■ China
Tibet to get karaoke trains
Ticket to Tibet, sir? That'll be US$1,000 a day. But at least you'll be able to have a good sing on the way. China is planning to offer luxury trains to the roof of the world when it opens a long anticipated and highly controversial railway to Tibet in July, a state newspaper said on Thursday. The five-star trains, aimed mainly at foreigners, will have showers, on board folk dance shows and that staple of the Chinese holiday experience -- karaoke, the Beijing Times reported. So luxurious will the train be that it is only going to carry around 100 passengers, as it sweeps through the snowy mountains of mainly Buddhist Tibet.
■ Philippines
Spratly security tightened
China, the Philippines and Vietnam are to strengthen security cooperation in the Spratly islands after an apparent pirate attack left four Chinese dead there, the Philippine military chief said yesterday. "We have agreed that we will continue our direct communication in the area so that these problems ... piracy, smuggling, transnational crimes ... can be resolved," military chief General Generosa Senga said.
■ China
Annan arrives in Beijing
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in Beijing yesterday for the third leg of his Asian tour, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Annan, who flew in from Japan, was due to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) later in the day to kick-start a five-day trip that is his seventh visit to China as UN chief. Aside from meeting with Hu on Friday afternoon, Annan is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) on Monday.
■ NEw Zealand
Sale of amputated leg foiled
A New Zealander's plan to sell his amputated leg has been tripped up by police and an auction Web site. Shane Torrance, 42, whose tattooed right leg was amputated 15 months ago, wanted to sell it to cover his debts and raise money for his daughter who has diabetes, the Nelson Mail reported on Thursday. He wanted to auction the limb, which he keeps in a freezer, on the Website Trade Me with a reserve of NZ$3,000 (US$1,860). But the leg was withdrawn from the Web site within hours of being listed. A shocked Trade Me business manager Mike O'Donnell said the sale of body parts was not allowed on the site, while Nelson Bays police area commander Inspector Brian McGurk said police would be looking at the legality of Torrance's actions.
■ Singapore
Macaque sent to India
A monkey smuggled into the city state and kept in a warehouse chained by its neck to a pole for a year was repatriated to India by an animal rights group yesterday. The fully grown monkey, a brownish female rhesus macaque with a reddish-pink face, was rescued by the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES) in August 2004 from a warehouse where it was being kept as a pet. The monkey is most likely of Indian origin, said Louis Ng, the group's executive director, who said ACRES found the monkey after a tip-off.
■ India
Storms claim 28 lives
At least 28 people were killed as heavy rains and hailstorms lashed southern Andhra Pradesh state overnight, officials said yesterday. "Twenty-eight people died and 14 were injured in 10 districts of the state, with Nalgonda near the state capital Hyderabad and the northern Khamam district reporting six deaths each," said C. Nagaraju, a disaster management official. Nine people were killed in the Krishna, Chittoor and Guntur districts. Nagaraju said the fatalities were mainly due to houses collapsing and falling trees across the state. Though the rains have eased, the local weather office predicted that the inclement weather would persist for the next few days.
RSS