■ Bangladesh
Dam threatens villages
An emergency red alert was sounded yesterday in northern Bangladesh as thousands of people threatened by a leaking river dam were asked to leave their homes in the face of fresh floods, relief officials said. At least 12 people were drowned and an estimated 400,000 had become homeless as heavy rains and water cascading down the hills from across the border in India converted the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers into raging flood waters. Disaster Management Office sources said renewed flooding had destroyed 72,000 mud and straw homes in the northern Rangpur region. About 12,000 farming families living near the Teesta river dam in Dimla and Jaldhaka sub-districts were told to move to flood shelters with their movable valuables and animals.
■ China
Seal breaks auction record
The largest seal ever used by an emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and recently retrieved from overseas sold for 6 million yuan (US$722,000) at an auction in China, state media said yesterday. Bidding for the seal, which was said to have been used by Emperor Kang Xi, the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, began at 1.6 million yuan, but soared to a final price of 6 million yuan. It was a record high for the auction of an imperial seal, the Xinhua news agency said. Huachen, a spokesperson for the auctioneer, said the seal featuring carvings across its 9.5cm2 surface, had been retrieved from a US collector.
■ Australia
White whale makes waves
A huge humpback whale that yesterday was making its way up the Great Barrier Reef on Australia's east coast had experts in a tizzy over its sex and coloring. The 12m mammal is completely white, but may not be the very rare albino specimen that some claim it is. Dubbed "Moby Dick" by some and "Moby Dora" by others, marine zoologist were also in disagreement over its sex. The jumbo humpback was first sighted in 1991 and has been seen regularly in the last four years headed from the Antarctic to breed in the waters of north Queensland.
■ Hong kong
Parentage in doubt
Four of 10 Hong Kong men who paid for DNA tests to find out if their children were really theirs had their worst suspicions confirmed, a news report said yesterday. The study quoted by the Sunday Morning Post newspaper found 30 out of 75 cases taken to DNA testing laboratories came back with the conclusion that the father was not the biological parent. A researcher involved in the study, which was originally published in the Chinese Medical Journal, said the results indicated that there might be "a large population of children in Hong Kong whose parentage is in doubt."
■ Malaysia
Man makes meal of penis
A Malaysian man sliced off his own penis, then fried and ate it after taking hallucinatory pills that caused him to hear voices urging him to mutilate himself, police said yesterday. The 34-year-old man claimed he only realized what he had done when he saw blood oozing from his crotch, said a police spokesman in the town of Sitiawan, 300km north of Kuala Lumpur. The man had taken hallucinatory pills before sleeping on Friday and awoke hearing voices telling him to chop off his penis and devour it, the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. He was hospitalized in stable condition, the national news agency Bernama reported. The man had recently been released from a drug rehabilitation center.
■ Russia
Nine killed in Chechnya
Rebels ambushed a Russian military vehicle in southern Chechnya, killing nine soldiers and wounding five, a Chechen administration official said yesterday. The soldiers were traveling in a heavy Kamaz truck when they hit a remote-controlled land mine in the Shatoi region of southern Chechnya on Saturday evening, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Rebels then ambushed the vehicle, launching grenades and firing automatic weapons at the truck, the official said. The soldiers had been returning to base after conducting a reconnaissance mission in the mountains of southern Chechnya where many rebels shelter and through which many supply routes run, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.
■ London
Short suggests Blair resign
Former British cabinet minister Clare Short, who resigned her post over the Iraq war, has urged Tony Blair to quit as Britain's prime minister, saying it would be in the country's best interest for him to go. "I think it would be in the interests of Tony Blair himself and his legacy of the Labour Party, and actually of the country, if he would think of making a voluntary departure and we could have an elegant handover and Labour could renew itself in power," Short said.
■ France
Muslim protests scarf ruling
A Muslim civil servant suspended from her job because she refused to remove her headscarf on Saturday condemned the decision, saying she would continue to wear the religious garment on her return to work. Nadjet Ben Abdallah, 33, who works as a civil servant in the Lyon region in eastern France, told journalists that her appeal against an initial penalty last year had been dismissed by the Lyon administrative tribunal. Instead, the tribunal handed down a one-year suspension without pay to the Frenchwoman of Algerian origin, describing her action as "particularly serious given her position."
■ London
Football legend back to bottle
George Best, famous as much for his drinking exploits as for his magical footballing talents in the 1960s and 1970s, has started drinking again and was arrested this weekend for brawling in a pub south of London. Speaking to a newspaper for which Best writes a column, his wife said her husband was in a self- destructive mood. Best, was arrested for assault on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm, police said. He was later released without charge. The News of the World, another British yesterday tabloid, said Best had been drinking at a pub near his home when he became involved in a scuffle with one of its photographers.
■ United states
Surgeon details proceedure
A US surgeon who helped separate the conjoined twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani says the sisters may have survived if the operation had been carried out in a series of smaller procedures. Dr. Benjamin Carson, pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, gave the first detailed account of the decisions made during 54 hours of surgery that ended with the 29-year-old sisters' death on Tuesday in a Singapore hospital. In interviews on Friday and Saturday, Carson described how the wish of the sisters to be separated at all costs weighed on decisions by the surgical team to continue as they ran into problems.
■ Mexico
Fox struggles in elections
On the night he was elected, President Vicente Fox stood at the country's independence monument and promised jobs, open government and a new Mexico. Three years later, people are not only disappointed with Fox, but with their newfound democracy, and it was felt in yesterday's midterm congressional elections. Voter turnout was only 41 percent, compared with 64 percent in 2000, and Fox's National Action Party emerged weaker. Many complained that politics had deteriorated into a dogfight among Mexico's proliferating parties, and others said Fox had failed to achieve even a few of his numerous goals.
■ United States
Priests' bad habits hidden
A Jesuit priest and psychiatrist said he was "stupefied" that the Boston archdiocese withheld key information about abusive priests he evaluated, and would have recommended jail for an accused pedophile had church officials provided all information known about him. The Reverend Dr. Edwin Cassem, former chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, evaluated dozens of priests accused of sexual misconduct in the late 1980s and 1990s. In a two-day deposition taken by lawyers representing alleged abuse victims, Cassem strongly criticized former church leaders for concealing information.
■ United States
Woman poisons grandchild
A woman has been charged with poisoning her 5-week-old granddaughter by pouring salt into the infant's formula, authorities said.
Police said that Merry Long, 43, of Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, poured about two cups of salt into a can of powdered baby formula because she was angry at her son and his girlfriend, who is the child's mother. The mother unknowingly mixed the formula with water and fed it to the baby, who went into convulsions and died Feb. 18, officials said. Long fled the area after confessing Feb. 24 that she put salt in the formula because she was angry with the couple.
■ United States
Nancy launches carrier
With the order "Bring her to life," former first lady Nancy Reagan commissioned the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier Saturday and sent lines of sailors streaming onto the USS Ronald Reagan. The carrier, nearly 330m long and standing 20 stories above the waterline, is the first to be named for a living president. Ronald Reagan, now 92 and ailing with Alzheimer's disease, didn't attend the ceremony at Norfolk Naval Station, but he was praised by speakers at the commissioning. Today's navy is in many ways a monument to Reagan's vision, Vice President Dick Cheney told the crowd of hundreds.
■ Congo
Rebels spark coup fears
A unilateral move by the main rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo creating three military zones in the area it controls has sparked fears of a possible putsch by the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), sources in the capital said Saturday. A document signed Thursday by RCD leader Azarias Ruberwa set up three military regions in eastern, northern and southern DRC that it controlled before a peace plan signed last year in the South African capital Pretoria. The committee monitoring the peace process suspended its work Saturday after learning of Ruberwa's unilateral creation of the zones.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing