■ South Korea
Refugee plan uncovered
The government has prepared secret plans to take control of North Korea and to accommodate at least 200,000 refugees in the event of the sudden collapse of the communist regime, a news report said yesterday. The JoongAng Ilbo, a major Seoul daily, said that under the secret plans disclosed at a parliamentary audit on Monday Seoul's unification minister would take over as ruler of post-collapse North Korea. South Korea has also designated public facilities such as schools and stadiums nationwide to house more than 200,000 North Koreans expected to flood towards the south if the communist regime lurched towards collapse, the JoongAng reported said.
■ Thailand
Cult ritual leaves child dead
A 10-year-old girl died after her throat was allegedly repeatedly slashed by her mother, grandmother and two aunts in a ritual to rid her of an evil spirit, police said yesterday. Prapasorn Jiamcharoen was found dead in a pool of blood with multiple slash wounds to her neck as the women chanted upstairs to a Hindu goddess they had built a cult around, police said. "We suspected they committed the crime in a trance-like state without even knowing what they have done," Police Colonel Surachai Kuandechakupt told reporters. He said the women had used a meat cleaver to hack at Prapasorn's throat and hair -- which was ceremonially soaked in a bowl -- before burning the girl's clothes and mattress.
■ Thailand
Hundreds of dogs saved
More than 1,000 dogs destined to be butchered and eaten in Vietnam were seized by Thai police who discovered them crammed inside three trucks, police said yesterday. The 1,070 dogs, discovered in tiny cages in northeastern Thailand on Monday, were about to be taken through Laos to Vietnam, according to police. Four men were arrested for illegal trading since they had no license, according to Police Colonel Sunthorn Kongkraphan. If found guilty, the men would be fined but not jailed, he said. The discovery of the dogs in Sakon Nakhon province, who were put in quarantine, was the latest in a series of regular dog seizures in northeastern Thailand.
■ Vietnam
War era shell kills children
Two children were killed and two others seriously injured when a US-made shell left over from the Vietnam War exploded in central Vietnam, police said yesterday. The accident happened on Saturday while the four children were trying to smash open a M79 artillery shell they had discovered on a hill in the Van Canh district of Binh Dinh province. According to the US military, over 15 million tonnes of bombs, mines, artillery shells and other munitions were used during the Vietnam War. As much as 10 percent of the ordnance is estimated to have failed to explode.
■ Indonesia
Megawati touts democracy
An emotional President Megawati Sukarnoputri on yesterday urged Indonesia to accept the results of landmark polls which delivered a landslide victory to her former security minister, clearing his path to the presidency. Her speech, made to mark Indonesia's armed forces day, was the closest to conceding defeat Megawati has come since officials results released a day earlier declared Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the victor of the elections. "All sides should be able to accept [this] well, uphold the values of democracy and mutually respect each other," Megawati said.
■ United Kingdom
Doctor-patient sex probed
Forty percent of medical students in Scotland believe they could justify having sex with a patient, according to a poll published yesterday. In a small study of 62 students reported in the Journal of Medical Ethics, the students said it would be acceptable in certain situations. Psychiatrists, gynecologists and general practitioners are significantly more likely to have an affair with a patient than other specialists, according to the researchers. The risk also increases with age. "Traditional medical education has inadequately tackled the issue," said Dr John Goldie of the University of Glasgow, who conducted the survey.
■ United Kingdom
Robbers loot chocolate
Perhaps they had a sweet tooth. Robbers with their own trucks stole six trailer loads of chocolates worth more than ?500,000 (US$900,000) from an industrial park in northeast England, police said on Monday. Since the crime at the Great Bear Distribution Center in Skelmersdale in the early hours of Sunday, five of the trailers have been recovered: four of them empty and the fifth still containing its load of Easter eggs. "It was a very well organized raid," a spokeswoman for the Lancashire Police said. "We don't know if they planned to come back for the Easter eggs -- or maybe they were considered too seasonal to get rid of."
■ Abkhazia
Election results delayed
Opposition candidate Sergei Bagapsh yesterday claimed victory in the first openly contested presidential vote in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, but the wait for official results continued. The delay prompted fears by one of the main candidates, Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba, that the outcome of Sunday's voting would be rigged. According to the Central Election Commission, Khadzhimba was leading in the capital, Sukhumi, by just under 500 votes, but the count was far from complete. And in another region, Bagapsh was ahead, said Astamur Appba, executive secretary of the Central Election Commission. Bagapsh insisted that the delay "doesn't raise any doubts about my victory."
■ United Kingdom
Pedophile jailed for life
A wealthy businessman thought to be the UK's most prolific pedophile was jailed for life on Monday. William Goad of Plymouth is believed to have sexually abused thousands of young boys over the past 40 years, driving two to suicide. Goad, 60, who once boasted he had beaten his own record of abusing 142 boys a year, was described by the prosecution at Plymouth crown court as "voracious, calculating, predatory and violent." Yesterday, victims cheered as he was jailed for life, while Judge William Taylor said he must not be freed while he remained a danger to children. Goad raped the children in his home, his warehouse, his van, on camping trips and in a country cottage, threatening violence if they told anyone.
■ Sudan
Darfur crisis `worsening'
The situation for Sudanese refugees in the western Darfur region worsened last month, according to a report that was to be presented by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday in the Security Council. Released on Monday night in New York, Annan's report accuses the government in Khartoum of not doing enough in stopping attacks on civilians or punishing those behind atrocities.
■ United States
Bremer cites troop shortage
The US didn't have enough troops in Iraq immediately following the removal of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and "paid a big price" for it, the former head of the US occupation said on Monday. Paul Bremer said he arrived in Iraq on May 6 last year to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation. "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address on Monday in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to an insurance group, which reported his comments. "We never had enough troops on the ground." Despite the daily reports of violence, "I am optimistic about the future in Iraq," he added. He said his references to troop levels related to the situation when he first arrived in Baghdad.
■ United States
North Korean aid gets nod
The US House of Representatives has given the government the green light to spend US$20 million to provide humanitarian aid to North Koreans inside and outside the country, and moved to make refugees from the country eligible for asylum in the US. But the North Korean Human Rights Act of this year, which was approved by voice vote on Monday and covers a four-year period through fiscal 2008, also contained US$4 million for expanding US radio broadcasts and other programs designed to promote democracy and human rights in the hermetic Stalinist nation.
■ France
Glitch causes highway panic
An electronic glitch created panic on a French motorway and forced a man to drive at nearly 200km per hour for more than one hour, French media reported yesterday. Hicham Dequiedt, 29, told the daily Le Parisien a defect in the electronic speed regulator of his Renault Vel Satis kept him racing late Sunday on the motorway between the cities of Vierzon and Riom. The police had toll-gates evacuated and alerted the local traffic radio station to warn drivers on the roadway to stay on the right. Dequiedt finally managed to remove the chip card that starts the car. "It seems highly unlikely to me," Renault head Louis Schweitzer said.
■ United States
Pioneering astronaut dies
Gordon Cooper, the astronaut who flew the last of the pioneering Mercury space missions and stayed aloft in a Gemini capsule long enough to demonstrate that a trip to the moon was feasible, died on Monday at his home in Ventura, California, NASA announced. He was 77. Cooper was the last Mercury astronaut, and thus the last US astronaut to fly alone in space. His mission, from May 15 to 16 in 1963, covered 34 hours, 20 minutes, more than all five of the previous Mercury shots combined. In an era ripe with firsts, he was reported to be the first American to sleep in space -- seven and a half hours, dreamlessly, he reported -- and the first to fly twice. He was also the first American televised from space.
■ United States
Kilmer's `Moses' retooled
The big-budget stage musical The Ten Commandments, starring Val Kilmer as Moses, has canceled three perform-ances per week in Los Angeles after receiving negative reviews. The show, which opened last week, is being retooled, producers said on Monday. The New York Times called the show a "bland, static, overproduced and underdirected musical." Kilmer got mixed reviews for his role, in which he declaims his lyrics rather than singing them.
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
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