■CHINA
Reporters attacked
Two journalists were hit and slapped by guards and thugs yesterday as they tried to enter a village at the center of a bitter land dispute. Malaysian journalist Leu Siew Ying from the South China Morning Post and Abel Segretin from Radio France Internationale said they were attacked by some 20 people near Taishi village, Guangdong Province. They asked to be taken to the police station as the crowd grew frenzied. They said they thought the thugs were linked to local officials as police quickly arrived. The incident came just days after the lawyer who was helping villagers in the dispute was formally arrested.
PHOTO: AFP
■MALAYSIA
Mahathir rebuffs Anwar
Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has rejected a demand by his one-time deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, to apologize and pay US$26.7 million in damages for calling him a homosexual. "Our client does not accede to any of the demands... and will vigorooouslly defend the proceedings against him which your client has threatened to commence," said a letter by Mahathir's lawyer to Anwar's lawyer. The two men were once close friends but became bitter foes in a sordid power struggle eight years ago. Mahathir reignited the war last moonth, telling reporters:"I cannot have a sodomizer in my Cabinet... Imagine a gay PM... nobody will be safe."
■NORTH KOREA
Weapons first, now bikes
The production line started yesterday for the North's first home-built bicycles, China's Xinhua news agency reported. With annual production of up to 300,000 bikes, the plant will reduce reliance on second-hand Japanese and Chinese imports.
■AUSTRALIA
Pedestrian fine sparks anger
An 83-year-old Australian woman who was fined for crossing the road too slowly has had the ticket torn up following community outrage, reports said yesterday. Pensioner Pat Gallen, who uses a walking stick to get around, was fined A$30 dollars (US$23) for failing to cross a road in her hometown of Malanda in far north Queensland "in the most direct route," the Daily Telegraph reported. "She didn't know whether to laugh or cry," her friend Fay Millist was quoted as telling Australian Associated Press. "Everyone thought the whole thing was so wrong in the first place for someone of that age." Police said the ticket, which had been issued by officers who were passing through the town, had been torn up.
■ CHINA
Heartless cabdriver sought
Police in Shanghai were looking for a taxi driver who ordered a pregnant woman going into early labor to get out of his cab, local newspapers reported yesterday. The woman, seven months pregnant, suffered a miscarriage and lost her child after she was forced to take a motorcycle part of the way to the hospital, the reports said. Guo Meiling, 28, had hailed the cab with her sister in law and was on the way to the hospital on Thursday when the driver suddenly ordered the pair out, saying he couldn't find the hospital. "I told him it was no joking matter, but he told us to get off," Guo's sister-in-law, identified only by her surname, Lin, was quoted as saying by the Shanghai Daily.
■ BANGLADESH
Rains displace thousands
At least 12 people have died, up to 50,000 have fled their homes and about 1.5 million are marooned following heavy rains that flooded several districts in northern Bangladesh, government officials said yesterday. The deaths were mostly caused by the collapse of dozens of mud houses, an official told reporters in the town of Bogra, one of the areas affected by the flood, about 200km north of Dhaka. Thousands of families were camped out in schools and river embankments, displaced by the second wave of flooding in the northern region this year.
■ China
Thousands flee floods
Floods have forced around 286,000 people to flee their homes in northwestern China, where steady rainfall since late last month has strained the banks of the Hanjiang and Weihe rivers, the China Daily reported yesterday. The rising water levels along tributaries to China's two top rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow river, affected over 3 million people in Shaanxi province and flooding on the Weihe river is said to be the most severe since 1981, the paper reported. It did not report any deaths.
■ UNITED STATES
Healthy priests rewarded
Priests are also prone to bad habits it seems. As a result, old priests are dying off faster than new ones replace them, and health care costs are climbing, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York is taking steps to conserve its precious and not-quite-renewable resource: It is offering bonuses of US$500 to priests who quit smoking or lose weight. Such incentive programs are common in the corporate world, but New York's is a Catholic first, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. To get a weight-loss bonus, a priest must trim 10 points from his body-mass index in a year. Smokers must quit for a year.
■ UNITED NATIONS
Ugandan rebels hunted
The UN International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued the first arrest warrants for five leaders of Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, the head of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said on Thursday. "They have issued arrest warrants for five people," said William Lacy Swing, UN special representative in DRC. He said the notifications went out last week to the governments of DRC, Uganda and Sudan. "I know a couple of names ... I'm not at liberty to give them because I don't know what the ICC has put on the record," Swing told reporters.
■ UNITED STATES
Green groups sue Bush
A coalition of 20 environmental groups are suing US President George W. Bush's administration to block road construction, logging and industrial development on more than 233,100km2 of the last untouched forests in the US. In the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Greenpeace and other groups challenge the US Forest Service decision earlier this year to repeal former president Bill Clinton's 2001 "roadless rule" that protected the undeveloped forest.
■ WEST BANK
Leaders order arrests
Police went door-to-door, surrounding and searching homes and arresting 30 Palestinian criminals early yesterday in an arrest raid unusual in this town. Residents of the Hebron-area village could not recall local police ever carrying out an arrest raid of this type. But yesterday, in Yatta, more than 200 police searched for drug and arms dealers and fugitives of justice, said Ahmed Rabai, the Hebron-area police chief. "This campaign was ordered by the political echelon to enforce law and order and to bring justice to normal Palestinians and to make the Palestinian people feel safe," Rabai said.
■ UNITED STATES
Murderer blames rap
Texas executed a man on Thursday who killed a police officer and blamed it on rap music. Ronald Ray Howard, 32, was the 14th person put to death this year in the state. He was condemned for the shooting death of Department of Public Safety Trooper Bill Davidson in 1992. Howard was driving a stolen vehicle and shot Davidson in the neck when the officer pulled him over. At his trial, Howard's lawyers argued the rap music he listened to for hours carried a message of violence toward police that influenced his behavior. In his final statement in the Texas death chamber, Howard said he hoped his execution "helps a little" for Davidson's family.
■BELGIUM
Strike shuts down services
Workers began their first general strike in over a decade yesterday, disrupting schools, transport, government services and shops to protest against social security reforms and changes to an early retirement scheme. The 24-hour strike halted the high-speed Eurostar service from London and the Thalys connection from Paris to Brussels. Strikers also picketed entrances to factories and offices, including a Ford car plant in Genk.
■UNITED STATES
Cervical cancer shot found
A vaccine that targets a human wart virus completely prevented early-stage cervical cancer and precancerous lesions in women caused by the two most common forms of the virus, Merck & Co said on Thursday. The ability to prevent cervical cancers, at least for the short term, was shown in a late-stage trial sponsored by the US drug maker. It included more than 12,000 women from 13 countries, aged 16 to 26. The two forms of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus targeted by the vaccine, types 16 and 18, are responsible for an estimated 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine was developed by an Australian company CSL Ltd and Merrck plans to seek US approval for it.
■ CANADA
Cause of disease probed
Health officials said Legionnaires' disease was likely the cause of 16 deaths at a Toronto nursing home and, while relieved they had found the culprit, warned more deaths were possible before the bacteria was fully contained. David McKeown, chief medical officer for Public Health Toronto, said there had been no new deaths since Wednesday, when six more elderly people residing at the Seven Oaks Home for the Aged succumbed to the bacteria. Legionnaires' disease is a type of pneumonia named after a severe outbreak that killed 34 people at a meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia in 1976.
■ UNITED STATES
Viagra no longer subsidized
The House of Representatives approved a bill that helps pay for hurricane relief with federal funds now devoted to providing coverage under government health care programs for erectile dysfunction drugs. Representative Nathan Deal, a Georgia Republican who sponsored the bill, said the government would save US$690 million over five years by prohibiting government health care programs from subsidizing prescriptions for sexual performance drugs. The money will be used to provide US$500 million in federal unemployment funds to hurricane-affected states to help them pay benefits to out-of-work people. Deal said that taxpayers should not be required to pay for a drug that does not determine life or death and is often used for recreational purposes.
■ BRAZIL
Psychic seeks bounty
A court will consider a psychic's claim that the US government owes him a US$25 million reward for information he says he provided on the hiding place of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Brazil's second-highest court decided the Brazilian justice system could rule on the matter. Jucelino da Luz alleges that the US armed forces only found Saddam based on his letters that provided his exact location. Da Luz sent letters to the US government from September 2001, describing Saddam's future hiding place -- a tiny cellar at a farmhouse near Tikrit. He never received a reply.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not