■ Afghanistan
Abuse claims investigated
The US military announced yesterday it had launched an investigation into a complaint of detainee abuse in Afghanistan. The US embassy in Kabul said an Afghan police officer, reportedly held by US-led forces in the city of Gardez and the US base at Bagram last year, said he had been stripped naked, photographed, kicked and subjected to "sexual taunting." "To the best of our knowledge this is the first time anyone in the military chain of command or the United States Embassy has heard of this alleged mistreatment," US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said.
■ Nepal
General strike continues
A general strike brought normal life in Nepal to a halt for the second straight day yesterday as political parties pressed King Gyanendra to restore democracy and resolve a prolonged political crisis. Five key political parties had called the 48-hour strike on Tuesday after the monarch ignored weeks of sustained, often violent, street protests and calls for a multi-party government. Streets in the temple-studded capital were deserted as taxis, public and private vehicles stayed off the roads, businesses downed shutters and schools as well as colleges closed.
■ Indonesia
Pedophile kills himself
A former Australian diplomat jailed for 13 years on the holiday island of Bali for lewd conduct with minors has killed himself less than a day after sentencing, a witness who saw the body said yesterday. William Brown had been found guilty of sexually abusing two teenage boys on the Indonesian resort isle. When the Karangasem district court handed down the sentence on Tuesday, Brown had reacted with rage, shouting expletives and shaking his fist at the judge, while spectators clapped and cheered the verdict. "Another convict found Brown's body early in the morning around 6:30am. He hanged himself using a mattress rope tied to a window," said the witness, a photographer who saw the body being moved from the jail to a local hospital.
■ South Korea
Generals in bribe probe
South Korean prosecutors are investigating embezzlement and bribery allegations against three former generals, a news agency reported yesterday. The report came just days after the arrest of a high-ranking South Korean general who works closely with American forces stationed in the South on embezzlement charges. Prosecutors are also looking into allegations that a former lieutenant general of the Korea Marine Corps embezzled about 80 million won (US$67,600) of military funds, Yonhap news agency reported yesterday.
■ Singapore
Conviction for child abuser
A convicted cheat and armed robber pleaded guilty of inflicting more than 140 injuries on a 7-year-old boy who died after seven months of the brutality, a newspaper reported yesterday. Chong Keng Chye, 36, will be sentenced at a later date, said District Judge Kow Keng Siong, who called for a report to see if Chong should be put in preventive detention, The Straits Times said. An autopsy found more than 140 injuries on the child's body, including spinal fractures, bleeding in the brain and wounds that appeared to stem from cigarette burns and cuts. Every day from October 1998 until June 3, 1999, Chong would slap the boy, kick him and hit him with a bamboo pole at the home of his girlfriend, the mother of the boy, the court was told.
■ United States
Grandma jailed over heists
A 58-year-old grandmother was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for robbing two Michigan banks while on a trip to visit her son -- a police officer. She also admitted to 10 other robberies in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Margaret Ann Thomas-Irving's arrest capped a nine-month crime spree in which she held up four banks, two savings and loans, two restaurants and two Dunkin' Donuts shops. The robberies netted just under US$20,000. The Hartford, Connecticut, woman was arrested last year on the same day she allegedly robbed two banks in Lansing.
■ United States
Abuse lawsuit targets nuns
Nine former students of a now-closed Massachusetts school for the deaf filed a lawsuit on Tuesday saying they were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by the Roman Catholic nuns who operated the institution. The plaintiffs, all of whom are deaf and mute, said they were raped, fondled, beaten, stuffed into lockers and had their heads submerged in toilets by the nuns. The plaintiffs were aged 4 to 18 at the time of the alleged abuse, which the lawsuit said took place between 1944 and 1977 at the Boston School for the Deaf in Randolph. The school closed in 1994. The lawsuit names 14 nuns, one priest, a staff member and Bishop Thomas Daily, the retired bishop of Brooklyn, as defendants.
■ Libya
Nurses appeal to Blair
The International Council of Nurses appealed on Tuesday to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene on behalf of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been condemned to death in Libya. Last year a court in Benghazi dismissed the case, in which the six medics were accused of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV at a hospital. But the case was reopened after the prosecution resubmitted charges, and the six were convicted and sentenced. The conviction came despite testimony that the virus was likely at the hospital before the nurses arrived.
■ Bosnia
Croat arrested for massacre
A Bosnian Croat suspected of being responsible for a massacre of more than 100 Muslim civilians during the war in Bosnia was arrested on Tuesday in Croatia, police said. The 42-year-old man, who was not named, was detained in the southern Adriatic town of Zadar under suspicion of committing war crimes, police said. He was transferred to a prison in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, and was to be questioned by an investigative judge yesterday, they said. The detainee is wanted in connection with atrocities committed in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici in April 1993, in which ethnic Croat forces killed more 100 civilians.
■ Germany
Post carrier balks at reprint
Insisting that books are a waste of wood pulp, mail carrier Deutsche Post is refusing to reprint its guide to German postal codes, saying letter-writers should either look up the codes on the Internet or phone a hotline for help. Elderly Germans who have never used the Internet complained, and raised a petition to parliament in Berlin. Now Deutsche Post is planning an opinion poll to establish whether Germans really want a fresh edition of the 1,000-page guide last printed in 1993, when the Internet was in its infancy, according to the newspaper Berliner Kurier.
■ Brazil
Reporter to be expelled
Brazil said on Tuesday it would expel New York Times correspondent Larry Rohter who wrote that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had a drinking problem. Lula said journalist Rohter deserved to lose his visa after writing the president's drinking had raised "national concern" he was losing his ability to rule. "It's not for a president to respond to such a piece of stupidity. Certainly its author, who doesn't know me and who I don't know, must be more worried ... than I am. It doesn't deserve a response, it deserves action," Lula told reporters in Brasilia.
■ Switzerland
AIDS is biggest killer
The World Health Organization said in its annual report that AIDS had become the leading single cause of death worldwide for people aged 15 to 59. The agency reported that 3 million people had died of AIDS in 2003, and that 5 million people had become infected with HIV that year. The agency's director general, Lee Jong-wook, called for a sharp increase in the supply of anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV. He said in the report, which is to be formally presented next week in Geneva, that less than 7 percent of the 6 million people with HIV in developing countries were thought to have access to treatment.
■ Russia
Putin visits Chechnya
In a rare visit to a war zone that has become Russia's quagmire, President Vladimir Putin made a quick trip Tuesday to Chechnya, and said its bombed and battered capital, Grozny, looked "horrible." His visit, two days after the assassination of his hand-picked president for the region, Akhmad Kadyrov, was an acknowledgment that the conflict from which he has tried to distance himself remained a critical problem for the Kremlin. After decreasing Russia's security forces in Chechnya over the last several months and trying to transform the decadelong separatist war into a local conflict, Putin on Tuesday announced a plan to bolster the local police force by at least 1,000 officers.
■ United States
Chlamydia prevalent
A surprisingly large number of young Americans are infected with the bacteria that causes the sexually transmitted disease known as chlamydia, according to a study released Tuesday. One in 25 young Americans carry the organism that causes the disease, and the rate of infection is particularly high among young blacks and in the southern US, researchers said. The findings are based on the most comprehensive study of the prevalence of chlamydia among Americans to date. The infection was six times greater in young black adults than in young whites, according to the study of more than 12,000 adults with an average age of 22.
■ Canada
New strain of bird flu
A new strain of bird flu has been found in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, different from anything seen in the area before, officials said. Scientists can't rule out the possibility the strain is the one responsible for the recent deaths of people in Asia, but they urged residents not to panic. "We don't know what it is," said Sally Greenwood, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Center for Disease Control. She said it was not the H7 virus that had been identified in province, and that there was possibility it could come back as a H5 subtype.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was