■ 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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of