■ Indonesia
Tribesmen clash again
Hundreds of tribesmen armed with spears and bows and arrows clashed again yesterday in Indonesia's Papua province despite police efforts to make peace between the warring groups. Three people were injured in the latest incident, a hospital nurse said. Two people were killed and about 50 injured in battles on Saturday and Monday between the Nduga and Damal tribes. Renewed clashes erupted around noon yesterday. Heated debate had taken place in the Nduga camp, with many demanding that fighting continue until the number of deaths on each side is equal after a dispute about two months ago in which one Nduga tribesman was killed.
■ Thailand
Boy stabs Buddhist teacher
Police detained a 14-year-old boy for allegedly stabbing and critically injuring a Buddhist teacher yesterday in southern Thailand, but said the violence was not linked to the region's Muslim insurgency. "The boy said he attacked the teacher out of anger," police Major-General Jetanakorn Natheethapat said. He said police seized a blood-stained shirt and a chipped knife from the suspect. The missing portion of the knife was lodged in the body of the victim, Somchai Naewbanthad, 37. Jetanakorn said the 14-year-old boy allegedly spent the night with the teacher before stabbing him in front of his apartment. Jetanakorn declined to elaborate.
■ Australia
Your brain'll be right, mate
A doctor in outback Australia performed life-saving brain surgery on an 11-year-old boy while receiving step-by-step instructions over a mobile phone, news reports said yesterday. Jeff Taylor, the local doctor in the South Australian town of Naracoorte, 300km south east of Adelaide, was talked through an operation that involved drilling into the boy's skull by the chief neurosurgeon at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital. Taylor said the surgical drill he used hadn't been used for 15 years. A trail-bike accident left the boy with brain swelling that a neuro-surgeon would normally deal with. The boy is recovering in Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital.
■ India
Bus plunges into river
A bus carrying wedding guests veered out of control and crashed into a rain-swollen river in eastern India, hours after a boat toppled into the same waterway, and some 65 people were feared killed in the two accidents, police said yesterday. The private bus was traveling late Monday in Bihar state when the driver lost control and it plunged into the Bagmati River near the village of Runisaitpur, some 90km north of Patna, said District Magistrate Arun Prasad. Twenty-five people were believed killed in the bus accident, which took place not far from where a boat capsized in the river, apparently killing 40 people.
■ The Philippines
Army kills Muslim rebel
Philippine troops killed a Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebel and captured another one in a clash in a southern town, a military report said yesterday. The firefight erupted Monday when a number of Abu Sayyaf rebels attacked government soldiers in Panglima Sugala town in Tawi-Tawi province, 1,120km south of Manila. "The soldiers were tracking down a band of Abu Sayyaf rebels who were believed to be holding captive two Malaysian sailors and an Indonesian tugboat skipper," the report said. The three foreigners were seized on April 11 aboard a cargo ship near the Malaysian border.
■ France
Vet gets presidential lift
Getting on the wrong bus usually spells disaster, but for one World War II veteran on Sunday it led to the ride of a lifetime. Keith Coleman, a former Royal Air Force gunner from New Zealand, had been hoping the bus he jumped on after the main international D-day cere-mony in Arromanches would take him back to Paris, but instead he ended up stranded at a remote military airfield. Help came when the 86-year-old was invited by French President Jacques Chirac to fly back to Paris on board one of the presidential jets. "I left the ceremony and there was this bus outside that people were getting on to and I thought to myself, I'll give this one a go," Coleman said on Monday. But at the end of the ride, the other veterans got on a plane and he was left alone. After asking for help from an airport official, Coleman was driven to another airfield where Chirac's Gulfstream jet was waiting.
■ France
Challenge to gay union
A public prosecutor challenged France's first gay wedding on Monday, only two days after the male couple exchanged marriage vows in the southwestern town of Begles. The ruling conservatives and the opposition have locked horns over gay marriage ahead of European elec-tions, with the government starting proceedings to suspend the Green mayor who married the couple despite warnings he was breaking the law. Prose-cutor Bertrand de Loz wants to summon the couple to court for a hearing, which the couple's lawyer said did not surprise her. Justice Minister Dominique Perben has already declared the wedding invalid.
■ Australia
Drug conviction for elderly
An 81-year-old World War II veteran and his 77-year-old wife were convicted yester-day of possessing thousands of dollars worth of canna-bis, which they hid in an ice-cream container under their bed. Pensioner David Davies and his wife Florence each received a 16-month suspended jail term after police found more than 19kg of cannabis hidden in their house. The bulk of the stash was found secreted in a false ceiling while the rest was hidden under the couple's bed. Perth Magistrates' Court was told the cannabis had a street value of around A$260,000 (US$183,000 ).
■ Germany
Berlin to promote elitism
Germany decided on Mon-day to end decades of egalitarianism and invest heavily in 10 top-flight universities committed to academic excellence, with the federal government to stump up three quarters of the bill. A jury will select the 10 in a competition. The program will cost a total of 1.9 billion euros (US$2.32 billion) up to 2010. German research institutions have been promised an annual boost of 3 percent in their subsidies up to 2010.
■ Brazil
State of emergency called
Inmates released a guard they were holding hostage on Monday, ending a rebellion at a police station detention center that left one man dead, the same day the governor of Rio de Janeiro declared a state of emergency in the state's prison system. Governor Rosinha Matheus urged prison and police officials to take urgent action to improve security. Prison breaks and rebellions are an almost daily occurrence in Brazil, where prisons are chronically overcrowded and conditions poor.
■ United States
Justice brief backed torture
The US Justice Department offered justification for the use of torture against al-Qaeda detainees in an August 2002 memo to the White House, the Washington
Post reported yesterday. The memo said if a government employee were to torture
a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the US by the al-Qaeda terrorist network," the newspaper reported. The memo also said that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later. Bush administration officials say that the US has abided by international conventions barring torture.
■ United States
Abortion `postponer' sued
A purported anti-abortion activist in Louisiana was accused in a lawsuit of running a sham abortion clinic that dupes women
into waiting too long
to have abortions. The
federal complaint, filed on
Monday by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of five plaintiffs, accuses William Graham
of running the Causeway Center for Women as a way to prevent abortions. The lawsuit accuses Graham of pretending to refer women to abortion providers at bargain prices, then telling them their appointments have been postponed. The lawsuit accuses him of
fraud, false advertising and trademark infringement because "Causeway" also appears in the name of a nearby abortion clinic.
■ United Kingdom
Bookish men to get cash
In a bid to lure British
men away from TV football matches and into bookshops, publisher Penguin Books will send out a sexy model to offer ?1,000 (US$1,837) prizes to males spotted reading a selected title. The publicity ploy, launched on Monday, aims to boost sales among men, who on average buy fewer books than women. "It's to sex up the book industry, which probably needs it, but also to address the more serious issue that reading has fallen off the radar of younger men," said Neil Griffiths, author of the Penguin-published Betrayal in Naples. Penguin's so-
called Good Booking Girl
will canvass the streets this month for men older than
16 years reading versions of Nick Hornby's 31 Songs that bear a special cover sticker. A different title will be chosen each month.
■ Italy
Satanists blamed for death
A young Italian woman was allegedly murdered because satanists had become obsessed with the idea that she was the re-embodiment of the Virgin Mary. According to Italian media reports on Monday, Chiara Marino,
19, was among up to seven people who investigators believe may have been killed in the Milan area in the past six years by a group calling itself the Beasts of Satan. Police and prosecutors are now investigating claims by an alleged member of the group that they were acting on orders from more senior devil worshippers, one of whom was known as the Antichrist. Marino went missing more than six years ago.
■ Canada
Japanese princess visits
Japan's Princess Takamado began a two-week tour
of Canada with a visit to Steveston Village, a historic center for the Japanese-Canadian community in southern British Columbia. The princess, 50, visited
a monument marking the history of Nikkei fishermen. She last visited Canada in 1999 with her late husband, Prince Takamado.
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
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese