■ Sri Lanka
Three dead in-fighting
A camp held by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels was overrun by a breakaway faction, sparking a gunbattle that left at least three guerrillas dead and five wounded, military officials said yesterday. About 15 Tamil Tigers were at the camp in rebel-held Pillumalai village, 220km east of Colombo, when it was attacked late Tuesday by a faction that broke away in March, an official said on condition of anonymity. Three rebels from the main rebel group were killed and five wounded, two of them seriously.
■ Philippines
Guerrillas turn themselves in
Ninety guerrillas from the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have surrendered to the army in the southern Philippines before peace negotiations, the military said yesterday. The rebels turned themselves in on Monday and handed over a cache of weapons to the 602nd Infantry Brigade in the town of Carmen in the main southern island of Mindanao, the military said in a statement. "The rebels are presently undergoing custodial debriefing," it said. The MILF has been waging a rebellion for an Islamic state since 1978, when it broke off from the larger Moro National Liberation Front .
■ Singapore
Baby incentives lauded
The Singapore government is encouraged by the public's response to a multimillion-dollar package aimed at easing the country's shortage of babies, a statement said yesterday. Singaporeans have made more than 11,000 calls to a hotline to get more details about financial and other incentives contained in a S$300 million package announced Aug. 25. Public feedback "has been very positive on the whole, with many Singaporeans expressing strong support for the measures," the official Steering Group on Population said. A parenthood website registered almost 80,000 hits in the nine days since the new package was launched. Lifting Singapore's fertility rate has become an urgent national priority after it fell to an all-time low of 1.26 children per woman last year.
■ Japan
Fischer's deportation barred
A Japanese court granted an injunction yesterday barring the deportation of former chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted in the US for breaking sanctions, until it rules on his lawsuit seeking to cancel the deportation order entirely, Fischer's lawyer Masako Suzuki said. Fischer is wanted by Washington for breaking sanctions by playing a chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992. He has been in detention in Japan since July when he was stopped at an airport for traveling on a passport US officials had said was invalid. Japanese authorities ordered his deportation late last month, but his lawyers immediately appealed, filing with the Tokyo District Court for cancellation of the order. The lawyers had also asked the court to suspend the deportation until it decided whether to cancel the order.
■ Thailand
Movie poster strikes nerve
Thailand's Buddhist leaders have strongly denounced a US film producer, whose movie promotional poster shows him sitting on the head of a Buddha statue, officials said yesterday. The Bureau of National Buddhism said the poster of the film Hollywood Buddha, which opens Sept. 24 in the US, was deeply offensive to Thais and demanded it be changed. The bureau sent a protest letter to the Thai foreign ministry and demanded US authorities and religious organizations order the posters to be removed.
■ Belgium
Airport security reviewed
The government said Tuesday it would review security procedures at Zaventem international airport after an undercover journalist brought a fake bomb into the airport. In a program aired on Monday, the journalist from the VTM television network said he was hired as a catering worker by an airport company without undergoing sufficient background checks. Tim Verheyden said he was able to bring a package resembling a bomb through the security check for airport employees. The package contained gray plasticine, wires and a mobile phone as a trigger, but no actual explosives, VTM said.
■ United Kingdom
Weather to kill millions
Millions of people across the globe are set to die early due to extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves caused by climate change, a British scientist said on Tuesday. Professor Mike Pilling cited the heatwave in Europe last year that killed thousands of people from a combination of heat exhaustion and an increase in atmospheric pollution. "We will experience an increase in extreme weather events," he told reporters at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "There are predictions of a 10-fold increase in heat waves. The increasing frequency of these will inevitably result in a sharp increase in the premature deaths of people," he added.
■ Italy
Nun sparks ID card dispute
Should Roman Catholic nuns who wear veils in Italy be treated any differently to Muslim women who wear veils? According to a civil servant in the central Italian city of L'Aquila, the answer is no. The law states that photographs on Italian identity cards must show a person's features clearly. The civil servant refused to issue an identity card to a nun who had presented a photo taken with her wearing a veil on the grounds that days earlier he had rejected a similar photo from a Muslim woman, according to Italian newspaper reports. Nuns with veils have been traditionally exempt from the ruling but the civil servant decided that it was best to be impartial.
■ Poland
Photographer freed
A French photographer held in Poland for 25 days as a terrorist suspect was unconditionally released on Tuesday, his lawyer said, even as a prosecutor insisted that the case remains open. Michel Neyrolles, 23, was arrested on August 13 while taking pictures of a gas pumping station and was subsequently charged with "preparing acts liable to endanger human lives and destroy property." Neyrolles was released from a prison in Pozan after a court ruled that "the evidence assembled was insufficient to back up an indictment," said judge Slawomir Jeksa.
■ Germany
Library to be rebuilt
Authorities in Germany Tuesday said the famed Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar would be rebuilt to its original rococo splendor following last week's devastating fire. "We intend to raise federal, state and local money as well as private donations to cover the cost of rebuilding the library and restoration work on some 40,000 damaged books," said an official. The fire hit just five weeks before the books were to have to been moved to a secure, underground storage room currently under construction.
■ United Kingdom
Smelly robot eats flies
British scientists are developing a robot that will generate its own power by eating flies. The idea is to produce electricity by catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells that will break down sugar in the insects' skeletons and release electrons that will drive an electric current. Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make "release and forget robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. The downside is that the robot it will have to use sewage or excrement to attract the flies and is bound to smell appalling.
■ United States
Pakistani pleads not guilty
A Pakistani man who was arrested in July after the Charlotte police saw him videotaping buildings downtown pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to six offenses unrelated to terrorism. Federal prosecutors say the man, Kamran Akhtar, lied to the authorities about his name and his immigration status, possessed false identification, and refused to leave the country after he was denied asylum in 1997. Tapes in Akhtar's possession included images of buildings and transit systems in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and New Orleans, and the building in Charlotte where the FBI office is located.
■ United States
Felons need approval to vote
About 600 felons who have lost their voting rights must write a letter to the state seeking permission to reregister to vote, provide three personal references, and gain approval from a prosecutor, according to new rules approved by Governor Ernie Fletcher. The felons must meet an Oct. 4 deadline in order to vote in the November general election. Voting rights advocates say the new rules unfairly single out members of minorities and the poor, but Fletcher, a Republican, said he believed felons should explain why they deserved to regain their voting rights.
■ United States
Alzheimer sufferer kills wife
An 88-year-old Queens County man with Alzheimer's disease stabbed his 80-year-old wife and beat her to death with a broomstick on Tuesday morning, the police said. One of the couple's sons entered their basement apartment, on 28th Avenue near 146th Street in College Point, around noon after no one answered the telephone, and found his father, Vincenzo Pizzurro, beating his mother, Francesca Pizzurro, on the head, a law enforcement official said. She was taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Pizzurro appeared to be extremely disoriented, perhaps unaware of what he had done, the official said.
■ United States
Dinosaurs not so bad: report
Dinosaurs may not all have been the terrifying creatures portrayed in blockbuster films but could have had a more caring, loving nature. A fossil found in China of a Psittacosaurus, a small dinosaur that lived about 110 million years ago, shows it may have been a doting parent, scientists said yesterday. "This is a nice, straightforward example of parental care in dinosaurs," said David Varricchio of Montana State University in Bozeman. The fossil was found last year and shows a single adult dinosaur clustered with 34 youngsters. Varricchio and scientists in China and Taiwan said the dinosaurs could have been buried by volcanic ash or trapped by a collapsed underground burrow.
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
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number