■ India
Police aide kills for blood
A police assistant in the central state of Chhattisgarh killed a fellow villager by slitting his throat with a sword and drank his blood, hoping to cure his own depression, police said yesterday. Amit Soni, 28, was unhappy with his low-paying home guard job, police said. Home guards support policemen in law enforcement tasks such as traffic management. "The man was a believer in witchcraft and he thought killing a human and drinking his blood would cure him of his mental agony and depression," police officer Dipanshu Karba said. He was struggling to look after his wife and children on a monthly salary of 1,600 rupees (US$35).
■ Hong Kong
Protesters denounce Yahoo
Protesters rallied outside the Hong Kong office of Yahoo on yesterday demonstrating against the US Internet giant for passing on information that led to the jailing of a journalist in China. The chanting protesters denounced Yahoo for providing Chinese authorities with the contact details of writer Shi Tao (師濤) who was jailed in April for 10 years for revealing state secrets. The demonstrators, members of the Democratic Party, unfurled a large banner and urged the company to review its privacy policy so that client information was protected in future.
■ Hong Kong
China's film limits to change
A senior Chinese film official said on Monday that the country's censorship system will change as China opens up more and cultural exchange increases. "Depending on the progress of opening up, as international exchanges increase in frequency, China's movie censorship system must change and adjust," Zhang Pimin, deputy director-general at the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV's Film Bureau told reporters in Hong Kong. Zhang said China only wants to uphold moral standards. He said films screened in China must extol the qualities of "truth, kindness, beauty," "true feelings and caring love," as well as "hard work leads to wealth."
■ China
Workers discover tombs
Archaeologists have unearthed a 1,700-year-old complex of tombs in eastern China that contain bronze mirrors, porcelains and ancient money, a news report said yesterday. The tombs near the port city of Ningbo south of Shanghai were uncovered by a forklift operator working at a construction site, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Inscriptions in the tombs indicate they were built in 256AD, the report said, citing Ding Youfu, a member of the archaeological team. He said they were the region's best-preserved tombs. "Figures embodying fish, beasts, dragons, phoenixes and money can be seen in the wall of the grave," Ding said. "They are incredibly refined and clearcut."
■ India
54-year detention an error
More than half-a-century ago, Machal Lalung was thought to be insane and sent to a mental asylum in India's remote northeast. A few months ago, he was set free after the National Human Rights Commission found that healthcare authorities had made a mistake and Lalung suffered only from epilepsy. Lalung's confinement for 54 years has shocked rights activists and mental health experts in a country where it is not uncommon for people to be branded insane and locked up in homes or asylums.
■ Bulgaria
Policemen steal cellphone
Two border policemen caught red-handed after stealing a mobile telephone belonging to US ambassador John Beyrle could face up to 10 years in prison, officials said on Monday. The two took the expensive telephone after Beyrle left it by an X-ray machine at Varna airport, where they worked. They denied having seen the phone when Beyrle called to enquire about it, but the high-tech gadget's inbuilt tracking system led to its eventual location in one of the men's pockets. The Interior Ministry said the policemen would be fired and their superiors disciplined following the incident.
■ Russia
Solzhenitsyn archive lost
A fire has destroyed the country cottage where former Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote some of his most famous works and stored part of his family's archive. The dacha near the village of Rodzhestvo, outside Moscow, was acquired by Solzhenitsyn in 1965. He retreated there after his expulsion from the Soviet Union Of Writers and wrote the seminal account of his time in Soviet prison camps system, The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel prize for literature in 1970 and returned to post-Soviet Russia in 1994 after 20 years' exile.
■ Russia
Vandals attack cemetery
Vandals attacked a Jewish cemetery in St Petersburg last Sunday, damaging at least 50 graves and bolstering fears about rising anti-Semitism. Police launched a criminal investigation after gravestones were knocked over and smashed in the 300-year-old Preobrazhenskoe cemetery, which had also been the target of an attack by vandals 10 days earlier. Racist attacks are not uncommon in Russia. Earlier this month a Peruvian student was beaten to death in Voronezh, to the south of Moscow, in an attack many fellow students blamed on racist gangs.
■ France
Debt drives couple to kill
A desperate couple tried to kill their five children and themselves by injecting them with insulin after running up 250,000 euros (US$300,725) of debt with 20 different credit firms, a French court heard on Monday. Emmanuel Cartier, 37, a machine operator, and his wife, Patricia, 44, a carer for the elderly, appeared at Beauvais court, north of Paris, charged with murder and attempted murder after falling into what their lawyer, Hubert Delarue, called an "infernal spiral" of consumer spending and easily obtained credit. One of the couple's daughters, Alicia, died in hospital after the injection. The others survived and now live with relatives.
■ Morocco
Dumped migrants rescued
More than 100 African migrants detained by Moroccan police as they tried to get into Spanish territory have been rescued after being dumped in the middle of the Sahara desert, according to Spanish media reports. The migrants said they had been robbed by Moroccan police, driven south into the desert and then abandoned. They were rescued by the Polisario Front movement, which seeks independence for Western Sahara. Spain has argued that the EU should tackle illegal immigration at its origins by aiding poor African countries. Morrocan Foreign Minister Mohammed Benaissa denied the claims, claiming that the Polisario Front and its allies were making the story up.
■ United Kingdom
Hopeless police dog retired
Buster the German Shepherd dog's career as a police dog has finished due to a complete lack of interest in fighting crime. The canine cop took early retirement after bosses at South Yorkshire Police noted his poor motivation -- his former handler said on Monday. Buster, who spent six months on the beat, is now living with a family in Sheffield. Police Constable David Stephenson said. "He a lacked motivation when asked to do operational work," Stephenson said. On one occasion, Buster walked straight past a suspected criminal hiding in the garden of a house and went off to cock his leg.
■ United states
Actor praised by judge
A judge reinstated actor Tom Sizemore's probation, praising him for making "remarkable" progress in his battle with drugs, but warning that if he slips again he could face 16 months in prison. "I have seen remarkable improvement. ... I believe that you know what you need to do to stay out of prison," Judge Paula Adele Mabrey told Sizemore on Monday. The actor's probation, stemming from an October conviction for methamphetamine possession, was revoked after he admitted using a prosthetic device to fake a drug test. Sizemore has been living at a Pasadena drug treatment facility since July.
■ United States
Anti-war grannies arrested
Eighteen antiwar grandmothers were arrested and face disorderly conduct charges after they tried to enlist at a military recruiting center in Times Square. When the women, including Marie Runyon, who is 90 and blind, tried to enter the station, they found it locked, said Joan Wile, director of Grandmothers against the War. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while. I don't know what they were afraid of," Wile said. Grandmothers against the War joined the New York City Raging Grannies and the Gray Panthers to form the Anti-War Grandmothers coalition.
■ United States
UK aid meals rejected
The US on Friday offered 330,000 packaged meals donated by Britain to feed Hurricane Katrina victims but rejected due to a US ban on British beef to needy countries. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the "Meals Ready to Eat," (MREs), had been held in a warehouse for more than a month after Agriculture officials said they contained British beef products. "We are certainly looking to dispose of them in the spirit of friendship and charity," Ereli told a briefing. The US bans the import of British beef products because of fears of mad cow disease.
■ United States
Video groups sue governor
Two trade groups sued California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday, challenging a law he passed banning the sale of violent video games to children under 18. The Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represent the US$10 billion a year industry, filed their lawsuit in San Francisco. They claim that the law passed on Oct. 7 violated the US Constitution's First Amendment right of free expression. But Schwarzenegger, himself the star of several violent video games based on his Terminator character, vowed to fight the suit: "I will do everything in my power to preserve this new law and prevent the sale of these games to children."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing