generalspeaking

News Fit to (Re)Print

• Middle East - European Union monitors at the Rafah border crossing caught a Palestinian woman trying to sneak into the Gaza Strip with three live crocodiles strapped to her stomach, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The young crocodiles, each about 40 centimetres long, were taped to the woman beneath a loose-fitting robe, said Maria Telleria Chavarri, spokeswoman for the EU mission at the crossing connecting Egypt and the Gaza Strip. "The crossing monitors suspected her because she was so fat and they searched her, discovered the crocodiles and arrested her," Ms. Telleria Chavarri said. The woman told border guards she intended to sell the crocodiles to a Gaza City zoo.
• Jerusalem - Under U.S. pressure to answer to increasing Arab flexibility on Mideast peace, Israel has agreed to resume face-to-face talks with a moderate, western-backed Palestinian leader who is sharing power with Islamic Hamas militants. Also yesterday, Israel welcomed the idea of a regional peace summit; Saudi Arabia suggested it would consider changes to a dormant peace initiative that could make it more acceptable to Israel.
  
• London - The two opposing parties whose conflict fuelled decades of violence in Northern Ireland met face-to-face for the first time yesterday and agreed to enter a power-sharing government on May 8. The meeting marked the beginning of the end of a conflict that claimed 3,700 lives over three decades, and set the stage for Rev.Ian Paisley, the 80-year-old standard bearer of pro-British unionism in Northern Ireland, to become the province's first minister within 6 weeks. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who has spent much of his political life battling to end British rule in the province and unite Ireland, agreed to delay an official handover of power until May, calling the pact "the beginning of a new era of politics on this island."
• Beijing - They are notoriously picky about their food and suffer from an exceptionally low sex drive, but when it comes to poo, pandas have few peers. Entrepreneurial Chinese are looking for ways to make a profit from the 20 kilograms of excrement produced each day by a single adult male, and help the endangered animals to pay their way. Officials at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base are working on a scheme to convert the fibre-rich droppings into high-quality paper.
• Baghdad - Iraq's prime minister and president will introduce legislation as early as today to let former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling party - including those in the feared security and paramilitary forces - resume jobs in the government. Long demanded by the U.S. to appease Iraq's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, the measure would set a three-month challenge period after which ex-Baath party loyalists would be immune from legal punishment for their actions during Saddam's reign.
• Berlin - Desperate mothers are being urged to drop their unwanted babies through hatches at hospitals in an effort to halt a spate of infanticides that has shocked Germany. At least 22 babies have been killed so far this year, many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in garbage cans. Police investigating the murders are at a loss to explain the sudden surge in such cases, which have involved mothers of all ages all over the country.
• Ukraine - An ad campaign featuring billboards and commercials with images of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin exhorting people to pay their bills was pulled yesterday after protests from rights groups and nationalists. Critics said it was shameful for authorities to be using an image of a man many Ukrainians blame for killing one-third of the country's population during a famine in the 1930s.
• South Korea - The world's first cloned wolves have been created in South Korea, using the same technique that enabled British scientists to create Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal. The wolves are the work of a team once led by Woo Suk Hwang, the disgraced South Korean scientist who faked human stem-cell research. Although the two female wolves were born in October 2005, veterinary scientists at Seoul National University announced their achievement only yesterday, after independent DNA tests finally verified their claims.
• Pakistan - Police killed two suspected militant recruiters in a gun-battle at a boys' school yesterday, after hearing they were trying to sign up students for suicide bombings and holy war, officials said.
• Iran - Iran yesterday said 15 British sailors and marines seized in the Persian Gulf last week were "fit and well", but refused to divulge where they are being held or when they might be freed.
  
• Japan - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, under fire for denying that Japan forced women to work as sex slaves during the Second World War, offered a fresh apology yesterday, but stopped short of clearly acknowledging the government's responsibility for the front-line brothels. "I express my sympathy toward the comfort women and apologize for the situation they found themselves in", said Mr. Abe.
• Jamaica - Police investigating the murder of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer are looking for at least three Pakistani cricket fans who were at his hotel when he died last week.
• United States - The Jewish Theological Seminary, considered the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism, said yesterday it will start accepting gay and lesbian applicants. The move came after scholars who guide the movement lifted the ban on gay ordination.
• Boston - ASA in low to moderate doses may lower the risk of death in women, particularly those who are older and prone to heart disease, a 24-year study of nearly 80,000 women suggests. In this long-running study of nurses who were middle-aged and older, women who took ASA had a 25% lower risk of death compared to those who never took it. ASA-takers had a 38% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 12% lower risk of death from cancer.

Labels: World News

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 27, 2007