■ Afghanistan
Aid workers killed
Four Afghan aid workers were killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan, aid officials said yesterday, announcing the latest of a bloody wave of attacks on aid workers, troops and government targets. Five employees of the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees were travelling by car in Ghazni province on Tuesday when they were attacked by a band of armed men, an aid official said. The ambush occurred on a road in the district of Ab Band, about 150km south of the capital Kabul. The unidentified assailants pulled the passengers out of the car, killing four of them. The fifth passenger escaped with injuries, the aid official said.
■ Cambodia
More temples discovered
Cambodian experts have uncovered seven ancient temples in the Siem Reap area that had been lost to the encroaching forest and years of civil war in the country, an official said yesterday. The most recently discovered temple, found in early September some 15km north of Angkor Wat, was a late-9th to early-10th century Brahman temple that was unrecorded in any known documents, the official said. "We only just learned about it from villagers who went deep into the jungle and found this temple covered by forest," said Nim Son, deputy chief of the Culture Ministry's Siem Reap-Angkor Heritage Office. "This is very important to show the world that there are so many other temples that still hide in the forest," he said.
■ South korea
Thousands catch `pinkeye'
A highly infectious eye disease has hit more than 66,000 South Koreans ahead of a long holiday beginning yesterday, and health officials feared it would spread further as millions of people jammed buses, trains and planes. A total of 19,746 new patients of the so-called "pinkeye" disease were reported on Tuesday, bringing the total number of patients to 66,700. The capital, Seoul, was the worst affected with 12,190 patients followed by Gangwon and Gyeonggi provinces which reported 8,012 and 7,003 cases. The disease is characterized by bloodshot, itchy eyes and is sometimes accompanied by muscular pain and headaches.
■ China
Floods sweep Wei valley
A major flood crest on northern China's swollen Wei River has safely passed downstream, but officials cautioned 4.9 million people affected by flooding and landslides that water levels remain high. Although the third major flood crest since August 24 had safely passed into the Yellow River, the Shaanxi provincial flood control headquarters warned that waters levels on the Wei at the Huaxian section had risen 80cm in recent days. So far, the worst flooding in the region in 20 years has killed at least 38 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from the Wei River valley and its tributaries and some 46,000 homes have been destroyed.
■ Nepal
Rebels kill police, kids
Rebels raided a town in central Nepal, shooting to death three officers at a police station and two boys watching a soccer game at a school next-door, police said yesterday. At least six police officers were missing after the attack. They could be hiding in nearby forests or have been captured by the rebels, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred at Khaireni, about 120km west of the capital, Katmandu, on Tuesday.
■ United States
H-bomb father dies
Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, died a few days after suffering a stroke, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said in a statement Tuesday. Teller was 95. Teller died Tuesday at his home on the Stanford University campus, in Stanford, California, the laboratory said. His death "is a great loss for this laboratory and for the nation," the statement said. Teller worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, between 1943 and 1946 that developed the atomic bomb and then later worked on developing the hydrogen bomb. The scientist, of Jewish origin, had lived in the US since 1935, when he fled the the rise of the Nazi regime in Europe.
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