■ Australia
Police make huge drug bust
Australian police seized over 5 million ecstasy tablets weighing more than a tonne and valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, in the country's largest-ever ecstasy drug bust, federal officials said yesterday. Four men were arrested after police discovered the ecstasy hidden inside a shipping container of ceramic tiles that arrived in the southern city of Melbourne from Italy on Tuesday. Federal Agent Mike Phelan said authorities received a tip-off about the illicit cargo well before the ship arrived. A customs X-ray examination later revealed the tablets hidden in cavities around some of the boxes of tiles, he said.
■ Bangladesh
Rescuers near to giving up
Rescuers all but gave up hope of finding 121 missing workers from a collapsed garment factory as the official death toll climbed to 44 with nine more bodies pulled from the rubble. A boiler blast on Monday brought the nine-story building down on top of nearly 300 workers at Spectrum Garments Factory near Savar, 32km northwest of Dhaka. "We have found nine more bodies and it'll be a miracle if we find any survivors," a police official said on condition of anonymity. The corpses were recovered after cranes removed huge concrete slabs, he said, adding it could take another week to clear the tonnes of rubble.
■ China
Obesity blamed on diet
China now has some 18 million obese adults, and 64 million adults may be at risk of cardiovascular disease because of poor dietary habits and lack of exercise, a study published today in The Lancet says. The figures are extrapolated from an in-depth survey of nearly 19,000 people aged 35 to 74, randomly selected from 20 rural and urban areas in China. The volunteers were weighed, their corpular fat measured and their blood monitored for pressure, glucose and cholesterol. Extrapolated for the country's population of 1.3 billion, the results indicate that 137 million Chinese are overweight, and 18 million of them are obese.
■ Afghanistan
Boy dies despite surgery
An Afghan toddler sent to the US for surgery to repair a life-threatening heart condition died in his father's arms yesterday, just two days after his return home. He had been treated at a children's hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. The child and his father had stayed in Indianapolis with a member of the Rotary Club, which helped cover the estimated US$100,000 cost. Only Wednesday, he and his father were escorted by US troops back to their family tent in the muddy refugee camp next to an Afghan military barracks. More than 100 adults and children from the camp were waiting, and applauded wildly when the boy's father emerged from a pickup truck clutching the boy.
■ Ireland
Man dies in gang hit
A lone gunman killed a Dublin man, shooting him five times point blank in the head, police said yesterday, in the third suspected gangland killing this month in the Irish capital. Although Ireland is statistically among the safest countries in Europe, it suffers from periodic spasms of bloodletting within its criminal underworld, particularly in Dublin and the southwest city of Limerick. Police handle about 30 to 40 murders a year in this country of 4 million. They said a man in his 20s was shot while sitting in a car, while his attacker escaped on a motorcycle that was later found torched.
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