■ Hong Kong
Thug takes man's hand, life
A man bled to death after having his hand chopped off with a meat cleaver in a savage triad gang-style attack, police said yesterday. Siu Lap-fu, a 58-year-old fishmonger, was attacked by a man carrying a beef knife as he sat in a crowded public park in Tsuen Wan district on Wednesday. The attacker chopped off Siu's hand and threw it across the park before continuing to chop at Siu as he lay screaming in a flower bed. He then coolly put the beef knife in a plastic bag and walked away in front of dozens of witnesses, leaving Siu to bleed to death.
■ China
Bomber dies in school
A man blew himself up with a bomb strapped to his body after taking four female students hostage at a college in Zhenghou, Henan, state media said on Wednesday. The man walked into the Water Resources College on Tuesday eve, seized the four girls at a dormitory and telephoned police to demand 1 million yuan (US$123,000) in ransom, reports said. Although the police later agreed to give the man some money, the man refused to release the girls, ordering them to the back of the room before exploding the bomb, killing himself and injuring a girl and a police officer.
■ Afghanistan
Rebels kill police, villagers
Rebels killed seven police officers and abducted two in an ambush in Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday. Meanwhile, two villagers were abducted and beheaded by suspected Taliban rebels in Uruzgan province on Monday, a local official said, adding that the Taliban mistakenly believed the men were working as interpreters for US-led coalition forces.
■ Australia
Toy guns spark panic
Two 16-year-olds who dressed up in camouflage gear and carried toy guns to a fancy dress day at their Tasmanian high school sparked a full scale security alert after parents mistook them for gunmen and called in the police. Police surrounded the school and kept the 690 pupils inside until a case of mistaken identity was cleared up. The lads who set pulses racing, Joshua Sinclair and Ben Quinn, said that people had become far too jumpy. "We were told to dress up as what we want to be when we are older," Sinclair said. "I dressed in military gear and my friend dressed as an undercover police officer."
■ Philippines
Arroyo urges media change
President Gloria Arroyo suggested yesterday that the Philippine press should stop covering activities of opposition groups, saying the public wants news about "winners" not "losers." Arroyo urged Filipino journalists to "cast aside the bad boy image" of the local press and not allow themselves to be used as "pawns in political games or destabilization schemes."
■ China
Minority literacy declines
Poor minority children in western regions are falling behind in school, with many unable to read or dropping out before finishing the compulsory nine years of education. China boasts one of the highest literacy rates among developing countries in the world, with 90.9 percent of its population able to read. But as of last year only 67.8 percent of the country's 699 autonomous minority counties had basically eliminated illiteracy among youth and middle-aged people or achieved nine-year compulsory education for all, the Ministry of Education said, compared to a 93.6 percent success rate in the rest of the country.
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