■ Afghanistan
44 militants killed
A bomb hit a convoy carrying Kabul's intelligence chief Humayoon Aini, missing him but killing three others, while the US-led coalition yesterday announced the deaths of 44 militants in clashes over the past week. Six other insurgents and three police were also killed in the country's volatile south, according to the police -- bringing the number of newly reported deaths across Afghanistan to 56. Taliban militants have stepped up attacks and in the past three weeks alone, more than 500 people have died in violence.
■ Myanmar
Suu Kyi takes ill: police
The detained head of the pro-democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, was stricken with a stomach illness, but it was not serious and she was not hospitalized, the nation's police chief said yesterday. Speaking to reporters during a press tour in Kayin State, police chief Major General Khin Yi confirmed opposition accounts that Suu Kyi had suffered from stomach problems in the past few days. Earlier yesterday, a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party said Suu Kyi had returned home after receiving treatment at a hospital for a stomach ailment.
■ Sri Lanka
Family hacked to death
An entire family of four was found hacked to death in northwestern Sri Lanka on Friday, a crime the government and Tamil Tiger rebels blamed on each other in the latest violence threatening a truce. A man, his wife and their two young children were killed around midnight on Thursday in Mannar District, 220km north of Colombo, the Media Center for National Security said. The center said Tamil Tiger are suspected because the family had been helping government forces. But the rebels' media spokesman, Daya Master said the military was responsible.
■ China
Floods kill 93
Flooding from two weeks of heavy rain in southern China has killed 93 people, a further 11 are missing and more than half a million people have been evacuated to higher ground, the official China Daily said yesterday. "Nearly 12 million people in nine provinces, regions and municipalities have been affected by the weather," the newspaper quoted the Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying. At least 560,000 people have been evacuated and direct losses from the heavy rains have reached 7.66 billion yuan (US$956 million), the ministry said. Mudslides remained a danger, the daily said. Fujian Province, the hardest-hit area, was given 40 million yuan by the central government for relief work, it said.
■ Japan
Coal liquefaction promoted
Japan plans to provide Asian nations, particularly China, with the technology to liquefy coal as part of an effort to reduce global dependence on crude oil, a report said yesterday. In coal liquefaction, petroleum fuels such as gasoline and kerosene are produced from powdered coal by applying heat and pressure. The industry ministry intends to tap proprietary technologies of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), an independent agency under its control, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. As a first step, NEDO will join with Chinese energy firms Datang International Power Generation Co and Xinwen Mining Group to conduct tests to determine how efficiently they can liquefy coal, the paper said.
■ Germany
The wurst way to go?
German police have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman with a sausage. Prosecutors and police said the 50-year-old was arrested after the woman's body was discovered in an apartment in Zwickau, eastern Germany. They said she had choked on a Bockwurst, a popular large German sausage. The prosecutors said the man had given a patchy account of events, acknowledging that he may have "administered" a Bockwurst to the woman. They are now working to establish exactly what happened in the run-up to her death.
■ Albania
Chinese delegation arrives
A delegation of Chinese parliamentarians arrived in Albania on Friday for a three-day visit, the first official visit since five Chinese Muslims sought asylum here after being released from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. Though officially the case of the ethnic Uighurs is not on the agenda of the trip, Albanian parliament officials did not deny that would be one of the main topics of discussion. The issue was not mentioned at all in a statement issued after Albanian Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli met with the delegation. Albanian parliament spokeswoman Suela Ruseti said both sides stressed during the meeting that "nothing would damage the excellent relations."
■ Bosnia
Late employee foils robbers
Three robbers were forced to suspend a post office raid as the employee who had the key for the safe where the money was kept was late for work, police said yesterday. The three masked robbers entered the post office in the village of Glavicica, in northeast Bosnia, on Friday and ordered the staff present to open the safe. However, they had to flee empty-handed after being told that the safe's key was with an employee who had not arrived at work yet.
■ Russia
John lends a hand
As part of the Kremlin's bid to forge a national identity, John the Baptist's right hand, which Christians think baptized Jesus Christ and was originally whisked away from John's corpse by the Apostle Paul, has returned to Russia for the first time in 89 years. The return has been hailed by the Russian Orthodox church with great pomp and reverence. The head of the church, Patriarch Alexei II, welcomed it at a ceremony on Wednesday at the Church of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow. The hand will remain there until Friday, when it will be taken on a tour of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine before returning in July to Montenegro, its present home.
■ Tanzania
Bus plunges, killing 54
Fifty-four people were killed and 20 injured when a bus plunged into a river in northern Tanzania on Friday, a senior regional official said. Abbas Kandoro, the Arusha regional commissioner, said the bus was carrying 74 people -- almost three times the legally allowed 26. "There were some [people] that were standing, plus cargo on top," he said. "It is not allowed within the law because the bus' capacity is 26 passengers." He said the bus plunged around 9m into the Mererani River. "The bus was carrying 74 passengers. Fifty four people have died," he added. The accident happened near Arusha, about 470km northwest of Dar es Salaam.
■ United States
More abuse photos coming
The US government must release 20 more pictures of US soldiers and detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan to satisfy the requests of a civil-rights group seeking to expose evidence of abuse, a New York judge said on Friday. US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who reviewed the photographs on Thursday, said identifying facial features must be removed from the pictures before they are released to the American Civil Liberties Union, which had filed a lawsuit seeking visual evidence of abuse. The color photographs were taken by individuals serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the judge said in a two-page order. He said the government was not required to turn over another seven photographs and he reserved judgment as to two others. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh called the ruling "a victory for the public's right to know the full truth about the treatment of detainees held in United States' custody abroad. The release of these and other photographs of abuse will assist the public in holding officials accountable for the systemic and widespread abuse of detainees."
■ Canada
Russian diplomat charged
A warrant was issued on Friday for the arrest of a former senior Russian diplomat charged with drugging and raping two men at his apartment in Ottawa, Canadian officials said.
Valery Fomin, 53, is accused of slipping two unsuspecting men a cocktail of "stupefying or overpowering" drugs, then sexually assaulting them as they lay unconscious for up to 16 hours in his downtown apartment in late February, police said in a statement.
Fomin, a former "counselor" at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, fled to Russia shortly after the alleged incident and has not returned to Canada, police said. "Toxicology reports confirmed the presence of three different types of prescription drugs that were unknowingly ingested by the victims, which rendered them unconscious for periods of time," police said.
■ Brazil
Illegal loggers get busted
Police arrested 28 people on Friday and were looking for 46 more, accused of operating an illegal logging ring in Brazil's Amazon rain forest, officials in Rio de Janeiro said. Some 300 officers in five states were involved in the operation to shut down a gang accused of using phony permits to harvest rare tropical hardwoods. Twenty-four people were arrested in the far western Amazon state of Acre and four more were captured in neighboring Rondonia state, federal police said in a statement. Three agents from the federal environmental agency and one member of the Acre state environment protection agency were among those arrested, police said.
■ United States
Taking the long way
Three elderly people spent three days driving lost around Miami, Florida, until police came to their rescue on Friday. "The two women were taking turns driving, and they've been driving around non-stop trying to find the hotel," said Mary Walters of the Miami-Dade police department. "The gentleman does have Alzheimer, so he didn't even know he was lost," she said. The trio from Naples, New York state, all in their early 70s, were in Miami to visit a sick friend, Walters said. "They were found in the car, just sitting there, in the parking lot of the gas station," Walters said. The three visited their friend on Tuesday, but got lost on their way back to their hotel, about 13km away.
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
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