center like those in Yemen and Egypt.
■MADAGASCAR
Rare ducklings rescued
British and US conservationists have taken a big step toward saving the world’s rarest duck species, the Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata), by hatching eight ducklings in captivity, reports said. Their challenging egg-rescue mission marked the start of a long-term conservation and breeding project aimed at releasing the animals back into their wetland habitats. Feared extinct in the late 1990s, 20 of the diving ducks were discovered in 2006 on a remote lake in northern Madagascar. During the most recent breeding season, a team monitoring the critically endangered birds reported that three females were preparing to lay eggs, so duck specialists from the UK and the US flew to Madagascar to bring the precious eggs into captivity. Eight ducklings are now said to be doing well.
■ITALY
Nicknames become official
The inhabitants of a small town where 8,000 residents share the same surname have won a legal battle to use their nicknames, including “Fat,” “Mad” and “Peasant,” on all official documents. For more than 200 years, the people of Chioggia near Venice, have used the nicknames to distinguish between distantly related families, but they were never officially recognized. Now, following a decree from the interior ministry, families in the town will be allowed to adopt their soubriquet as a second, official surname.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez to ‘zap’ clouds
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he will join a team of Cuban scientists on flights to “bomb clouds” to create rain amid a severe drought that has aroused public anger because of water and electricity rationing. Chavez, who has asked Venezuelans to take three-minute showers to save water, said the Cubans had arrived in Venezuela and were preparing to fly specially equipped aircraft above the Orinoco River. “I’m going in a plane; any cloud that crosses me, I’ll zap it so that it rains,” Chavez said at a ceremony late on Saturday with family members of five Cubans convicted of spying in the US. Many countries have programs aimed at altering weather patterns, commonly known as cloud seeding, although the effectiveness of such techniques is disputed. Firing silver iodine at clouds is one common method.
■UNITED STATES
Hudson pilot criticizes book
The pilot who guided his disabled plane to a safe emergency landing in the Hudson River said that a new book that underscores the role of the jet’s automation technology in the landing was inaccurate. Captain Chesley Sullenberger told the New York Times on Sunday that the book Fly By Wire by William Langewiesche “greatly overstates how much it mattered” that the Airbus A320 featured an automated cockpit. Sullenberger ditched US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15 when geese strikes killed the power in the jet’s engines. All 155 on board survived. He said the outcome would have been the same without the automation.
■UNITED STATES
Books finally returned
A high school librarian in Phoenix said a former student at the Arizona school returned two overdue books checked out 51 years ago along with a US$1,000 money order to cover the fines. Camelback High School librarian Georgette Bordine said the two Audubon Society books checked out in 1959 and the money order were sent by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. Bordine said the letter explained that the borrower’s family moved to another state and the books were mistakenly packed. The letter said the money order was to cover fines of US$0.02 per day for each book. That would total about US$745. The letter said the extra money was added in case the rates had changed.
■NICARAGUA
Police seize weapons cache
Police on Sunday seized a large cache of weapons and explosives from suspected members of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel after a police car chase outside Managua, a spokeswoman said. The weapons included 61 automatic rifles, mostly AK-47s and four M-16s, two grenade launchers, 10 hand grenades, 20 sticks of dynamite and more than 19,000 rounds of ammunition, Vilma Reyes told a press briefing. They were found inside a car the suspected drug traffickers fled from after being chased by police on a highway outside Managua, she said.
■UNITED STATES
Director Wendkos dies at 84
Paul Wendkos, who directed more than 100 films and television shows during a 50-year career, including the 1959 surf movie Gidget, has died. He was 84. Family spokeswoman Christie Craig said Wendkos died on Thursday in Malibu of a lung infection that followed a stroke. Gidget, starring Sandra Dee as an all-American surfer girl, was a hit and led to two sequels for Wendkos. For television, he directed series such as The Rifleman and Hawaii Five-O.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
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