■ Singapore
Man killed in rare shooting
A manhunt was underway in Singapore yesterday after a rare shooting murder in the city-state, which has a reputation as one of the safest places in Asia. The gunman, who appeared to be blind in one eye, entered the victim's apartment just before 7am yesterday, tied up his wife, teenage daughter and maid, then opened fire, a police statement said. It described the deceased as a 41-year-old businessman. Other members of the household were unhurt, but the house was ransacked.
■ China
More relics under threat
China's oldest and most prestigious university has stirred controversy with plans to demolish historic housing to make way for modern educational facilities, state media reported yesterday. Hundreds of centuries-old courtyard homes on the campus of Peking University would be bulldozed in the biggest renovation project in the institute's history and replaced by a new mathematics research center, the China Daily said.
■ Hong Kong
SARS victims file suit
Fourteen people are suing Hong Kong's Hospital Authority and a supermarket for failing to protect them from contracting SARS during an outbreak three years ago, according to court documents seen yesterday. Twelve health workers and a patient accused the authority of negligence for not taking steps to prevent them from contracting SARS during the 2003 outbreak, the documents said. The other plaintiff is suing the supermarket where she worked in an apartment complex hit hard by SARS, according to the documents, filed on Tuesday at Hong Kong's High Court.
■ Japan
Killer snow claims student
Heavy snow slid off the roof of a school building, killing a student in northern Japan yesterday, police said. The accident occurred in the city of Ebetsu on the northern island of Hokkaido, police said. The 23-year-old veterinary student went missing after midnight and his body was pulled from the snow early yesterday morning. Police officials said they were unaware of other people who might be trapped under the snow, but Kyodo News reported that three other students were missing. A team of rescuers searched around the building yesterday, but found no one else trapped, local fire officials said.
■ India
Cobras lay siege to hospital
Cobras and other fierce snakes have taken over a hospital in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state, scaring away doctors and medical staff, a news report said yesterday. Officials from the state health department who carried out an inspection at the Community Health Center in eastern Siddharthnagar district were shocked to find deadly snakes in the deserted outpatient department and operation theater instead of staff. The officials found that hardly any patients visited the hospital because it is in a remote location, the Hindustan Times reported. A senior health official said that people from the nearest town, Baunsi, need to trek kilometers to reach the hospital.
■ Australia
Mint worker cashes out
A man who raised a shopkeeper's suspicions by paying for goods with piles of shiny new A$2 coins turned out to be an employee of the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra. Police charged the 48-year-old man on Tuesday with stealing A$6,000 from his workplace. They allege he had been spiriting coins out of the mint by hiding them in his boots and lunchbox at a rate of around 250 a week.
■ Indonesia
New hotline also flooded
An SMS hotline created by Indonesia's president to keep tabs on complaints about the government has been inundated with almost 2 million messages, a report said yesterday. As part of his corruption-busting campaign, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono created the hotline last year after a personal cellphone number he gave out to the public was overwhelmed with complaints. Sardan Marbun, a presidential assistant, said 1.92 million messages had been received since June, in addition to more than 15,500 letters, the Jakarta Post reported. Of those complaints, on everything from tardy law enforcement to illegal logging, only about 1,000 have actually been forwarded to concerned agencies as they had sufficient detail to follow up, Marbun said.
■ Australia
School of the Air upgraded
Schoolchildren in the outback saw the teachers that they listen to for the first time yesterday when the iconic School of the Air shut down its radio transmitters and switched to a satellite-based system that beams lessons in broadband to desktop computers in 300 remote sheep farms. The world-renowned School of the Air has been going for almost 50 years in the remote north of New South Wales. It caters to children aged five to 10 who are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest school and have to study at home. "This is all about breaking the tyranny of distance," New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma said when cranking up the new system.
■ Zimbabwe
Love marchers arrested
Police arrested at least 60 women who took part in a march on Tuesday with a Valentine's Day theme calling for love and harmony and protesting food shortages and alleged human-rights violations, their lawyers said. The demonstrators distributed red roses and Valentine's Day cards in downtown Harare, according to Lawyers for Human Rights. The women, belonging to a group known as Women of Zimbabwe Arise, were taken on trucks to the main Harare police station. In both protests the marchers demanded "bread and roses" to protest acute food shortages and alleged human-rights violations by authorities.
■ United Kingdom
Larger men still not happy
Researchers said on Tuesday that most men who have had penis enlargement surgery are not satisfied with the results. "For patients with psychological concern about the size of the penis -- particularly if it is normal size -- there is little point in offering them surgery because it makes no difference," said Nim Christopher, a urologist at St. Peter's Andrology Center in London. Christopher and his colleagues, who questioned 42 men who had the surgery, found the dissatisfaction rate was very high. Often the men requested another surgical procedure. "The average increase in length is 1.3cm, which isn't very much and the dissatisfaction rate was in excess of 70 percent," Christopher said.
■ Iraq
Booze bomber kills three
A homemade bomb exploded near a Baghdad liquor shop yesterday, killing three people and wounding two, while two policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting, police said. Lieutenant Ali Mittab said the blast completely destroyed the liquor shop situated in central Baghdad's bustling Fadel area and damaged several other shops. Mittab said the three people killed and two wounded were passers-by. The motive for the attack is unclear, but stores selling alcohol have been targeted before by religious extremists.
■ United Kingdom
Smoking ban passed
Smoking is to be banned in virtually all public places including restaurants, pubs and clubs after a landmark parliamentary vote passed by a significant majority, reports said yesterday. The "historic" ban, expected to come into force in 2007, will mean that "a further 600,000 people will give up smoking and millions more will be protected from passive smoking," said Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt following the vote. Some 384 parliamentarians, among them Prime Minister Tony Blair, voted for the total smoking ban, blasted by opponents as "draconian."
■ Israel
Dalai Lama visit angers PRC
China is "furious" at Israel for not preventing a visit by the Dalai Lama, Israel Radio reported yesterday. The radio quoted the Chinese consul in Tel Aviv, Lu Chin, as telling the station that the Chinese government had asked Israel to prevent the visit. He said Israeli officials had promised China that no state meetings with the exiled Tibetan ruler would be scheduled. China appreciated this, but it was "not enough," Chin said. The Dalai Lama was due to arrive in Israel yesterday and address symposiums at Tel Aviv University and the Ben Gurion University in the southern desert city of Beersheba.
■ Venezuela
US missionaries must go
Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal on Tuesday rejected a request by US missionaries to remain in remote Indian communities while awaiting the outcome of an appeal against an order for them to leave the areas. Last November, Venezuela's Interior Ministry gave the New Tribes Mission three months to leave areas where it has been working with indigenous communities after President Hugo Chavez accused the group of destroying Indians cultures and conducting reconnaissance for the CIA. The New Tribes Mission, based in Sanford, Florida, has appealed the government expulsion order, but the Supreme Tribunal has yet to rule on the appeal.
■ Canada
Students opt for virtual sex
Call it a sexual revolution of the virtual kind -- young Canadians are practicing a new style of safe sex and the only touching required involves a keyboard. Of more than 2,500 university and college students polled across the country, 87 percent of them are having sex over instant messenger, Web cams or the telephone, according to results of a national survey released on Monday. "We were very surprised," Noah Gurza, a founder of Toronto-based CampusKiss.com, an online dating community for students, which commissioned a Canadian CampusKiss & Tell Survey.
■ United States
Unit suspected terrorist
Pre-Sept. 11 intelligence conducted by a secret military unit identified terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta 13 different times, a US congressman said. During a Capitol Hill news conference on Tuesday, Representative Curt Weldon, a Republican, said the unit -- code-named "Able Danger" -- also identified ``a problem'' in Yemen two weeks before the attack on the USS Cole. It knew the problem was tied into the port of Aden and involved a US platform, but the ship commander was not made aware of it, Weldon said.
■ United States
Pets enjoy birthday parties
They already have their own designer clothes, health insurance and therapists. Now more and more US pets are enjoying their own birthday parties. A surprising number of pet owners host parties -- complete with party hats, cake and guests -- for their dogs, cats and birds, according to a survey released on Monday by California-based Veterinary Pet Insurance. The firm reported that 58 percent of its policyholders who responded said they had hosted birthday bashes for their pets. Three Dog Bakery, a specialty store in upscale Newport Beach, California, gets about 20 requests a week for pet birthday cakes.
■ United States
Sheep sodomy appeal
A Michigan man who pleaded no contest to a sodomy charge involving a sheep says he should not be registered as a sex offender. Jeffrey Haynes, 42, said the state registry is intended to keep track of people who have committed crimes against humans. "The prosecutor is being real hard on me for what I did," Haynes said. "But I should not be treated as a child molester." Police said Haynes had sex with a sheep at a Bedford Township farm on Jan. 26 last year. The animal's owner caught him on the property and the sheep was found injured. Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge Conrad Sindt told Haynes at his sentencing hearing on Monday that once he is released from prison, he must register with the Michigan State Police Public Sex Offender Registry.
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