The plan to free almost 500 fighters from southern Afghanistan’s largest prison was kept so secret that one Taliban fighter who escaped said he knew nothing of it until a fellow inmate tugged his sleeve to wake him in the night. Allah Mohammed Agha’s liberators led him to a 90 centimetre-wide tunnel, which ran several […]
Japan farmers rally against Tepco
HUNDREDS of angry Japanese farmers protested on Tuesday outside the Tokyo head office of nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, taking with them vegetables, milk and and even two cows affected by the atomic crisis. Some 350 people, mainly farmers from the region around the radiation-leaking Fukushima Daiichi power plant, flocked to the heavily-guarded […]
Carter in N.Korea peace bid but S.Korea sceptical
FORMER US president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday began a visit to North Korea aimed at easing tensions on the divided peninsula, but South Korea reacted sceptically to the mission. Mr Carter and three other retired world leaders accompanying him say they also want to assess food shortages and help revive stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks. […]
Evacuees get home visits of five hours
The government will allow those who evacuated from the 20-km radius no-go zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to visit their homes for up to five hours, officials said Monday. The announcement was made as prefectural officials were preparing to cull dying livestock in the fallout-contaminated area. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said […]
Tepco boss blasted by angry evacuees
‘WHY don’t you try living here!’ ‘Tell us when we can go home!’ These and other harsh comments greeted Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co, during a visit to an evacuation shelter in Koriyama on Friday to apologise for the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. His visit was […]
Boozy Brits abroad part of national character
MORE than a quarter of Britons think getting drunk abroad is a national characteristic, according to a survey marking England’s national day on Saturday. An Opinium Research poll of 2,012 British adults found that 60 per cent thought drinking tea was a national trait, closely followed by talking about the weather. Forty per cent associated […]
Termites eat millions of Indian rupees in bank
IT was an all you can eat buffet at the bank. An army of termites munched through 10 million rupees (S$274,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank, police in northern India said on Friday. The bank manager discovered the damage when he opened the reinforced room in an old bank […]
No-smoking laws could span US by 2020
ABOUT half the United States has banned smoking in bars, restaurants or workplaces, and similar no-smoking policies could span the nation by 2020, the government said on Thursday. Over the past decade, 25 states have enacted laws that prohibit smoking indoors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly […]
Cuba marks 50 years of communism
CUBA marked 50 years of communism and the defeat of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion on Saturday as it opened a critical Communist Party Congress likely to enshrine some economic change. The 1,000 delegates of the meeting will, over four days, vote on economic reforms proposed by President Raul Castro and officially relieve his […]
Computer demand shrinks amid tablet craze
FIGURES released on Wednesday showed that the personal computer market shrank for the first time in more than a year due to frugality and a tablet computer craze led by Apple’s hot-selling iPads. Global personal computer (PC) shipments declined 3.2 per cent during the first three months of the year in the first slip since […]