■ North Korea
Kim heir to be unveiled
An eventual successor to leader Kim Jong-il could be announced by the secretive state later this month, Russian news agency Itar-Tass said yesterday, quoting a diplomatic source in Pyongyang. "An announcement could be made as early as this month, timed for the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the [North Korean Labour Party]," the unnamed source said. The source added that the successor would be one of Kim Jong-il's sons.
■ Malaysia
Nurses ease baby jam
A pregnant woman on her way to a hospital to give birth got stuck in traffic next to a van full of nurses, who helped to deliver her baby in the car. Kamaruzaman Mohamed was driving his wife Nazilah to the city of Kota Baru on Monday when she went into labor. Nazilah's sister said the family had begun to panic when they spotted the nurses parked nearby and called for help, the New Straits Times reported. The nurses rushed to the car and delivered the baby girl in minutes. Both mother and daughter were reportedly doing well.
■ Japan
Fuel deal extended
The Cabinet yesterday endorsed a one-year extension of the country's naval mission to support US-led troops in Afghanistan. The navy has provided fuel for warships in the Indian Ocean since November 2001. The law had already been extended in 2003 for two years. "We decided one year was necessary," said Hiroyuki Hosoda, the government's top spokesman. "The problem of international terrorism has once again intensified with the attacks in London and Bali," he said.
■ China
Xinjiang mine blast traps 14
An explosion at a coal mine has trapped 14 people, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday, the latest accident to hit the world's deadliest mining industry. The accident occurred in Xinjiang, the official agency said, adding that 11 miners had escaped. A gas explosion in a coal mine in the central Henan Province on Monday killed at least 34 people. Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), cited by Xinhua, said the country's industrial sector should pay attention to work place safety following the Henan deaths.
■ Hong Kong
Ex-judge in welfare scam
An 80-year-old former High Court judge from Britain has been charged by police for fraudulently obtaining welfare in the territory and lying on a public housing application. Miles Henry Jackson-Lipkin and his wife Lucille, a lawyer, were accused of lying to conceal the extent of their assets in welfare and housing applications, the government and local media said yesterday. In a public housing application last year, the couple claimed to have only HK$2,200 (US$284) in cash, the South China Morning Post reported.
■ India
Love for mum `undying'
A professor of English in Siddavatta village in Andhra Pradesh state loved his mother so much that he lived with her corpse for 20 years. When he died, the pair were laid to rest in the same grave. Syed Abdul Gafoor's mother died in 1985, but he refused to bury her, authorities said. Instead, he preserved her body with chemicals and kept it at home in a glass case, causing his wife to leave him and sparking a social boycott in the village. "He kept the body intact and lived in isolation till he died on Saturday" district administrator Ashok Kumar said. Gafoor, 60, was buried along with his mother in a single grave near the village mosque according to his last wish, Kumar said.
■ Hong Kong
Woman jumps after murder
A 33-year-old former flight attendant leapt to her death from a high-rise apartment after killing her sleeping boyfriend, police said yesterday. The woman is believed to have repeatedly stabbed her 28-year-old boyfriend, a Cathay Pacific flight attendant, in the neck and chest as he lay in bed in their apartment in the Tuen Mun area. The woman then jumped from the window of the 11th floor building and was found by police lying dead on the podium of the building. The body of the man was discovered in the blood-soaked bedroom close to a knife. He had been dead for several hours.
■ Australia
Crocodile attacks girl
A crocodile mauled a 10-year-old girl in the Kimberley region on Monday, police said, days after two men were killed in separate attacks by the reptiles. The girl, rescued from the crocodile's jaws by her father and brother, was lucky to be alive, her mother said yesterday. Chantal Burnup was sitting at the back of a yacht when the crocodile started dragging her into the water. Her father grabbed her as her brother beat the crocodile over the head with a stick. "She suffered injuries to her arms, chest and back, which weren't life threatening," a police spokeswoman said. Crocodile expert Malcolm Douglas told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio that crocodiles became more aggressive during breeding season and that the risk of attacks was increasing because more people were venturing into the remote wilderness.
■ West Bank
Woman stabs soldier
A Palestinian woman brandishing a knife charged a female soldier at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, stabbing her in the face before soldiers shot and killed the attacker, the army said. The soldier sustained moderate wounds, the army said. The army said the incident happened early yesterday when the Palestinian woman arrived at the Hawara checkpoint. She took out a knife and attacked the soldier. The attack ended when other soldiers shot the attacker. She later died at the scene, the army and witnesses said.
■ United States
Man seeks wife with ad
A California bachelor has rented a giant billboard in Hollywood and launched an online campaign in a bid to find his ideal new wife. The 44-year-old investment banker, known as Dean, has paid for a giant hoarding featuring an enormous, smiling photograph of himself above the slogan: "Single, Successful, Ready" and proclaiming: "Wife wanted." The huge personal advert, erected in the predominantly gay area of West Hollywood, refers interested candidates to Dean's Web site, Billboardbachelor.com.
■ Mexico
Poison prostitutes strike
Half a dozen Mexico City prostitutes have been arrested for using eye drops containing a sleep-inducing drug to knock out and rob their clients, leaving at least five men dead, a newspaper said on Monday. One central city district has recorded 17 cases this year including five deaths from the drug cyclopentolate -- a muscle relaxant used in eye examinations to dilate the pupil and blur vision. "Once they are in the hotel it seems they slip a substance into the client's drink. Our data shows that they are using eye drops," local prosecutor Fernando Lopez told the daily El Universal. Mixing eye drops, which are not meant to be swallowed, with alcohol can create a fatal mixture for someone with heart problems, experts say.
■ United Kingdom
`Small Island' wins prize
British writer Andrea Levy's much lauded novel Small Island was chosen Monday as the best book to win the Orange Prize for fiction by women since the award was created a decade ago. A panel made up of the chairs of previous juries for the 10-year-old Orange Prize decided that Small Island, which scooped the award last year, was the best novel to have won the prize so far. Levy's novel about the experiences of black Jamaican immigrants in post-World War II Britain has also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the ?30,000 (US$57,000) Whitbread Book of the Year award.
■ Guatemala
Hospitals short of drugs
Guatemala's rights watchdog said on Monday it was probing the nation's public health service after accusations that 10 children died of AIDS due to hospital shortages of life-saving drugs. Alejandro Rodriguez, an official in the ombudsman's office, told reporters the office was taking seriously local press reports that 10 children infected with AIDS had died because of a lack of antiretroviral medicines in public hospitals. Guatemala's public health service has long been accused of putting patients at risk because of a lack of antiretroviral drugs in hospital storerooms. Rodriguez said the ombudsman was investigating.
■ United Kingdom
Ronnie Barker dies
Comedian Ronnie Barker, half of the famous duo The Two Ronnies and the indomitable Fletch in prison sitcom Porridge, has died. He was 76. A spokeswoman for the BBC said yesterday that the portly star died peacefully on Monday in the presence of his wife. He had a history of heart trouble. Tributes poured in for one of Britain's best-loved comics. "He was hugely talented and had a regard for the written word," BBC presenter Michael Parkinson said. Michael Hurll, a producer on The Two Ronnies, said Barker's partnership with the diminutive Ronnie Corbett ranked alongside that of Morecambe and Wise in importance.
■ United Kingdom
New arrests in axe murder
Police arrested three people yesterday in connection with the July murder of a black teenager in Liverpool. Two men aged 31 and 18 and a 34-year-old woman were arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice over the murder of Anthony Walker, Merseyside police said. Walker, 18, was killed with an axe in a Merseyside park. Two men have already been charged with Walker's murder and a total of 12 people have been arrested in connection with the killing.
■ United States
Woman sues over `therapy'
An Oregon woman whose doctor convinced her that he could cure her lower back pain by having sex with her is suing him and his medical clinic for US$4 million, according to legal documents obtained on Monday. The doctor, Randall Smith, who was 50 at the time, was stripped of his license and sent to jail for 60 days last year for charging the state's Oregon Health Plan US$5,000 for his 45-minute "treatments" involving the woman. Though he pleaded guilty to submitting false healthcare claims, a felony, Smith maintained the sex with the 47-year-old woman was consensual.
■ United States
Thank Peru for the potato
US researchers on Monday said that the potato was first cultivated in southern Peru more than 7,000 years ago, citing DNA evidence to resolve a scientific debate about the origins of the ubiquitous vegetable. A study sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture analyzed the DNA of 261 varieties of wild potato and 98 types of cultivated potato to examine whether the "domestic potato" arose from a single source or from multiple sources and geographic areas. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, presented DNA data that "in fact all cultivated potatoes can be traced back to a single origin in southern Peru." Now some 300 million tonnes of potatoes are produced around the world every year.
■ United States
Pentagon slow to pay up
The Pentagon has not devised rules for reimbursing US troops for body armor and other gear bought with their own money for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan despite a law that required such guidelines seven months ago. US Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said on Monday that Pentagon staff had been working hard on the issue, though he declined to predict when the rules would be ready. Some troops and their families have bought body armor and other equipment after the Pentagon failed to provide the gear they felt was necessary. Critics of the Bush administration have periodically seized on this as an illustration of what they see as poor planning for the wars.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was