■ India
13 burnt, hacked in dispute
At least 13 villagers have been burnt or hacked to death by a rival tribe in a land dispute in India's restive northeast, taking the death toll in weekend violence to 21, police said yesterday. Eight Karbi tribespeople were burnt to death by rival Dimasa villagers on Sunday night while five Karbis were hacked to death yesterday morning, senior police officer Pankaj Sharma said from the affected Karbi Anglong district. On Saturday, eight Karbi villagers died in a similar attack in the same area. Sharma, who was speaking from Diphu, about 240km southeast of the region's main city Guwahati, said about 400 Karbi and Dimasa tribals have been made homeless by the trouble.
■ Hong Kong
Democracy figure gets nod
A pro-democracy figure will join the Hong Kong chief executive's Cabinet, a body traditionally dominated by pro-Beijing and pro-government interests, an opposition legislator said yesterday. Legislator Albert Chan (陳偉業) refused to reveal a name or his source, but the government routinely consults lawmakers on its affairs. The Ming Pao daily identified the appointment as Anthony Cheung (張炳良), a public administration professor and former vice chairman of the opposition Democratic Party. Word of the appointment comes as China tries to mend relations with opposition figures, traditionally viewed as troublemakers for their harsh criticism of Beijing.
■ New Zealand
Terrorism joke goes awry
A man who went to a bad-taste party dressed as a suicide bomber has been let off with a warning after he caused the city center of Christchurch to be shut down for six hours at the weekend, police said yesterday. The man dumped the fake bomb and fancy dress costume in a rubbish bin on Friday night outside a hotel after city bars refused to let him in. After a drifter found the costume while combing city bins the next morning, police evacuated two hotels and cordoned off three blocks as bomb-squad experts dealt with the suspicious material. Alerted by media reports, the red-faced 29-year-old called police to confess what he had done.
■ China
Next space launch tomorrow
China's second manned space mission will blast off from Inner Mongolia at 9am tomorrow, an official said yesterday. The China National Space Administration said it could not confirm the date, which has been shrouded in secrecy. However, a travel agent taking domestic tourists to witness the launch said he had been advised to be at the site early tomorrow morning. The Chongqing Morning Post, meanwhile, reported that strict limitations have been imposed on the media covering the event. Chinese journalists who have gained access to the launch site have been ordered not to use cellphones or to access the Internet via wireless devices.
■ China
Medical scalpers targeted
The government has launched a national crackdown on scalpers who make profits in hospitals by re-selling medical appointments to desperate patients for extortionate prices, state media reported yesterday. Government departments announced the initiative on the weekend to try to prosecute the touts who sell the appointments for up to 20 times the original price, the China Daily said. Scalpers typically take up all the appointments with medical specialists at top hospitals and re-sell their slots.
■ Italy
Bank head faces bias probe
Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio was to be questioned yesterday by magistrates investigating him for abuse of office in a bank takeover battle, a legal source said. Fazio was placed under official investigation in August over accusations that he was unfairly biased in favor of an Italian bank that was bidding against a Dutch competitor for control of domestic lender Antonveneta. Fazio has denied any wrongdoing and resisted calls from across the political spectrum for his resignation. Being placed under investigation does not imply guilt and does not mean charges will necessarily be brought.
■ France
Eiffel Tower in bomb hoax
French police briefly evacuated tourists from the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Sunday following an anonymous bomb threat that proved to be a false alarm, police said. A spokeswoman for Paris police said the famous landmark was evacuated around 1:30pm after a caller said there was a bomb. The public was allowed back some 90 minutes later. It was not immediately clear how many people had been on the 324m structure at the time of the alert. Around 6 million people a year climb the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of the French capital.
■ Russia
Foreign students attacked
About 15 youths severely beat a university student from Spain and two from Peru in the central Russian city of Voronezh, killing one of the Peruvians, a Russian Federal Security Service officer said. The three students attending Voronezh State University were attacked on Sunday at a sports complex in the center of the city some 475km south of Moscow, regional security service spokesman Pavel Bolshunov said. Over the past six years, at least seven foreigners have been killed in apparently racially motivated attacks in Voronezh, where many foreign students attend university.
■ France
Le Pen to run for president
Extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on Sunday launched his campaign for France's 2007 presidential elections, appealing to a dissident faction of one-time supporters to return to the fold. The 77-year-old anti-immigration politician confirmed that he would stand for president and promised to reintegrate National Front members who broke away in 1998 to follow his rival, Bruno Megret. "They'll be welcomed like the prodigal son," Le Pen told a National Front party conference outside Paris, where supporters chanted, "Le Pen for president."
■ Cyprus
Plane may get grounded
Aviation authorities in Cyprus may indefinitely ground a Boeing aircraft run by private operator Helios Airways after two flights were turned back in recent days, officials said yesterday. The aborted flights to Britain on Friday and Sunday come after a Helios Boeing 737 slammed into a hillside north of Athens on Aug. 14, killing all 121 on board. "The communications ministry will look at the situation today. It is not a matter of revoking [Helios's] license, but to take a decision on that one particular aircraft involved in the two incidents," a senior communications ministry official said. A Helios spokesman described the problem as minor, but said the aircraft was undergoing checks by Boeing engineers.
■ Mexico
Border violence kills four
Four bullet-ridden bodies have been discovered at a ranch 50km southeast of the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Meanwhile, four more shooting deaths in two attacks also were reported over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo. The four bodies found at a ranch in the rural town of Anahuac included a 13-year-old boy. The victims had been dead about 36 hours before police found them on Saturday. Prosecutors were investigating whether killings were related to smuggling after finding soldering and tire-repair equipment on the premises. Smugglers are known to use tires to sneak drugs across the US border.
■ United Kingdom
UK open to tough terror law
The government may be prepared to compromise on its plans to detain terrorism suspects for up to three months without charge, a minister said. The measure -- one of a number of anti-terrorism proposals drawn up by the government in the wake of July's bomb attacks in London -- has alarmed many. The Labour government is expected to publish the anti-terrorism bill this week.
■ Argentina
Venezuela wants a reactor
Venezuela has asked to buy a nuclear reactor from Argentina in a request being handled like a "hot potato" in Buenos Aires because of leftist President Hugo Chavez' clashes with Washington. Venezuela's state-owned oil firm PDVSA requested a medium-strength reactor in a meeting with Argentine officials in Buenos Aires in late August, saying it wanted to develop alternative energy sources in its Orinoco oil region, the Clarin newspaper said. Despite President Nestor Kirchner's close ties to Chavez, officials in his government were divided over the issue.
■ United States
Sick girl in custody battle
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that a man can have supervised contact with his 13-year-old daughter, who was placed in state custody because her parents refused to continue her cancer treatments. Katie Wernecke was removed from her parents' care in June. Since then, only her mother, Michelle Wernecke, was allowed supervised visits. The court's order prohibits both parents from having access to Katie if they try to persuade her to avoid treatment for Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. The girl was diagnosed in January, received chemotherapy, and doctors recommended it be followed with radiation. Her parents refused; in June the cancer had returned.
■ United States
Media films police beating
Two New Orleans police officers repeatedly punched a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication, and another city officer assaulted an AP television news producer as a cameraman taped the confrontations. The three officers were arrested late Sunday and charged with battery, then released and ordered to appear in court at a later date. The tape shows an officer hitting the man at least four times in the head on Saturday night as he stood outside a bar near Bourbon Street. The suspect, Robert Davis, was dragged to the ground by four officers, kneed and punched twice. A fifth officer ordered the cameraman to stop recording. When the producer held up his credentials and explained he was working, the officer grabbed him, leaned him backward over a car, jabbed him in the stomach and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade. "I've been here for six weeks trying to keep ... alive. ... Go home!" shouted the officer, who later identified himself as S.M. Smith.
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
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