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SEOUL: South Korea is investigating its third possible bird
flu outbreak in less than a week, with 280,000 chickens and ducks
being culled to contain the virus, officials said Sunday. The
culling went ahead following two outbreaks at poultry farms in the
country’s southwest last week and as it was announced that another
site had been placed under quarantine. South Korea Saturday
confirmed a second bird flu case at a duck farm in Jeongeup, about
250 kilometers (156 miles) southwest of Seoul, where half of some
12,000 birds had died in the past week, prompting a slaughter.
-- AFP
ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate of the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), has introduced a new food law to ensure
the safety of food items, local newspaper Khaleej Times reported on
Sunday. The new law, which will come into effect on May 1, aims to
organize the relationships between the government, the private
sector and the consumers in a way guaranteeing the safety of the
people, according to the report. The law would be enforced on all
establishments that trade in food and those involved in activities
related to food items in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, Rashid Al
Shuraiqi, Director of Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority, was quoted
as saying. The law stipulates imprisonment for at least three months
and/or a fine ranging from 30,000 dirhams to 200,000 dirhams for
anyone bringing or trading in food that is harmful to health.
-- Xinhua
SYDNEY: Japan and India deserve permanent seats
on the UN Security Council, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen
Smith said Sunday, stressing that Canberra should also play a
greater role in world affairs. He said the newly elected government
of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wanted to see the United Nations
modernize by broadening the Council’s permanent membership beyond
Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. “We think
the permanent membership should be changed to reflect the modern
reality, having on the permanent membership Japan, for example, and
India,” he told national television.
-- AFP
SOCHI, Russia: Russia’s outgoing President
Vladimir Putin and his United States counterpart George W. Bush
kicked off their last official talks on Sunday in the capacity of
presidents in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The heads of states
held talks on Saturday at an informal meeting in Putin’s Sochi
residence Bocharov Ruchei upon Bush’s arrival, Kremlin sources
said. Bush thanked Putin for his host and Saturday’s dinner that
was accompanied by folk music and dancing, joking he was glad that
the press did not see him dancing. The talks are expected to lay out
a roadmap for the future leaders of the two countries to improve and
develop bilateral ties that have reached a post-Cold War low due to
arrays of disputes.
-- Xinhua
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s next parliamentary
elections will take place in April 2009, with presidential polls due
later next year, the electoral commission announced at the weekend.
More than 154 million voters in the world’s most populous Muslim
nation will be eligible to cast ballots on April 5, 2009, for the
550-seat national parliament, the commission said late Saturday on
its website. Voters will also elect provincial officials and
district council members. The last parliamentary elections in
Indonesia took place in 2004.
-- AFP
BEIJING: Nearly 2 million Beijing citizens and
servicemen planted 2.39 million trees on Saturday, the 24th Beijing
voluntary tree planting day, Sunday’s Beijing Youth Daily reports.
The volunteers also cleaned 1,310 hectares of lawns and forested
areas and dispatched 1.16 million pamphlets on the importance of
afforestation. Chinese President Hu Jintao and other senior state
leaders also took part in the voluntary tree planting activity at
Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park on Saturday. Official figures showed
that 168 million trees were planted in the 1981 to 2007 period in
the Chinese capital, where air quality and sandstorms were long-time
headaches.
-- Xinhua
MIAMI: The children of an alleged victim of
Cuba’s communist government have received the biggest court award
against Havana to date, a whopping $253 million, The Miami Herald
reported Saturday. Rafael del Pino Jr. and his sister Milagros
Suarez are children of Rafael del Pino Siero, a Cuban American who
befriended Fidel Castro at the University of Havana but who later
was jailed after Castro took over Cuba’s government January 1,
1959, the report said. Del Pino Siero “who had broken with the
guerrilla leader over suspicions that Castro was a communist, was
captured while trying to help a Cuban escape to Miami in July
1959,” the Herald report added. He died in jail 18 years later
aged 51, leaving behind in Miami two young children.
-- AFP
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