■ India
Grenade wounds patients
One person was killed and 30 injured in a grenade explosion yesterday at a hospital
PHOTO: AFP
in Indian-administered
Kashmir, police and witnesses
said. They said suspected
rebels tossed a grenade at paramilitary troops near the outpatients department at the main hospital in Baramulla, 55km north of the summer capital Srinagar. "The
grenade exploded among the paramilitary men and civilian patients and attendants," a police spokesman said. The identity of the dead person had yet to be ascertained. "The hospital was abuzz with activity when the explosion took place," the spokesman said, adding that few of the injured were with India's Border Security Force.
■ China
Hijacking goes nowhere
A Chinese jetliner bound from Beijing to southern China made an emergency landing yesterday after a passenger shouted that he wanted to hijack the flight to South Korea, but the unarmed man was detained and the plane took off again, state media and an airport spokeswoman said. The Air China plane
was bound for the city of Changsha when it was forced to stop in Zhengzhou in central China, the Changsha airport spokeswoman said. The plane landed after the passenger rushed an onboard security guard and said he wanted to hijack the flight to South Korea, the newspaper said. "He just shouted. He
had nothing in his hands.
His behavior made him
seem mentally ill," the report quoted a source as saying.
■ China
Kids having plastic surgery
An increasing number of parents are taking children
as young as three to plastic surgeons in China, state media reported yesterday. Xiong Xiangfeng, vice president of Shanghai Ren'ai Hospital, told the China Daily that "more and more" teenagers, accompanied by their parents, are seeking plastic surgery with his hospital. Most want their noses enlarged and a fold cut onto their eyelids to make them bigger -- to make
them look more like the Westerners they see in Hollywood films and the advertisements on billboards and in magazines.
■ Australia
Woman survives ordeal
Rescuers on Sunday praised the survival instincts of a grandmother who emerged virtually unscathed more than three days after becoming
lost in the Australia's rugged northwest following a run-in with a wild bull. With little water and no food, rescuers admitted they never expected to find Norma Hayes, 65, alive in terrain where temperatures approach freezing at night and soar to 40oC during the day. The search party was amazed when she strolled into their base camp on Saturday suffering only dehydration and minor scratches. Hayes said she became separated from her bushwalking group after a wild bull chased her into the scrub, where she fell over and knocked herself out.
■ Thailand
Golfers dodge bullets
Forget water hazards and sandtraps: health hazards
are the main concern for unfortunate golfers at a course in Thailand who are dodging stray bullets from
a nearby shooting range,
an official said yesterday. Retrieving an errant tee-shot has become a no-no on the 15th hole at the Field Marshall Plaek Golf Course, which abuts a shooting range in Lopburi province where police officers are known to practice their marksmanship. "We have seen bullets glancing off from somewhere and falling on our golf course," manager Colonel Bavornrat Maitreeprasat said.
■ Israel
Vanunu travel ban upheld
The High Court refused yesterday to lift a ban on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu leaving the country, a restriction imposed when he was freed after an 18-year prison term, court officials said. The government has branded the former nuclear techni-cian who spilled Israel's atomic weapons secrets in 1986 a security risk, saying he might have more infor-mation to reveal. Vanunu insists he has nothing more to tell and that the travel ban violates his civil rights. "This is a very sad day and shameful day," Vanunu said after Israel's High Court rejected his petition. "I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man. If Israel is a democracy it should allow me to do it."
■ United States
Jail populations grows
The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report that was released yesterday. The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult popu-lation, the report said. The growth in what the report termed the "correctional population" comes at a time when the crime rate has been relatively stable for several years. It also comes when many states, faced with budget deficits, have passed new, less strict sentencing laws in an attempt to reduce the number of inmates.
■ Hong Kong
Writer gets cold shoulder
A French author suffered the embarrassment of holding a book-signing that nobody attended, a media report said yesterday. Writer Pierrette Fleutiaux, who won China's literature prize for best foreign novelist in 2001, had to cancel the signing session on Sunday because no one wanted her autograph, the South China Morning Post reported. "It was the first day I arrived and nobody knew me," said Fleutiaux, who is promoting Short Sentences, My Darling. She is in Hong Kong as part of the first-ever French exhibit at the annual Hong Kong Book Fair.
■ Saudi Arabia
Cellphone pics mar wedding
A wedding party turned violent after a female guest was caught using her mobile telephone to take digital photographs of other women at the celebration, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Al-Madineh said a fight broke out as a woman used her mobile to take pictures at the segregated wedding party in Khamis Msheit. "The scuffle spread to the male section of the party. A number of guests were hospitalized," the daily added. Men and women celebrate weddings separately, so that women are at liberty to attend without wearing the all-covering black cloaks and veil that are obligatory in the presence of men.
■ France
Minister warns arsonists
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin warned in Aix-en-Provence on Sunday that wildfires ravaging parts of the south had not all been started by accident and called for heavy punishment for fire-raisers. "The out-breaks are not all innocent," he told a press conference after flying over affected areas. "The situation has more or less stabilized but there are risks of new outbreaks," de Villepin said after inspecting wildfires that had burned more than 2,500 hectares of land and forced the evacuation of 2,000 people.
■ Turkey
Train hits bus, killing 15
A passenger train slammed into a minibus at a railroad crossing in western Turkey, killing 15 people and injuring four just days after the deadly derailment of a Turkish express train. The minibus -- carrying 19 passengers returning from a wedding party -- was rushing Sunday to cross the track before the barriers came down, a railroad official told reporters.
■ United Kingdom
MPs ask Iraq war probe
Forty British members of Parliament (MPs) have asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to seek the opinion of the UN's International Court of Justice on the Iraq war's legality, the Daily Mirror reported yesterday. The cross-party group, which had written a letter to Annan dated July 20, believes Prime Minister Tony Blair's government breached the UN charter when it joined the US-led invasion of Iraq. "Lots of people have concerns about the legitimacy of the war and it seems we do need to have clarification on this," said Alan Simpson, a Labour MP. The letter said: "It is clear that in Britain and the United States, war was justified on the basis of intelligence ... which turned out to be without foundation."
■ United Kingdom
Serial murder suspect held
British police have arrested a 34-year-old man on suspicion of two double murders in northern England following a week-long search, police said Sunday. Mark Hobson was recognized by a service station owner in North Yorkshire where he tried to buy matches. "As a result of a call from the public, he was found in a field," said Deputy Chief Constable Roger Baker. The bodies of 27-year-old twin sisters Claire and Diane Sanderson were found in Camblesforth, North Yorkshire last week, on the same day as police found the blood-stained bodies of James and Joan Britton, aged 80 and 82, at their home about 40km away.
■ United States
Man dies in hospital lounge
A man was found dead on a couch in a hospital lounge in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, and a nurse told police that nobody had checked on him for at least 17 hours because he appeared to be asleep. Robert Johnson, 55, who had emphysema, was found Thursday at Southwest General Health Center, police said. A hospital spokeswoman, Kelly Stanford, said, "It's an unfortunate situation, but we're cooperating fully with all levels of investigation." The dead man's wife, Robin Johnson, said she had not seen her husband since he left home Monday after an argument. Police say he camped out at the hospital rather than return home.
■ France
`Papa' among oldest words
"Papa" may have been one of the first words uttered by babies at the dawn of humanity, according to French linguists. Scientists investigating the roots of language believe the word has been handed down through generations from an original proto-tongue spoken at least 50,000 years ago. Many of the estimated 6,000 languages now spoken share common words and meanings. Now two French researchers have found that "papa" is present in almost 700 of the 1,000 languages they have data for. The meaning of "papa" is remarkably consistent. In 71 percent of cases it means "father" or a male relative on the father's side. "There is only one explanation for the consistent meaning of the word 'papa': a common ancestry," said researcher Pierre Bancel of the Association for the Study of Linguistics and Prehistoric Anthropology in Paris.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not