■ Philippines
Man forgets killing wife
A drunken farmer nailed his wife's mouth shut and beat her to death in front of their children, then prepared breakfast the next day without realizing he had killed her, police said yesterday. Police called to the house of Rodolfo and Vilma Porras in Manapla, central Philippines, on Saturday found the 40-year-old woman dead in her bed with nails driven through her mouth and the back of both knees. Police officer Eliseo Solaban said two of the couple's four children, a girl aged 10 and a boy of eight, told investigators their father beat their mother to death with an iron and drenched her with boiling water after coming home drunk.
■ Nepal
Guerrillas hunted
Police and soldiers hunted yesterday for communist rebels who have kidnapped dozens of schoolchildren from the outskirts of the capital, officials said. On Sunday afternoon, rebels took 12 teachers and about 50 children aged 15 to 16 years from their school in Chiamale village, about 25km south of Katmandu, police said. Over the past few months, hundreds of students have been kidnapped by rebels conducting what they call training. The rebels usually take the children to rural villages where they lecture them about their campaign for a communist state, then free them a few days later. The rebels say they want to replace Nepal's monarchy with a communist state.
■ Indonesia
Militants attack church
An unidentified attacker sprayed bullets into an Indonesian church during an evening service, killing a woman priest and injuring four others, police said yesterday. Sunday's attack was the latest in a series by suspected Islamic extremists on Christian targets in Central Sulawesi province, where hundreds of police and troops have been deployed to prevent a new outbreak of sectarian conflict. One of a group of five attackers burst into the Effata Presbyterian church in the provincial capital Palu and opened fire around 7pm, said provincial police spokesman Victor Batara.
■ India
Bus crash kills 40
At least 40 people were killed yesterday in a bus accident near the town of Laxmipur in eastern India's West Bengal state, police said. Police spokesman Sandanu Kar told reporters the bus carrying at least 50 passengers was traveling "at breakneck speed" mid-morning when the driver lost control and the vehicle careered into a ditch. Laxmipur, in Malda district, is about 355km north of the state capital Calcutta. West Bengal Police Inspector-General Chanyan Mukherjee confirmed the death toll and added that an unknown number of injured had been taken to hospital near Laxmipur.
■ China
Bomb kills 2, injures 3
Two people died and three people were injured after a bomb exploded in a litter bin outside a cinema in southern China, state media said yesterday. The explosion killed two men on Saturday night in a square outside the cinema in Shenzhen, an affluent city that borders Hong Kong, the Beijing News and other media said. Police had no initial leads on the motives behind the bombing, the newspaper said. They were searching for a man dressed in white who was seen placing a suspicious package in the litter bin about half an hour before the explosion. The explosives were packed into a 40cm-long metal pipe, the official Xinhua news agency said.
■ United Kingdom
Secret file found on road
A confidential police file on counterterrorism operations around London's Heathrow airport was found on a road by a passing motorist, the Sun reported yesterday. Police launched an inquiry into how the file had gone missing. The papers show 62 sites at the airport where a group such as al-Qaeda was most likely to launch anti-aircraft missile strikes, including key facts about escape routes, evacuation plans and road closures, as well as police data on patrol times, use of dog units and deployment of rooftop snipers. London's main airport has repeatedly been the focus of security operations as police are said to believe hand-held anti-aircraft missiles could have been smuggled into Britain.
■ Slovenia
Suspected assassin in court
A Serbian man wanted for his suspected role in the assassination last year of the former Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic, appeared in a Greek court on Sunday under heavily armed guard. The man, Dejan Milenkovic, was arrested late Friday night on an international arrest warrant in the port city of Salonika in northern Greece. Milenkovic is one of 13 men, many of them members of a paramilitary police unit, accused of organizing the shooting of Djindjic outside his offices on March 11 last year. Five are already on trial in Belgrade, the Serbian capital.
■ United Kingdom
Child killer admits intent
British double murderer Ian Huntley has admitted to his parents he deliberately killed 10-year-old Jessica Chapman, London's Daily Mirror said yesterday. Huntley, who is serving life for killing Jessica and Holly Wells but maintained their deaths were accidental, told his parents during a prison visit. Kevin Huntley told the newspaper they had found out what happened to Jessica, but his son still needed to explain what happened to Holly. Huntley killed the children in August 2002 after luring them into his house on the grounds of the girls' primary school.
■ United Kingdom
Poll says races don't mix
More than nine out of 10 white Britons have no or hardly any ethnic minority friends, according to a poll. Details of the survey are to be released this week by the Commission for Racial Equality. The poll found that 94 percent of white people say most or all their friends are of the same race, while 47 percent of ethnic minorities say white people form all or most of their friends. Pollsters YouGov asked 2,065 white and 808 ethnic minority people aged over 18 for details of their closest 10 to 20 friends in an Internet survey. Around two-thirds of all ethnic groups believe that minority Britons too often live apart from the rest of society, but only 30 percent of minority people surveyed said all or most of their friends were Asian or black.
■ United Kingdom
Marathon date challenged
The battle of Marathon -- and the epic 26-mile run from the battlefield to Athens celebrated with every modern marathon -- may have been misdated by a month. A team from Texas State University argues from lunar cycle evidence that the date for the battle of Marathon should be Aug. 12, 490BC, rather than Sept. 12. "The hot afternoon of August 12, 490 BC could induce the condition that can be fatal to even a trained athlete: heat exhaustion and heatstroke," wrote Donald Olson, Russell Doescher and Marilynn Olson, in Sky and Telescope.
■ United States
CIA director cool to changes
Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin says the agency has made changes since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and he sees no need for a new national intelligence chief. The bipartisan commission investigating the 2001 hijackings will release its final report this week, and it is expected to recommend the creation of a Cabinet-level position to oversee the nation's 15 intelligence agencies and control their budgets. McLaughlin said ``a good argument can be made'' for such a post. But he added: "It doesn't relate particularly to the world I live in."
■ United States
DNA no help on death row
In the first test of a state statute permitting convicts to seek exonerations through DNA tests, the Georgia Supreme Court and the state parole board have denied a request from a man who was scheduled to be executed yesterday. Barry Scheck, a lawyer who presented the case to the Board of Pardons and Paroles last week, said that to his knowledge it was the first time a death row inmate had been denied DNA testing after making every possible appeal at the state level. "It's just never happened before," Scheck said. "Usually some clemency board, or the governor or someone will step in."
■ Brazil
Slave labor flourishes
An estimated 25,000 people are working as slave laborers in Brazil clearing the Amazon jungle for ranchers, or producing pig iron in the forest using charcoal smelters, according to a new study. An unpublished report for the Geneva-based International Labour Organi-sation concludes that despite the best efforts of the government of President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva to free slaves and prosecute offen-ders, the level of lawlessness in the country's interior means that the practise continues. The report also uncovers a new area of labour "analogous to slavery," where men, women and children who are illegal immigrants from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay are working in sweatshops in Sao Paulo.
■ United States
Winds fan fires
Dry temperatures and strong winds fanned a wildfire toward hundreds of houses in northern Los Angeles County, forcing about 1,000 people to flee their homes. More than 600 homes
near Santa Clarita were threatened as the fire, which was 35 percent contained, grew to more than 1,680 hectares on Sunday, said county fire department spokesman Mike Brown. An unexpected wind shift pushed the fire toward the houses just hours after officials had lifted an earlier evacuation order. By afternoon, the fire -- fanned by winds up to 24 to 32 kph -- had moved northeast toward homes in the neighborhood of Fair Oaks Ranch, Brown said.
■ United States
CBS will fight Jackson fines
Television network CBS will fight any fines leveled against its television stations over Janet Jackson's startling Super Bowl per-formance, a top executive with parent company Viacom said. CBS could face a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fine of US$550,000 or a maximum penalty of US$27,500 for each of 20 CBS-owned stations, reports said last month. An FCC staff recommendation did not call for fining CBS affiliates that aired the Super Bowl halftime show but are not owned by Viacom. A fine would be "grossly unfair," Leslie Moonves, Viacom co-president and co-chief operating officer, said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
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