■ China
Man hacks five to death
A man wielding a machete hacked to death a woman and four children and seriously injured two other children in Yingxue Village, Guangxi Province, the Beijing News said yesterday. Friday's rampage by Liang Jiqian, 52, was so sudden that he was able to kill the woman, 38, and four children aged six to seven before being apprehended by police, the newspaper said. It gave no explanation for the attack but said Liang had recently lost his wife to illness and was furious because other children taunted his handicapped 10-year-old son.
■ China
Dress rules spark criticism
The Shanghai Normal University has banned "super-short" skirts on its teachers, citing the need to maintain a certain distance from the students, the Beijing Times said yesterday. Only days after the new rules were announced at the university, they have triggered a heated debate among its more than 200 female teachers, the paper said. Some of the teachers have complained that they, too, have a right to be fashionable and a number of students support them, according to the paper. "We like teachers with personality, and especially teachers who dare show their personality," one unidentified student said.
■ China
Miners killed in explosion
Twenty-seven miners were killed and five others were still missing yesterday after a gas explosion in a Shaanxi Province coal-mine on Saturday, state media said. The gas blast occurred at 4:20pm in Wayaobao Township Coal Mine in Yanan City, as 39 miners were working beneath the shaft, the Xinhua news agency reported. Only seven miners managed to escape.
■ Hong Kong
Children plead with Tsang
Nearly 600 schoolchildren have delivered a letter to Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) pleading with him to tackle the city's worsening air pollution, a news report said yesterday. Every pupil in Beacon Hill primary school wrote a letter to Tsang asking him to do something to halt the pollution. The letters were delivered to his office and handed to a policeman by a delegation of 15 pupils on Friday, the Sunday Morning Post newspaper reported. A spokesman for the chief executive's office told the newspaper Tsang was on leave and could not say if he would read the letters upon his return.
■ Japan
Half fear another war: survey
Almost half of Japanese fear the country could face war again, with North Korea's nuclear program and China's massive military build-up considered major threats to peace, according to a government survey published yesterday. The Cabinet Office survey, published in all major Japanese newspapers yesterday, said 45 percent of respondents believe Japan may become caught up in a war -- up 1.8 percentage points from a 2003 survey -- while only 16.5 percent disagreed. The survey said that 63.7 percent of respondents cited North Korea's nuclear threat as a possible cause of regional conflict, followed by terrorist attacks and the rapid modernization of China's military.
■ Indonesia
Search on for terror chief
Security forces fanned out across central Indonesia in search of Southeast Asia's terror chief yesterday, as investigators questioned two suspects arrested in a raid on his hideout. Malaysian fugitive Noordin Top, believed to be behind a string of suicide bombings in Indonesia, has eluded police for years and slipped through their fingers once again early on Saturday. Despite months of surveillance he was not in the safe house in Binangun, a village in Central Java province, when it was overrun by elite anti-terror police. "A team of forensic experts have searched the scene and hundreds of police personnel have been deployed," said deputy spokesman for the national police, Anton Bahrul Alam.
■ Thailand
Thaksin may run for premier
Thaksin Shinawatra, forced to step aside as prime minister in the wake of a months-long political crisis, could run for premier again if new elections are called, the acting prime minister said yesterday. Thaksin's party won controversial snap elections that he called earlier this month to end two months of mass street protests against his rule. But his victory was undermined by an opposition boycott and a strong protest vote. He announced two days later that he would not become prime minister in the new government.
■ North Korea
US accused of more spying
North Korea accused the US of stepping up aerial espionage activities over its territory during high-level inter-Korean talks in Pyongyang last month, state-run media reported. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Saturday that US spy planes, including U-2s, had flown an average of more than five missions a day over North Korean airspace last month, totaling 160 sorties for the month. "Tens of reconnaissance planes carried out their aerial espionage activities during the North-South Korean high-level talks from April 21-24," KCNA said in a report monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
■ Serbia
Mladic faces extradition
Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic could be handed over to the international tribunal in The Hague on May 10, the special coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, Ehrard Busek, said in a German newspaper at the weekend. "The latest information that I have received is that Belgrade now plans to hand him over on May 10," Busek told newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. The international community had given authorities until yesterday to hand over Mladic, who has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide, other war crimes and crimes against humanity during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
■ United Kingdom
Largest cruise liner docks
Britons had their first glimpse of the world's largest cruise liner on Saturday when Freedom of the Seas sailed into the southern port of Southampton. Equipped with an ice rink, boxing ring, climbing wall, surfing pool, golf course and six-story shopping center, the mammoth liner is three times the size of the Titanic and longer than the Eiffel Tower. The 160,000 tonne ship with its 15 passenger decks is in Southampton for a few days before setting sail for New York.
■ Egypt
One killed in gunfight
Security forces killed one person and captured four early yesterday in a gun battle in the center of Sinai while investigating bomb attacks in the resort of Dahab and north Sinai, security sources said. Two people involved in the gunfight escaped, the sources added. However, separate security sources said that one man was killed and no one was captured. Details of the shootout were not immediately available. Bomb attacks killed 18 people in Dahab last Monday, and on Wednesday two men died after blowing themselves up in attacks on a multinational peace force and a police station, both based in the north of Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
■ United States
Explosive promotion
A newspaper promotion for Tom Cruise's upcoming Mission: Impossible III got off to an explosive start when a county arson squad blew up a news rack in Santa Clarita, California, thinking it contained a bomb. The confusion: the Los Angeles Times rack was fitted with a digital musical device designed to play the Mission: Impossible theme song when the door was opened. But in some cases, the red plastic boxes with protruding wires were jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers. Sheriff's officials said they rendered the news rack in this suburb 56km north of downtown Los Angeles "safe."
■ France
Immigration bill protested
More than 5,000 people marched through Paris on Saturday to protest a tough immigration bill that critics say will favor only skilled immigrants. The country's top Roman Catholic official, who met with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, said the government may soften the bill when the parliamentary debate on it starts tomorrow. "There is a balance to be found between irresponsible laxism and a nearly xenophobic firmness," said Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard after a meeting with Villepin that was also attended by the head of the country's Protestants, Jean-Arnold de Clermont.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia