■ China
Man held for teen stabbings
Chinese police have arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of stabbing eight teenagers to death as they slept in a school dormitory, the latest in a wave of school attacks in China, state media said yesterday. Yan Yanming was arrested in dirt-poor Ruzhou, central Henan Province, on Friday when his mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide at home, media said. Twelve students were stabbed, eight died and four were wounded, two of them critically, it said. No motive was given for the murders, but the Beijing Youth Daily said Yan was hostile towards his victims, who were students at an expensive boarding school. It was the sixth attack on schoolchildren in just four months, prompting schools in Beijing and other cities to recruit security guards to protect students.
■ Australia
Man's death sparks rioting
Police arrested nine people yesterday for their involvement in a violent rampage by hundreds of Aborigines who torched a police station and court building on an island off Australia's east coast. About 80 extra police officers were flown to Palm Island, off the coast of Queensland state, after some 300 Aborigines rioted Friday following the release of autopsy details on local resident Cameron Doomadgee, 36, who was found dead in police custody Nov. 19. According to the autopsy, he had four broken ribs and appeared to have died of a punctured lung. The rioters apparently believed the finding confirmed their suspicion that Doomadgee was a victim of police brutality.
■ Thailand
VCD of beatings blocked
The Thai government is moving to suppress a video CD of security forces beating Muslim protestors in the restive south on a day in which 87 demonstrators died, officials said yesterday. "The VCD producers want to create more violence," said spokesman Major General Balangura Klaharn. The VCD shows soldiers beating and trampling on protesters whose hands are bound behind their backs after a riot at Tak Bai in Narathiwat province on Oct. 25, according to the Bangkok Post.
■ Hong Kong
Fire edges toward Disney
Firemen were yesterday battling to stop a raging hill fire which was edging close to the US$3 billion Disney theme park on Hong Kong's Lantau Island. Helicopters were flying over the fierce blaze and dumping water to try to stop it reaching the under-construction theme park at Penny's Bay, due to open next September. The fire began Friday and at one stage came within metres of homes at the expatriate housing development Discovery Bay on the opposite side of the island to the Disney park. Fanned by strong winds, it switched direction overnight and started heading towards the Disney theme park.
■ Indonesia
Pissing threatens bridge
A landmark bridge in Indonesia's Sumatra island may collapse because too many people are fond of urinating on one of its steel pillars, a report said yesterday. Public works officials have found that the Ampera bridge, the landmark of Palembang city, the capital of South Sumatra province, has begun to lean on an angle and rocks slightly when traffic is heavy, the Jakarta Post said. An official at the public works department in Palembang, Azmi Lakoni, was quoted as saying the bridge had deteriorated because people often took a leak on one of its piers, corroding the structure.
■ Russia
Rebel leader's aide killed
Russian security forces killed an alleged top aide to radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev after he put up armed resistance to arrest, the Federal Security Service said Friday. Akhmed Sambiyev, known as the ``White Arab,'' was killed late Thursday in a confrontation with police and security service officers in a private house in Ingushetia, a southern Russian region bordering on Chechnya, said Yuri Smolyaninov, a spokesman for the Ingush branch of the security service. Two other militants were killed and another two captured in clashes with police and Russian troops in Chechnya Friday, while an abducted Interior Troops soldier was freed by Chechen security officers, police and media reports said. Three security force officers were wounded in the operation to capture Sambiyev in the Ingush city of Nazran, Smolyaninov said.
■ United States
NBC to air new Diana tape
NBC television network will broadcast a never-before-seen video tape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she says she suspects a member of her staff with whom she fell in love was "bumped off." NBC said on Friday the two-part program starting tomorrow includes excerpts of interviews Diana recorded with communications consultant Peter Settelen in her living room, discussing her childhood, marriage and struggle with bulimia. The princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997. NBC said Diana met Settelen in September 1992, in the aftermath of the book by Andrew Morton, and had engaged him to train her in public speaking, a process that involved an on-camera interview to inspire confidence.
■ DR Congo
Rwanda willing to talk
Rwanda said on Friday it was ready to hold talks with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila to defuse growing tensions over Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo. Tension between the neighboring countries escalated this week after Rwanda repeatedly threatened to send its soldiers into Congo to attack Hutu rebels based in the east of the country. Diplomats and analysts have said the latest Rwandan threat to attack should be taken seriously. Rwanda has twice invaded Congo to hunt down Hutu extremists that took part in the 1994 genocide, killing some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then fled into eastern Congo once they were defeated. The second Rwandan incursion in 1998 was one of the triggers for Congo's five-year war, which sucked in five other neighboring countries and killed some 3 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
■ Italy
`Dead or alive' illegal
The plan was for a Wild West-style manhunt offering 25,000 euros ($32,600) for delivery of the killer of an Italian petrol station attendant "dead of alive."Then, Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli found out that the idea was probably illegal. "I would have preferred something like 'dead or alive', but they told me the law wouldn't allow for it," said Calderoli, a leader of the rightist Northern League party. So instead, he and his Northern League colleagues have offered a simple reward for information leading to the arrest of the robbers who on Thursday shot dead a 61-year-old petrol station attendant in front of his wife.
■ Russia
Venezuela to buy weapons
Venezuela plans to buy large amounts of arms from Russia, President Hugo Chavez said after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday. "We are modernizing and strengthening our armed forces against any form of aggression. We are talking about deliveries of 100,000 Russian machine guns," Chavez told a news conference. "We also told the president about our wish to acquire large quantities of anti-tank and anti-aircraft equipment," he added. Leftist former paratrooper Chavez is hoping Putin will help him diversify Venezuela's arms procurement away from the US and the EU. Putin said arms sales to Venezuela had doubled in the past year.
■ Canada
Same-sex benefits upheld
Canada's government must pay widowed gays and lesbians retroactive pension benefits, Ontario's highest court ruled Friday, upholding a lower court's decision. The Appeal Court said individuals in same-sex couples who were widowed after April 1985 were entitled to Canada Pension Plan survivor payments. The issue stems from Canada's decision in 2000 to include in the national pension plan gays and lesbians whose partners had died, but to limit retroactivity to Jan 1, 1998. Homosexual activists filed a class-action suit in Ontario Superior Court last year, arguing the payments should go back to April 1985, when Canada first granted gays and lesbians equal rights under its Charter of Rights of Freedoms.
■ El Salvador
Police asylum under review
El Salvador said Friday night it is considering the requests of two former Caracas police chiefs who sought political asylum at El Salvador's embassy amid investigations into their handling of violent 2002 protests that left 19 people dead. Henry Vivas, Caracas' police chief during the protests and Lazaro Forero, police chief until two months ago and previously Vivas' deputy chief, headed to the Salvadoran embassy in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on Friday "due to a growing, uncertain situation filled with anguish," according to their lawyer, Juan Garanton.
■ United States
International court targeted
The US congress has launched a fresh attack on the international criminal court (ICC) at The Hague, threatening to cut off development aid to countries who refuse to guarantee immunity from prosecution for Americans at the tribunal. Washington has withheld about US$50 million in military aid to more than 30 countries, such as Benin, Croatia, Ecuador and Mali, which refused to sign exemption deals. But they and more than 40 other countries have resisted US demands on the grounds that immunity deals would clash with their domestic laws and international obligations.
■ Argentina
Prince Harry not naughty
England's heir to the throne Prince Harry cut short a trip to Argentina plagued by reports of bad behaviour and a rumoured kidnap plot. An Argentinian security official reportedly called the British embassy in Buenos Aires asking authorities to "restrain" and "control" the prince. Claims that he was constantly evading the Argentinian police guarding the ranch to visit local night spots, and reports of the prince carousing at local bars were denied by government officials in Argentina and by Buckingham palace. A Clarence House spokesman said, "At no time did he stay out late or become involved in excessive drinking."
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in