World News Quick Take

■ Tajikistan
Twenty-one die in crash
Twenty-one died and seven were injured when two buses collided, causing one to catch fire, police said yesterday. Most of the casualties were trapped inside in a small, gas-fueled bus that overturned and burst into flames while traveling some 70km south of the capital Dushanbe on Sunday evening. The collision occurred after a tire burst on a larger bus driving in the opposite direction. It was the worst road accident this year in the former Soviet republic, where drivers of often dilapidated transport have to negotiate poorly maintained mountain roads.

■ Japan
Man jailed for starving son
A truck driver was sentenced yesterday to 14 years in prison for leaving his son to starve until he entered a coma in a bid to teach him discipline. Yasunobu Karasuno, 41, and his 40-year-old common-law wife, Natsuyo Kawaguchi, beat their son and deprived him of most food for over a year from June 2002, according to the court ruling. When the boy was rescued in November 2003, the then 15-year-old was in a coma and weighed only 24kg. He is still incapacitated and is not expected to recover.

■ Malaysia
Dengue fever kills another
A businessman died of dengue fever yesterday, pushing the death toll to 74 as health authorities expected a spike in suspected cases with people mistaking unrelated fevers for the disease, officials said. Mohammed Sarip Ceramal Basir, 44, a trader in the northern island of Penang, became the sixth person in the state to die of the mosquito-borne dengue over the weekend, Penang's health minister P. Subbaiyah said.

■ Bangladesh
Court buildings bombed
Two were killed and nine wounded when bombs exploded yesterday at three court buildings, police said. One man died in Chandpur and three others wounded. Police said that two people suspected of carrying the bomb were detained. Another man was killed and six were wounded in a bomb blast at a court building in nearby Laxmipur town, police said. And one or more bombs went off at a court in the port of Chittagong, police said. There was no immediate word on casualties. Police said they were checking a report of bomb blasts in one or two other places. The detained suspects have reportedly claimed membership in Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, a banned Islamist militant group.

■ China
Mine blast claims 34
A gas explosion in a coal mine yesterday killed at least 34 people, the official Xinhua news agency reported, just the latest accident to hit the world's deadliest mining industry. The blast occurred in a mine near Hebi, Henan Province, Xinhua said, but gave no further details. More than 2,700 people died in floods, explosions, collapses and other mining accidents in the first half of this year. The huge industry supplies about three-quarters of the country's energy and is straining to keep pace with voracious demand from a rapidly growing economy.

■ New Zealand
Clark starts coalition talks
Prime Minister Helen Clark began negotiations yesterday with five minor political parties in an attempt to form a stable government after her Labour Party's wafer-thin election victory. The center-left Labour Party won 50 seats in the 121-seat parliament in the weekend's final count of the Sept. 17 election. Don Brash's center-right National Party trailed with 48 seats and six minor parties shared 23 seats between them. Clark is planning talks with all of the minor parties, except for the right-wing Act Party which has just two seats. "All the options are on the table," Clark told reporters before meeting separately with the Green and Maori leaders.

■ Thailand
Suspects hanged with laces
The National Police Bureau ordered an investigation into the deaths of three drug suspects found hanged with their shoe laces in a jail cell hours after being arrested, an official said yesterday. The three ethnic hilltribe people and another suspect were arrested with 1,700 methamphetamine pills allegedly in their possession late on Sunday in northern Lamphun Province. The suspects were interrogated and detained, but were found dead yesterday morning, said police Captain Saman Thongnoi. "The fourth suspect told duty police officers that he heard the three suspects speaking in a hilltribe language he did not understand before he fell asleep. When he woke up, he found that they had hanged themselves," he said.

■ Malaysia
Cigarettes spark fratricide
A man died after he was shot by his brother following a fight over cigarettes and a mobile phone, news reports said yesterday. The 25-year-old victim from southern Johor State had been watching television in his home when he approached his younger brother in the bedroom, asking for spare cigarettes and the use of his mobile phone. When the younger brother claimed not to have any more smokes and refused to give up his phone, a fight erupted, and the suspect left the room to get his gun, state chief of criminal investigations Ahmad Zamri Awang said.

■ Peru
Double quake injures 10
Two earthquakes in quick succession caused at least 10 injuries and collapsed 300 adobe houses in southern Peru. The quakes on Saturday, registering 4.0 and 4.2 on the Richter scale, struck the Andean region of Moquegua. The area around Omate was cut off from the outside world by landslides following the geological events. Hundreds of people spent the night outdoors, and civil defense authorities sent tents, blankets, medical supplies and food to the region. A week ago, another earthquake in Peru left five people dead and 50 injured.

■ United States
Writer August Wilson dies
Playwright Wilson, whose epic 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America included such landmark dramas as Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Radio Golf has died of liver cancer. He was 60. Wilson died Sunday at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, surrounded by his family. The playwright had disclosed in late August that his illness was inoperable and he had only a few months to live. Wilson's plays were big, often sprawling and poetic, dealing primarily with the effects of slavery on succeeding generations of black Americans: from turn-of-century characters who could remember the Civil War to a prosperous middle class at the end of the century who had forgotten the past.

■ Gaza
Gunbattles break out
Palestinian and Hamas militants waged gunbattles across Gaza City on Sunday night that killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded 47 others, including 10 police officers. The gunfights came just three days after Palestinian armed groups agreed to stop carrying weapons in public. Hamas blamed the Palestinian Authority for the violence, saying it started after police attempted to arrest the son of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a former Hamas leader who was slain in an Israeli airstrike last year. Hamas said the police stopped Mohammed Rantisi's car, but he refused to hand himself over. The police began shooting after an angry crowd gathered around them, sparking a gunbattle, Hamas said, claiming that Rantisi's car was riddled with bullets, but not injured.

■ Russia
Space tourist at station
The Russian Soyuz rocket carrying American millionaire "space tourist" Greg Olsen together with a Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut docked with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday, after taking off on Saturday. Olsen, 60, paid US$20 million to become the third private citizen in space. Carrying "tourists" into space has become a profitable sideline for the Russian space program. Olsen, who heads a New Jersey-based firm that makes electronic sensors for military and civilian use, is due to help out with scientific work aboard the ISS, and to test products produced by his company.

■ Zimbabwe
Police detain thousands
Zimbabwean have arrested 14,706 vagrants, street vendors and illegal foreign currency dealers in the capital Harare over the past two weeks. The arrests come as police battle to enforce an urban clearance campaign launched five months ago that saw the arrest and subsequent release of some 46,000 street traders and black marketeers as well as the countrywide demolition of cottages, shacks and houses.

■ United States
Bush selects next justice
US George W. Bush will pick White House counsel Harriet Miers as the next justice on the US Supreme Court, an administration official said yesterday. Miers, a longtime Bush ally going back to his days as Texas governor, would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the high court. O'Connor was a key swing vote on the closely divided Supreme Court and her replacement was certain to undergo great scrutiny at the US Senate, which must confirm Bush's choice. The announcement will come before the Supreme Court opens its 2005-2006 term with Bush's first choice for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts, taking his seat for the first time.

■ Somalia
Militia clash leaves 6 dead
Rival groups clashed in Somalia's capital, killing at least six people, witnesses and medical officials said, as the sounds of gunfire and explosions were heard throughout Mogadishu. The fighting began yesterday afternoon when gunmen loyal to a city warlord, Abduqadir Beebe, attacked gunmen loyal to an Islamic court in northern Mogadishu, injuring 10 people, mostly civilians, said witnesses, who did not want to be identified due to fears for their security. The fighting has stopped, but some civilians fled their homes to unknown destinations, fearing that fighting could resume.

■ United Kingdom
Police arrest five in raid
Police five people before dawn yesterday under the country's sweeping anti-terrorism laws, citing national security concerns. The five foreign nationals were arrested at one London address and will be held pending deportation. "The immigration service detained five individuals in accordance with the Home Secretary's powers to deport individuals whose presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good for reasons of national security," the Home Office said. A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police said the five had been arrested at 6am at one address in London.

■ United States
21 elderly tourists killed
Twenty-one from a senior citizens' tour group were killed on Sunday when a small tour boat capsized after it hit the wake from a larger boat on Lake George in upstate New York. The 12m-long, glass-enclosed Ethan Allen, operated by Shoreline Cruises, was carrying 50 passengers and crew when it capsized. The passengers were from Michigan on a tour run by a Canadian company. The boat was making a left turn when it hit the wake of a larger boat, which swamped and flipped the Ethan Allen sending the elderly passengers, who were on the upper deck and not wearing life jackets, into the water.

■ Spain
Hundreds border
Around 700 sub-Saharan migrants charged at border fences around the North African enclave of Melilla yesterday, with about 200 managing to get over after the fence collapsed. State radio said many of the migrants and several Spanish officials were hurt. It was the fourth such attempt at Spain's North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla since last week. Spain sent in the army to reinforce security at the outposts after five Africans were killed during an attempt to enter Ceuta last Thursday. Police in the area said about 200 had managed to get across using make-shift ladders. Separately, another 147 North Africans were caught trying to get across the Gibraltar Strait illegally. Both sides are under pressure to sort out immigration on Europe's only land borders with Africa.