■ China
Bus driver goes on rampage
A bus driver infuriated by new work conditions stabbed his boss before ramming the bus into pedestrians and vehicles, killing two people and injuring 16, state media said yesterday. The driver had quarrelled with his supervisor before taking his bus into the streets of Shenzhen on Saturday, the Beijing News said yesterday. The rampage ended after police brought the vehicle to a stop and took the man into custody following a failed suicide attempt, the paper said. Six of the injured were in serious condition.
■ Japan
Tokyo to pay for relocation
Tokyo is considering extending loans to the US to cover the cost of relocating US troops out of the country, in an effort to break the deadlock in talks with Washington, a newspaper said on yesterday. The two countries are seeking to finalize plans to reorganize US military forces in Japan by late next month, but have yet to agree on some key issues, including how to share the cost of moving some 7,000 Marines from the southern island of Okinawa to Guam. The financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said Tokyo would propose loans to shoulder part of the relocation cost, which Washington has estimated at US$7.6 billion.
■ Hong Kong
Swimmers flee bird
Hundreds of panicked swimmers were evacuated from a swimming pool when a bird flew into the water, a news report said yesterday. The incident at the indoor pool in the Wan Chai district on Saturday was an indication of the level of fear over avian flu in the city of 6.8 million. According to the South China Morning Post, around 300 swimmers were told to get out of the water immediately when a bird flew into the water on Saturday afternoon. The pool was closed for two hours for intensive cleaning and the bird was handed alive to government officials to be tested for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the newspaper said.
■ Indonesia
Muslims pelt US embassy
About 400 hardline Muslim protesters pelted the US embassy with rocks, tomatoes and eggs, claiming the US government masterminded the recent publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a bid to discredit Islam. Members of the Islam Defenders Front, a hardline vigilante group, attacked barricades outside the embassy with staves and bamboo poles at about noon. "They [Western countries] want to destroy Islam through the issue of terrorism ... and all those things are engineered by the United States," said protest organizer Maksuni, referring to depictions of the prophet -- one that included a bomb sticking out of his head.
■ Australia
Troops will stay in Iraq
Australian troops protecting Japanese reconstruction teams in Iraq are likely to stay in the country even if the Japanese withdraw Defense Minister Brendan Nelson said yesterday. He said that if the Japanese humanitarian effort stayed beyond May, Australia would continue to guard them. If they left, Australian forces could redeploy elsewhere in southern Iraq, he added. Nelson told the Nine television network that "... whilst the option is to bring those troops home, we are disposed in fact to seeing that our troops, or most of those 460, are redeployed in the south of Iraq, primarily in provincial reconstruction activities.
■ South Africa
Cape Town suffers blackout
Tourist capital Cape Town experienced its second blackout within 24 hours yesterday, leaving the city and the entire Western Cape province without electricity. A spokesman for the public electricity company Eskom said the power cuts had been caused by problems with overland power lines. On Saturday, a fault in the Koeberg plant near Cape Town -- the country's only nuclear power station -- had triggered a massive blackout, leaving several districts of Cape Town without power. One of the plant's reactors has to be dissembled following a defect, whilst another one is facing a general overhaul.
■ United Kingdom
Officers to be charged
Prosecutors plan to charge the officers who oversaw an anti-terrorist operation in July that saw police kill an innocent Brazilian electrician in the London subway, the Independent on Sunday reported. It said the police officers would be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, and not the shooting itself, for allegedly trying to disguise the fact that they had mistaken the Brazilian for a terrorism suspect. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot and killed at point-blank range inside an Underground train at Stockwell station on July 22, a day after a failed attempt to repeat the July 7 bombings in London which left 56 dead.
■ Tanzania
Goodall to certify coffee
Ape conservationist Jane Goodall said on Saturday she is developing a new certification scheme for coffee growers farming in areas where endangered chimpanzees live, mainly in Tanzania and Burundi. Farmers will be encouraged to protect and enlarge forests where the animals have their habitat in return for marketing of their product to roasters interested in paying a premium for environmentally friendly coffee. "People associate my name with chimpanzees," the environmentalist said on the sidelines of a conference of African coffee growers.
■ Lebanon
Cabinet snubs president
The Cabinet decided late on Saturday to stop meeting at the Presidential Palace under the chairmanship of Lebanese pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, the latest step aimed at putting more pressure on Lahoud to step down. "The Cabinet will start meeting from now on at the government's headquarters in the museum region in Beirut instead of the Baabda Presidential Palace," deputy information Minister Armenian Hagob Ogesipian told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. The move came at a time when the anti-Syrian majority in parliament has called for the ousting of the president, who is a close friend of Syria.
■ United Kingdom
Terrorism not favored
An opinion poll published in a Sunday newspaper revealed widespread contempt amongst Muslims in Britain towards terrorism, but also growing feelings of alienation from Western society. The ICM Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph indicated that 96 percent of Muslims felt it was wrong for Muslim suicide bombers to have carried out the July 7 attacks in London. Eighty-six percent said it was wrong for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and its sympathizers to attack Western targets, and 79 percent disagreed that it was okay to use violence against those deemed to have "insulted Islam."
■ Mexico
Ship picks up refugees
A cruise ship fished 22 Cuban refugees out of international waters near Mexico's Caribbean coast, officials said on Saturday. The cruise ship rescued the refugees, who were suffering hunger and thirst in their off-course boat, and brought them to the island of Cozumel off the Yucatan Peninsula, immigration authorities said. The Cubans had been heading to the Florida coast in the US, but were carried off course by currents and wind. They intended to request asylum, officials said. The number of Cuban refugees landing in Mexico has been on the increase in recent months.
■ United States
Storm leaves four dead
More than a quarter-million homes and businesses still lacked power across the northeast on Saturday as temperatures plummeted following a storm with hurricane-force wind gusts that was blamed for four deaths. On Friday, wind of about 100kph buffeted the Rochester, New York, area and a 124kph gust was recorded at the city's airport, the weather service said. A falling tree crushed a car outside Rochester, killing a 52-year-old woman, and another killed a state worker in a truck at Saratoga Spa State Park. A falling tree killed the driver of a pickup in Massachusetts. East of Rochester, New York, a man was killed when his vehicle slammed into a tractor-trailer rig whose driver had stopped to clear storm debris from his windshield.
■ United States
Church group slams Bush
The US Conference for the World Council of Churches condemned the US-led war in Iraq on Saturday for "raining down terror" on helpless Iraqis, and criticized Washington's policies on the environment and poverty. "We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights," the conference said in a letter released during the World Council of Churches Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The World Council of Churches represents Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and other Christian churches in more than 100 countries. The statement from the US group accused the Bush administration of "raining down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors," saying the US "has done much in these years to endanger the human family."
■ United States
Immigrants protest job bill
Immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean rallied in Miami, Florida, on Saturday against proposed federal legislation that would require employers to provide information to verify the legal status of their workers and build more fences along parts of the Mexican border. About 350 people heard speeches in Spanish and English, and then marched to Miami's Freedom Tower to protest a proposed federal law that immigrant groups say would criminalize the nation's 11 million undocumented workers.
■ Somalia
Mogadishu clashes kill 10
At least 10 people, including two children, were killed in clashes with militia on Saturday in the capital Mogadishu. According to eyewitness reports, most of the victims were civilians who were caught up in the clashes. The violence stemmed from a dispute between a local militia leader and an Islamic court. Meanwhile, aid agencies in Somalia have said that at least seven people have died of thirst in the drought-stricken country over the past few days. Some families are being forced to travel up to 70km for water.
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