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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police have broken a baby-selling racket in southern Johor state, seizing four infants and detaining 23 people including a doctor and a government registrar, reports said Sunday. The New Straits Times said the syndicate bought babies from poor women who were talked out of having abortions, and then sold them to childless couples.
-- AFP
YANGON: An international pledging conference, co-organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the UN and participated by 52 countries including host Myanmar and 24 UN organizations and international non-governmental organizations, opened at the Sedona Hotel here Sunday to seek further international financial aid commitment for Myanmar's cyclone aid relief and rehabilitation efforts.
-- Xinhua
TOKYO: World leaders looking for ways to ease global food shortages may have found one answer in warehouses dotted around Japan where a rice mountain is standing idle. The United States is considering relaxing a trade agreement between the world's two largest economies to allow Japan to sell imported US rice on the global market. Tokyo is already preparing to ship 200,000 tons to the Philippines, but that is just a fraction of the 1.5 million tons of imported foreign rice that is stored in sacks piled high in air-conditioned government warehouses.
-- AFP
KOBE: Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita delivered a keynote speech on climate change Sunday at the Group of Eight (G8) environment ministers meeting. In his speech, Kamoshita voiced his hope that the G8 leaders will reach an agreement on the long-term goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at the G8 summit scheduled for July in Japan's Hokkaido.
-- Xinhua
BEIJING: An elderly man was freed unhurt from the collapsed remains of his home 11 days after the massive quake in southwestern China. Xiao Zhihu, 80, had been provided water and food by his wife since the quake hit and was in stable condition when rescue workers finally freed him Friday in the city of Mianzhu, the China News Service reported Sunday.
-- AFP
CHENGDU, China: The deadly earthquake that jolted Sichuan province has destroyed the homes of giant pandas and left the bears in dire need of their favorite food, bamboo. Panda keepers at the Wolong Nature Reserve, about 30 kilometers from the epicenter, have had difficulty in reaching the animals' food resources as the quake, continuous aftershocks and subsequent landslides damaged mountain roads, said Zhou Xiaoping, an official with the Wolong-based China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.
-- Xinhua
TAIPEI: The head of Taiwan's ruling party will meet China's president this week, the highest-level contact in more than 60 years as the two sides prepare to resume talks stalled for a decade next month. Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung will fly to Beijing today and will meet President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, underscoring a rapid improvement in ties since the island's change of government.
-- AFP
HONG KONG: A painting that uses imagery from China's Cultural Revolution sold for US$9.7 million at an auction in Hong Kong, setting yet another new record for Chinese contemporary art. Zeng Fanzhi's Mask Series 1996 No.6 depicts eight figures wearing red scarves reminiscent of the "Little Red Guards," a movement inspired by Communist chief Mao Zedong who persecuted millions in China in the 1960s and 1970s for capitalist ideology.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: In the first step toward trying the alleged plotters behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, five men including the accused mastermind will be arraigned June 5 before a US military judge in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly seven years after the attacks and at least five years after their capture, Pakistan-born Kuwaiti Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported key 9/11 planner, and four others will formally be charged with murder, terrorism and other war crimes, launching the process of trying them under special military commissions at the US naval prison at Guantanamo. All face possible death sentences, but the question of whether the trials will ever get underway and how long they could last still looms darkly over the process.
-- AFP
BEIRUT: The Lebanese parliament convenes on Sunday to elect army chief Michel Sleiman as president in a first step toward defusing an often deadly 18-month standoff between feuding political factions.
-- AFP
AMMAN, Jordan: The number of roadblocks in the West Bank has increased by 7 percent in less than eight months, despite the Israeli pledges to ease the mobility of people and goods in the region, Jordan's state news agency Petra reported. The roadblock number has increased to 607 on April 29, from 566 in September, including new construction of 144 new closures, according to a release by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem on Friday.
-- Xinhua
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: President Thabo Mbeki, already under fire for perceived policy failings that caused an anti-immigrant backlash in his country, now faces questions about his handling of the crisis. The head of state is yet to visit the worst affected areas of Johannesburg after two weeks of violence against foreigners that has left more than 40 dead and more than 25,000 displaced.
-- AFP
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called Saturday for peacekeepers and election monitors from the 14-member regional body South African Development Community to be deployed in Zimbabwe by the end of May. Tsvangirai is to face veteran President Robert Mugabe in a run-off election on June 27 and has asked the regional body to assist in organizing a free and fair election.
-- AFP
BOGOTA, Columbia: The government here is insisting the leader of its largest rebel group, Manuel Marulanda, is dead, but is offering no proof to back up its assertion. The allegation, contained in a statement by Admiral David Moreno, head of the general staff of the country's military, was followed by an announcement by President Alvaro Uribe, who insisted that some leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were ready to free high-profile hostages, such as French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
-- AFP
KATHMANDU, Nepal: A Nepalese climber has become the oldest person to summit the world's highest mountain, breaking the previous record held by a Japanese man, officials said Sunday. "Seventy-seven-year-old Nepalese man Min Bahadur Sherchan reached the top of Everest on Sunday morning," Ramesh Khatri Chhetri, an official at the mountaineering department of Nepal's Tourism Ministry said.
-- AFP
LONDON: An 18-year-old actor in the forthcoming Harry Potter film was stabbed to death during a fight outside a London bar Saturday. Rob Knox, who plays student Marcus Belby in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, due out in November, was killed in a scuffle in the suburb of Sidcup. Police said a 21-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murder. The fatal stabbing takes to 14 the number of teenagers violently killed in the British capital this year.
-- AFP
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