Emerging Asian nations are finding out what developed ones did years ago: money and the stuff it buys brings happiness.
	Levels of self-reported well-being in fast-growing nations like Indonesia, China and Malaysia now rival those in the US, Germany and the United Kingdom, rich nations that have long topped the happiness charts, according to a Pew Research Centre global survey released Friday.
	It says it shows how rises in national income are closely linked to personal satisfaction.
	The pollsters asked people in 43 countries to place themselves on a "ladder of life," with the top rung representing the best possible life and the bottom the worst. Pew carried out the same survey in 2002 and 2005 in most of those countries, enabling researchers to look at trends over time.
	But the data also suggested that there is a limit to how much happiness money can buy. For example, 56 per cent of Malaysians rated their life a "seven" or higher on the ladder, significantly more than the 36 per ...

Survey: Asia finds money brings happiness

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A nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa said she plans to end her voluntary quarantine and even stepped outside her home briefly on today.
	Kaci Hickox's words and actions signaled a potential showdown with state police monitoring her home and state officials seeking to legally enforce the quarantine.
	Police stood across the street and watched as Hickox held an impromptu press conference outside with her boyfriend.
	State officials are seeking a court order allowing state troopers to detain Hickox, said Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew.
	Hickox, who has shown no symptoms of Ebola, told NBC's "Today" show and ABC's "Good Morning America" she was abiding by the state's voluntary quarantine by having no contact with people Tuesday and yesterday. But she said she'll defy the state if the policy isn't changed by today.
	"I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me even though I am in perfectly good health," ...

Quarantined Ebola nurse goes outside; police watch

From her wheelchair, Maryam Samimi punched the air as the referee's whistle signalled her basketball team's win in an Afghan national tournament, a moment of joy in a country often unkind to those missing limbs.
	Many amputees in Afghanistan languish without access to care and become depressed and isolated. And with mines and unexploded ordinance still scattered across this country ravaged by decades of nonstop war, more will be maimed or lose limbs from explosions.
	However, an International Committee of the Red Cross program offering sports to amputees has seen hundreds sign up to play wheelchair basketball.
	"From my experience, I know that when you lose a part of your body, big or small, for the first month you don't want to be alive any more. You don't want to see the future, everything stops," said Shukrullah Zeerak, a supervising physiotherapist at an ICRC center who lost his right leg below the knee in a mine blast in 1995. "But slowly you adapt, you survive."
	Afghanistan is .

Afghan war amputees find new life, pride in sports

In a move that might give Visa, Mastercard and other foreign competitors greater access to the Chinese market, China plans to ease restrictions on credit cards.
	Foreign companies will be allowed for the first time to apply to set up credit card clearing operations in China, said a Cabinet announcement late yesterday. It gave no details of what qualifications would be required for a foreign competitor to be approved or when licenses might be issued.
	Beijing's restrictions have given a monopoly on credit card processing to a state-owned entity, UnionPay. All banks are required to participate in UnionPay and all transactions must be processed through it.
	The World Trade Organisation, ruling on a complaint by the United States, said two years ago the restrictions violated China's free-trade commitments by treating foreign credit card processors unequally. The government said it would review the decision but did little to increase market access.
	Yesterday's statement said the move was .

China eases monopoly on credit cards

Crews searched for scorched wreckage along the Virginia coast in hopes of determining why an unmanned commercial rocket exploded in a blow to NASA's strategy of using private companies to send supplies and, eventually, astronauts to the International Space Station.
	The 140-foot Antares rocket, operated by Orbital Sciences Corp, blew up 15 seconds after liftoff Tuesday, lighting up the night sky and raining flaming debris on the launch site.
	No one was injured, but the USD 200 million-plus mission was a total loss.
	The blast not only incinerated the cargo, 2½ tons of space station food, clothes, equipment and science experiments dreamed up by schoolchildren, but dealt a setback to the commercial spaceflight effort championed by NASA and the White House even before the shuttle was retired.
	It was the first failure after an unbroken string of successful commercial cargo flights to the space station since 2012, three by Orbital and five by SpaceX, the other US company hired by the ...

Russian rocket engines suspected in launch blast

Four bodies were found east of the border city of Matamaros, near where three young Americans went missing more than two weeks ago, a Mexican state official said.
	Tamaulipas state investigator Raul Galindo Vira would only confirm that four bodies had been recovered yesterday and declined to discuss who they might be.
	A second state official said investigators were trying to determine if the dead include three siblings from Progreso, Texas, who disappeared with a fourth person Oct 13.
	The official, who said the bodies were badly decomposed, insisted on speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
	Mexican authorities yesterday asked the siblings' father what they were wearing when they disappeared, mother Raquel Alvarado told The Associated Press.
	Alvarado said witnesses saw armed men take her daughter, Erica Alvarado Rivera, 26, and her sons, Alex, 22, and Jose Angel, 21, in El Control, a small town near the Texas border west of Matamoros. The three ...

Bodies found in Mexico where 3 Texans missing

A UN human rights investigator met for a second time with a North Korean official on a possible groundbreaking visit and the North's demand that a UN effort to refer the country's situation to the International Criminal Court be dropped.
	Marzuki Darusman yesterday met with a councilor from the North's Geneva office. He said nothing was decided but was encouraged that the North is willing to engage. The possibility of Darusman visiting North Korea remains.
	His surprise meetings with the North Koreans this week are the first since the special rapporteur's office was created 10 years ago. A visit would be a breakthrough in global efforts to have a firsthand look at the way the deeply impoverished but nuclear-armed country treats its citizens.
	Darusman said he will try to meet again with the European Union and Japan, who have drafted a General Assembly resolution that calls for the UN Security Council to refer the North's dismal human rights situation to the ICC. The North Koreans ...

UN investigator, North Korea meet again on visit

The Russian Navy has successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile, proving its reliability after a long and troublesome development.
	The Defense Ministry said that the Yuri Dolgoruky nuclear submarine test-fired a Bulava missile from an underwater position in the Barents Sea today. The missile's warheads successfully reached designated targets at a testing range in the Kamchatka Peninsula in fare eastern Russia.
	The launch was key for confirming the capability of the missile, which the Kremlin touted as an important part of the nation's nuclear deterrent.
	Many early Bulava launches went awry during a decade of tests, raising doubts about Russia's ability to carry out the ambitious project. A series of recent launches, however, has been successful and the Navy now has three nuclear submarines to carry the Bulava.

Russia successfully test-fires new Navy missile

The Austrian state prosecutor's office says a 14-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of planning to place a bomb in a busy Viennese train station and could be charged with belonging to a terrorist organization.
	A spokeswoman of the state prosecutor's office, Michaela Obenaus today identified the suspect only as an Austrian citizen with Turkish roots who has lived for eight years in Austria.
	Obenaus said the juvenile told police that he wants to fight on the side of Islamic extremists, had researched building a bomb on the internet and had mentioned Vienna's downtown Westbahnhof rail station as a possible target.
	She said he was arrested yesterday in the city of St Poelten, west of Vienna.

Austrian police detain 14-year-old terror suspect

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell, known for poems that connected the experiences of daily life to larger forces, has died at age 87.
	Kinnell's wife, Bobbie Bristol, says he died yesterday afternoon at their home in Sheffield, Vermont. He had leukemia.
	Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983 for selected poems, and the following year he won a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. In 1989, he was named Vermont's poet laureate.
	A Rhode Island native, Kinnell graduated from Princeton University.
	Bristol says Kinnell had owned property in Vermont since 1960 but started living there full-time in 2005 after he retired from New York University. In August, he was honored at the Vermont Statehouse.
	Bristol says her husband is going to be buried on the hill behind their home.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell dies

A Danish court has sentenced three men from Germany, Colombia and Denmark to prison for the attempted smuggling and distribution of 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cocaine, valued at more than 43 million kroner (USD 7 million).
	The Aarhus City Court said today that the men had been found guilty and given sentences ranging from one to 10 years. The men, who were not identified, immediately appealed.
	The US Drug Enforcement Administration helped Danish police track the movements of the men, who were arrested in Denmark in December.
	Prosecutor Poul Gade said it was the first time that a Danish court ruled in a case involving foreign undercover agents.

3 men jailed in USD 7 million cocaine bust in Denmark

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel today approved a recommendation by military leaders that all US troops returning from Ebola response missions in West Africa be kept in supervised isolation for 21 days.
	The move goes beyond precautions recommended by the Obama administration for civilians, although President Barack Obama has made clear he feels the military's situation is different from that of civilians, in part because troops are not in West Africa by choice.
	Hagel said he acted in response to a recommendation sent to him yesterday by Army Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on behalf of the heads of each of the military services. They cited numerous factors, including concerns among military families and the communities from which troops are deploying for the Ebola response mission.
	In explaining his decision, Hagel noted that the military has more people in Africa helping with the Ebola effort than any other segment of the US government.
	"This is also a ...

Hagel approves 21-day Ebola quarantine for troops

Fifty-one countries today signed an agreement to share financial data and boost efforts to crack down on tax evasion.
	The standard agreed upon in Berlin today was developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in consultation with the world's top 20 economies.
	The countries that signed include most European Union nations, as well as traditional tax havens like Liechtenstein, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands.
	They will begin automatically exchanging data collected by financial institutions as early as 2017, the OECD said. Other countries have indicated they will join the accord later.
	The United States hasn't signed but says it will share information as part of bilateral deals.
	Britain's treasury chief, George Osborne, says the new treaty "strikes a blow on behalf of hard-working taxpayers."
	India, however, did not attend the meeting.

51 countries sign deal in tax evasion crackdown

The British government's insistence that its spies don't use the vast espionage powers of the US National Security Agency to sidestep UK restrictions on domestic eavesdropping was called into question by a court document published today.
	The two-page memorandum challenges that official line, carrying an acknowledgement by Britain's electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ that it scoops up an undisclosed amount of "unanalysed intercepted communications content" from its foreign intelligence partners without a warrant.
	For human rights groups challenging UK surveillance, the document shows that GCHQ can use its allies to engage in mass spying without proper oversight.
	"The British public had been consistently persuaded by government over the last year that GCHQ are not using the NSA as a backdoor to sidestep protection in the law," said Eric King, whose group, Privacy International, has joined London-based rights group Liberty and Amnesty International in suing the spy agency.
	King, ...

Court: UK spies get bulk access to NSA data

Israel's prime minister said today that recent verbal attacks against him from the United States were merely because he was "defending Israel" and vowed to carry on with his policies despite the vitriolic rhetoric.
	Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks to parliament followed a report in The Atlantic this week in which unidentified US officials lambasted the Israeli premier for his settlement policies and for undermining American peace efforts. The officials derided Netanyahu as cowardly and recalcitrant, among other insults.
	The report reverberated throughout Israel, with some coming to the prime minister's defense while others pointing to them as an indication of just how bad relations between the two close allies have gotten under Netanyahu's watch.
	Netanyahu responded that those who attack him do so only because he defends Israel, and stressed that he was "not prepared to make concessions that will endanger our state."
	"Our supreme interests, with security and the unity of Jerusalem ...

Israeli leader lashes back at harsh US criticism

Hundreds of Egyptians living along the border with the Gaza Strip evacuated their homes today, after the army ordered them out to make way for a planned buffer zone meant to stop militants and smugglers, officials said.
	They said residents of the border town of Rafah have already handed over 62 homes to the army, a first step for a target of 880 houses where some 10,000 people live.
	Tanks and armored vehicles sealed off all of Rafah, while bulldozers stood by to demolish the houses, said officials, as well as witnesses who refused to give their names for fear of reprisals.
	Previous administrations had tried but failed to implement similar measures to stop the endemic smuggling with the Palestinian territory, although they all backed down before protests by residents, who see the evacuation as forced displacement.
	Residents of the border area, in the northeastern corner of the Sinai Peninsula, say they were given short notice to pack up and leave, and that while the government has .

Army moves in as Egyptians leave homes near Gaza

The company behind the dramatic launch explosion of a space station supply mission promises to find the cause of the failure and is warning residents to avoid any potentially hazardous wreckage.
	Orbital Sciences Corp's unmanned Antares rocket blew up just moments after liftoff yesterday evening from the Virginia coast.
	Meanwhile, early today, the Russian Space Agency launched its own cargo vessel from Kazakhstan and the spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station six hours later with 3 tons of food. The smooth flight was in stark contrast to the Orbital Sciences' failed launch, and had been planned well in advance of the accident.
	The Orbital Sciences rocket was carrying a Cygnus capsule loaded with 2½ tons of space station experiments and equipment for NASA. No one was injured when the rocket exploded moments after liftoff, shooting flaming debris down onto the launch area and into the ocean.
	Ground crews were ready to access the fire-stricken area of NASA's Wallops ...

Russian deliver space station cargo after US flop

Ford is recalling about 205,000 SUVs in cold-weather states and parts of Canada to fix gas tanks that can rust, leak and cause a fire.
	The recall affects Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX vehicles from the 2007 and 2008 model years.
	The company said today that it traced the problem to rust under some mounting brackets in areas where salt is used to clear snow from the roads.
	Ford said that it knows of one fire due to the problem, but no crashes or injuries.
	The SUVs are being recalled in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington, DC Also covered are the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.
	Dealers will inspect the fuel tanks and repair or replace them at no cost to owners.

Ford recalls 205,000 SUVs for fuel tank leaks

The United Arab Emirates' top diplomat warned today that the Islamic State group could team up with Islamic militants in Somalia, saying that more should be done to prepare for such a threat.
	The Islamic State group that now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh and the Somali militant Islamic group al-Shabab share a common pedigree in that they both have had links to al-Qaida. They frequently use similar tactics such as explosives-laden cars, suicide bombers and attacks on civilians.
	They operate independently for now, but the Emirati foreign minister, Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, suggested that could change.
	"What really scares us now is what we see from Daesh, and are we going to see in the future any sort of collaboration between different terrorist groups like Daesh and al-Shabab?" Sheik Abdullah said in an address at the opening of a conference focused on counter-piracy in Somalia.
	"I think we should start to ask ourselves: how .

UAE official warns of potential for IS-Shabab link

Myanmar President Thein Sein and commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing will jointly meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the first time Friday, less than two weeks before the arrival of President Barack Obama and other world leaders.
	After winning international praise for helping steer the country from dictatorship to democracy, Thein Sein's nominally civilian government is facing mounting criticism that early political reforms and peace talks with ethnic rebels have stalled.
	A participant who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the meeting said Wednesday that it would be held in the capital, Naypyitaw.
	Critics said it would be little more than window dressing an attempt to show participants at the upcoming East Asian Summit that political dialogue is continuing.

Myanmar's president, army chief to meet Suu Kyi

A man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing a Japanese astronomer who helped develop the international ALMA observatory in Chile.
	A court in Santiago sentenced Cristopher Quijada Villalobos for the robbery and manslaughter of Koichiro Morita.
	Police say the 57-year-old died was killed by a blow to the head from Quijada, who took his wallet and cellphone during a robbery in Santiago in 2012.
	ALMA says Morita was instrumental in creating the observatory on a high plateau in Chile's Atacama desert.
	The sentence was announced yesterday.
	ALMA searches for clues about the dawn of the cosmos, from the coldest gases and dust where galaxies are formed to the energy produced by the Big Bang.
	It is jointly funded by the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan.

AP

AP

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