■ Indonesia
Aceh rebels dispute law
Former Aceh rebels said a law that grants the province greater autonomy and control over most of its natural gas revenues falls short of promises made by the government in a peace accord last year. The rebels threatened to contest the bill with international monitors, saying it had "the potential to ruin peace." Munawarliza Zain, a spokesman for the former rebels, took issue with a clause saying that Indonesia's central government must "consult" Acehnese lawmakers about international aid destined for the province, rather than get their "consent."
■ New Zealand
No clues to handless body
Police said yesterday that they had no clues in the killing of an elderly man whose hands were cut off, apparently to prevent his identification. Police said the man, believed to be in his 60s, had been badly beaten and attempts had been made to cut off his head. The body, with its feet tied, was found floating in the sea near Wellington on Sunday. Police, who called the killing "brutal and macabre," said they had not ruled out a drug-related execution.
■ Bangladesh
Woman battles tiger
A woman armed with only an oar battled a Bengal tiger yesterday to save her husband's life. Nazma Akhter, 18, and her husband Anwarul Islam, 25, were fishing when the big cat pounced. "The tiger bit the man's knee and was dragging him into the forest, but his wife Nazma frantically beat it back with an oar from their boat," the police said. Akhter kept the tiger at bay for around 10 minutes before it abandoned her husband. Islam was recovering in hospital yesterday.
■ Hong Kong
Filipino boy receives aid
A seven-year-old Filipino boy is to undergo life-saving surgery in Hong Kong after donations flooded in to pay for his liver transplant, a news report said yesterday. Louie Adrielle Perez's operation was postponed last week after his family raised only US$72,000 of the US$110,000 needed to pay for it at a public hospital. Louie was born with a defect of the liver-bile ducts. Surgeons said his only chance of survival is a transplant. When his plight was published in the South China Morning Post, donations flooded in and covered the shortfall within days. The family can now afford the operation, which is to use part of Louie's father's liver.
■ China
Cops to tackle crime wave
More than 500 special armed police will be assigned to the streets of Guangzhou to tackle a wave of vicious crime in the booming southern metropolis, state media said yesterday. It will be the first time the city has deployed special police to guard the streets, and the number of plainclothes officers will increase to around 1,000 from the current 300 by the end of the year, the China Daily said. Crime has soared along with the economic boom in Guangdong, with motorcycle-riding bag-snatchers sometimes hacking off the hands or arms of victims who hang on to their valuables.
■ China
Toxic fumes poison 164
Medical staff treated 164 people for chlorine gas poisoning yesterday after the gas leaked from a rusting pipe at a chemical plant in the northwestern Ningxia region, state media said. At least one person was seriously poisoned by fumes that spread across the Xixia residential district of the regional capital, Yinchuan, late on Sunday and early yesterday, the official Xinhua news agency said.
■ China
Activist's trial date set
A blind activist detained for nearly a year for protesting coercive state family planning policies will face trial next week, his lawyer said yesterday. "The court told me the trial will take place on July 17 [Monday]," lawyer Li Jinsong said. The court declined to comment when contacted about the case of Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), an opponent of forced abortions and sterilizations known as the "barefoot lawyer." Chen, 34, has provided legal advice to locals on state family planning policies, while accusing officials in Linyi City of carrying out forced abortions and sterilizations in violation of population control guidelines. Li said the trial was unexpected, and expressed frustration that he and other lawyers were barred from collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses who he said had been intimidated by local authorities.
■ New Zealand
Fugitive otter re-captured
Jin, an otter bred in captivity at Auckland Zoo, was caught yesterday after four weeks of freedom. Zoo officials said the short-clawed Asian otter who escaped on June 13 was caught in a baited trap after a yachtsman had seen her. They told Radio New Zealand she appeared to be in good condition and had apparently managed to feed herself although she had no previous experience of living in the wild. Having swum 10km across the city's harbor after escaping from the zoo, she was known to have covered another 15km to and from Rangitoto Island, in the Hauraki Gulf at least three times. Zoo curator Marian Finnigan said that while otters were good swimmers, she was "absolutely stunned" at the distance she traveled.
■ United States
Building collapses in blast
A four-story building on Manhattan's East Side went up in flames and collapsed yesterday after what witnesses described as an explosion that rocked the neighborhood. New York City Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told CNN TV news that he believed a gas explosion caused the blast. The White House said there was no indication of terrorism. The power company Con Edison said they were on the scene at a building next door -- responding to a report from a gas customer -- when the blast occurred. Authorities said that two civilians were taken to New York Hospital, and one firefighter suffered neck and back injuries and was taken to a hospital.
■ United States
Singer rehired after surgery
An American soprano fired by the Royal Opera House because of her weight has been rehired after undergoing stomach surgery and losing 61kg, her spokeswoman and the theater said on Sunday. Deborah Voigt, one of the world's top opera singers, lost her part in Richard Strauss' Ariadne on Naxos in 2004 because the Royal Opera House decided that a slimmer singer would be better. She now has a contract to return to the role in the 2007-2008 season, a Royal Opera spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the house does not officially announce its casts so far in advance.
■ United States
`Discovery' OK to land
Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts got some happy news: It's safe to fly home. Mission Control informed the crew of six on Sunday that the ship's thermal shielding is "100 percent cleared for entry" in another week. "Boy, that is great news, that's fantastic," shuttle commander Steve Lindsey said. "And to get all that done by the end of flight day six ... is just amazing," he said. Only one heat shield issue remained going into the late afternoon mission management meeting -- a 5cm-long piece of fabric filler sticking out about 2.5cm from thermal tiles on Discovery's belly.
■ United States
Pedophile sentence sought
The attorney general was to decide yesterday whether to seek to increase the sentence handed down to pedophile Craig Sweeney, whose jailing last month provoked a storm of protest and charges of political interference. Sweeney, 24, was sent to prison for life but with an eligibility for parole after five years when he admitted to kidnapping and sexually assaulting a three-year-old girl. Home Secretary John Reid said this was "unduly lenient" and said he wanted the government's top lawyer, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, to consider referring the case to the appeal court with a view to obtaining a longer sentence.
■ United States
Couple vies for Kansas seat
The candidates say they offer legitimate political differences. Their conservative critics say it is a campaign dirty trick. Jeff Ippel is a Republican, involved in a three-way primary race for a seat in the Kansas House. His wife, Pam, is unopposed in next month's Democratic primary -- for the same seat. Pam Ippel, whose platform emphasizes health care and funding for education, said she was the first to enter the race for an open seat from this Kansas City suburb. "The more Jeff thought about it, the more he thought he'd have a better chance," she said.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema