■ China
Tourists die in bus crash
Four Malaysian tourists were killed and 14 other people were injured when the tour bus they were riding in fell into a ravine in central China, the Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. The bus was carrying 19 people, including 17 Malaysians, on a sightseeing outing when the driver lost control in Shanxi Province on Friday Xinhua said. Three Malaysians were seriously injured and 11 others, including a Chinese tour guide, received light injuries, Xinhua said. The bus driver apparently fled and his whereabouts were not known.
■ Indonesia
Volcanic activity increasing
Activity increased yesterday at Mount Merapi with repeated bursts of red-hot lava, hot gases and clouds of ash, an official said. The mountain is located near the area of Java where an earthquake struck one week ago, killing more than 6,200 people. Lava and hot clouds spewed from the mountain scores of times yesterday morning, said Subandrio, a government scientist who uses one name. He said the mountain's lava dome had grown by 17m in the past week to reach 100m. The government volcanology center recommended that all activities be halted within 7km of the summit.
■ New Zealand
Rugby fans bid for handbag
Rugby fans are bidding thousands of dollars for the chance to own the handbag that reduced a burly All Blacks player to tears. Former New Zealand captain Tana Umaga tangled with Hurricanes club team mate Chris Masoe in a nightclub last week. Masoe, who has played two tests for New Zealand, tripped over a man's feet in the club in Christchurch early last Sunday and then hit the man in retaliation. Umaga, who played 74 tests for the All Blacks, stepped in to break up the scuffle, picking up a woman's handbag and hitting Masoe twice over the head.
■ Pakistan
Bomb blast kills policeman
A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle carrying policemen killing one of them and wounding two others, an intelligence official said. It was not immediately clear who was behind late Friday's attack in Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and the official said they were still investigating. "So far we only know that the policemen were on a routine patrol when the bomb went off, but we don't have any further details," the official said on condition of anonymity. Bajur has been the scene of several attacks against government forces since earlier this year, when a US missile strike reportedly killed some top al-Qaeda operatives and civilians.
■ Japan
Tokyo seeks better PRC ties
Japan hopes to hold military exchanges with China as a way to ease tensions between neighbors who have sparred recently over wartime history, Tokyo's defense minister said yesterday. Fukushiro Nukaga sought to assuage concerns that recent spats between Tokyo and Beijing stemming from Japan's 1930s invasion of China and overlapping maritime claims could be handled peacefully. "We are considering exchanges in the defense field and other areas, in the belief that this region's security requires mutual coordination between Japan and China," he told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum in Singapore. "It is desirable to build a partnership through healthy competition, and I hope that beginning with defense exchanges, we can promote better ties," Nukaga said.
■ United Kingdom
Hamster escapes shredder
Another chapter was written on Friday in the history of great hamster escapes, when a pet called Mike survived three types of crushing machine and a shredder at a waste recycling plant. The small rodent was left with only a minor foot injury after astonished staff discovered him limping into a final sorting area after going through a process which rips cookers and washing machines into stringy bits of metal. Mike's white-knuckle ride through the Recyclo works on Deeside, north Wales, adds to the remarkable survival record of mesocricetus auratus over many years. Hamsters have returned from premature burial, travelled through the post in envelopes (a highly illegal practice) and contentedly shared pet cages with poisonous snakes.
■ Turkey
Five dead after clashes
Turkish soldiers battled Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border, leaving four rebels and one soldier dead, a government statement said on Friday. The governor's office in the southeastern town of Sirnak issued a statement reporting the deaths but gave no details of the fighting. Autonomy-seeking guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have stepped up attacks recently. Fighting this week has killed four soldiers, three government-paid village guards and six Kurdish rebels. Village guards are local residents paid and armed by the government to be the first line of defense against the rebels.
■ Spain
Divorced man can't visit dog
A Spanish court has ruled that dogs should not be treated like children in divorce cases and be the object of visiting rights. A Spanish man was originally given permission by his wife to visit Yako, a golden retriever, when they separated but he appealed to a lower court when she stopped him from seeing the dog. The court ruled in his favor and set up visiting hours. But the provincial court of Barcelona then overturned that decision, saying it set a precedent for pets to be treated like children in divorce cases.
■ Russia
Putin blames Japan
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday blamed Japan for a protracted deadlock over disputed Pacific Ocean islands but said that Moscow was ready to continue searching for a solution. The dispute over the four islands seized by the Soviet forces in the closing days of World War II -- which Russia calls the Kurils and Japan refers to as the Northern Territories -- has prevented the two nations from signing a peace treaty to formally end their wartime hostilities. Putin said that Japan had initiated the discussion of a 1956 Soviet-Japanese declaration under which Moscow had agreed to return two of the islands but backed off when the Kremlin agreed to honor the commitments.
■ United Kingdom
Alleged hitmen caught
Police arrested two Belfast men on Friday on suspicion of involvement in this week's attempted assassination of a prominent member of an outlawed Protestant group, the Ulster Volunteer Force. Mark Haddock, 36, was shot several times at close range on Tuesday as he met other Protestant militants on the edge of north Belfast. His condition improved on Friday at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital, where he was removed from the critical list.
■ United States
Mouse burrito felon jailed
A man was sentenced on Friday in Traverse City, Michigan, to 16 to 30 months in prison for trying to extort money from a Taco Bell restaurant by putting a dead mouse in a burrito. Ryan Daniel Goff, 20, pleaded guilty on May 5 to a felony count of attempted false pretenses. He will get credit for 87 days served, the court clerk said. Investigators said Goff complained to a restaurant employee on Jan. 24 that his burrito tasted "funny." After Goff filed a report with the local health department, investigators said his girlfriend told them he bought frozen mice from a pet store and slipped one into his burrito.
■ United States
Pilot battles snake in air
Monty Coles was 900m in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane's instrument panel -- a 1.35m black snake. Coles had left Charleston last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee and was preparing to land in Gallipolis, Ohio, when the snake revealed itself. While maintaining control of the single-engine plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the reptile behind its head with his other. Radioing for emergency landing, Coles told them "I had one hand full of snake and the other hand full of plane. They cleared me in." After a smooth landing, Coles posed for pictures with the snake, then let it loose.
■ Canada
Police arrest terror suspects
More than 10 people were arrested on Friday on "terrorism-related" charges in police raids in Toronto, said Corporal Michele Paradis of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, adding that "they'll be charged tomorrow [yesterday]." Reports said that the group had videotaped the CN Tower, one of the world's tallest structures, and the local subway, which carries some 800,000 commuters each day. Paradis refused to comment on those reports, but said more than 400 officers were involved in the investigation and more arrests were expected in the case. "It's still ongoing and we're anticipating further arrests," she said.
■ Canada
Kids' donations returned
Some children in Canada are so well-off and so keen on current affairs that they donate thousands of dollars to politicians -- at least, that's what one contender for the leadership of the opposition Liberal Party seems to believe. Former immigration minister Joe Volpe hit the spotlight this week after it emerged that a pair of 11-year-old twins and their 14-year-old brother had each donated C$5,400 (US$4,900) to his leadership campaign. On Thursday, Volpe ordered that five donations from people under 18 be given back. "All the donations were in complete compliance with the law but the perception was not good and that's why they were returned," Volpe spokesman Corey Hobbs said.
■ United States
Bush backs marriage plan
US President George W. Bush yesterday backed a resolution to amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman even though the idea has little chance of being passed in the Senate. "Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his radio address yesterday. Democrats say Senate floor time is being wasted on the issue, and accuse Republicans of making a pre-midterm election appeal to social conservatives whose votes were key to Bush's re-election.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing