■ Bangladesh
Protesters injured, killed
Two people died and at least 40 were injured yesterday as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in several cities enforcing a nationwide transport shutdown, police said. The main opposition Awami League said one of its officials died after a tear gas shell hit his body during violent protests at Dhaka's main bus terminal, but police said he may have died of a stroke after he left the protest scene. More than a dozen people were injured in the violence near the bus station, police said. Separately, a police officer was killed in a Dhaka suburb after he was hit by stones hurled by protesters.
■ India
Terrorists sentenced
A special anti-terrorism court sentenced three men to death after finding them guilty of involvement in a 2002 terror attack on a Hindu shrine in the west of the country that killed 33 people, a news report said. The court, at a high-security jail in Ahmadabad, sentenced three other suspects in the attack -- one to life in jail, one to five years and the other to 10 years, the Press Trust of India reported on Saturday. The three sentenced to death were identified as Chand Khan, Adam Suleman Ajmeri and Abdul Kayum Mohammed Hussain Mansuri. The court found them guilty of "hatching a criminal conspiracy and waging war against the nation," the news report said.
■ Japan
Stranded man returns
A man left behind on the Russian island of Sakhalin at the end of World War II smiled and held hands with family members as he returned to the country for the first time in nearly seven decades. Yoshiteru Nakagawa, 79, who moved to Sakhalin with his family before the war began, was separated from them in 1945 when his mother and younger sister evacuated to the country's northernmost island of Hokkaido and was subsequently not heard from for years. Riding in a wheelchair, Nakagawa greeted relatives with waves as he arrived at a Hokkaido airport from Sakhalin, then held hands with his younger sisters as they wept. "I never even dreamed that I'd be able to return to Japan," Nakagawa told reporters.
■ Afghanistan
British soldiers killed
Two British soldiers were killed when rebels attacked their base in the south of the country in a district where 12 Taliban also died in a battle, local and British military said yesterday. Rebels attacked the base in Helmand Province's Sangin district with small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire, British military spokesman Lieutenant Rob Hunt told reporters. The base had been under attack for three nights, said another spokesman, Captain Drew Gibson. "The first two were fairly minor -- last night was a fairly concentrated attack," he said.
■ Japan
Sargent Pepper's in town
The Beatles visited Japan only once as a band, but the country is commemorating the 40th anniversary of their concerts as if the Fab Four had never left the stage. Japanese media are lost in Beatlemania, and the hotel where they last stayed in 1966 is offering a special last viewing of their suite before the new owners demolish it. "We have done our best to restore the presidential suite to how it looked when the Beatles stayed," Michael Miyauchi, of the Capitol Tokyu Hotel, said as lines of fans queued for a viewing. The hotel was the Tokyo Hilton in 1966. "We expected to see mainly 50-and-60- year-olds but all generations have been turning up," he said.
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