■ China
Nine die in jealous rage
A man consumed by jealousy is suspected of murdering eight members of his wife's family before committing suicide, state press said yesterday. Wang Changyi is believed to have murdered his brother-in-law and his wife and their four children, as well as his sister-in-law and her mother in Bailujiao Village, Yunnan Province, early on Tuesday, the Chuncheng Evening News reported. The paper said that Wang was incensed that his wife had run away and had threatened her family if they did not reveal her whereabouts.
■ China
Flooding wrecks bridge
Flooding triggered by torrential rains wrecked a key highway bridge in Liaoning Province, a news report said yesterday, but there was no immediate word of deaths. The bridge collapsed after the area was hit by storms that started on Monday and dumped up to 145mm of rain on one area within seven hours, the official Xinhua news agency said. The bridge collapse forced a halt to traffic on a highway linking Heihe, a city on the northern border with Russia, and the eastern port of Dalian, Xinhua said.
■ China
Space the final defense
An analysis authored by a group of unnamed researchers at the National Defense University and published in the People's Daily yesterday listed space as an area where the People's Liberation Army must be equipped and prepared to defend the nation's interests. "Our military should not only protect China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, but should also protect the oceans and transport routes and other economic interests [and] ... the security of space," it said.
■ Singapore
Islamic schools to get aid
Islamic schools in Singapore are receiving more money to ensure their quality of education does not fall behind that of national facilities, the Islamic Religious Council said yesterday. The six schools, or madrasah, are receiving S$300,000 (US$191,000) from the council, 30 percent more than last year. "Children in madrasahs, we feel, should keep up with the pace of chance, and should not lose out to other children in national schools," the Straits Times quoted council president Alami Musa as saying on Tuesday.
■ Philippines
Japanese pedophile booked
An accused pedophile from Japan was arrested by immigration agents in a southern Philippine city, an official said yesterday. Immigration Chief Commissioner Alipio Fernandez said Hideo Akamae, 64, was arrested over the weekend at his house in Davao City, 990km south of Manila. Fernandez said Akamae was arrested after social workers from a local non-governmental organization helping abused and distressed children in Davao filed molestation complaints against him. The suspect arrived in the Philippines in December 2004 and was admitted as tourist for 21 days, but since then, he has not left the country, Fernandez said.
■ Afghanistan
Car explodes in traffic
A car exploded during morning rush-hour in Kabul yesterday, killing the driver and wounding two people, police said. The possibility the vehicle was carrying explosives intended for a suicide attack was being investigated, police said. The two wounded were in the moving car when it exploded in the southeastern outskirts of the city and were in a serious condition, city criminal investigation chief Ali Shah Paktiawal said. "We don't know if it was a suicide car bomb or if they were involved in carrying explosives," spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said.
■ Hong Kong
Police crack down on drugs
A month-long crackdown on teen crime and drug abuse has been launched by police in Hong Kong following the death of a 13-year-old schoolgirl from a suspected drugs overdose last week, police said yesterday. The girl collapsed and died after allegedly taking a mix of the party drugs ketamine and ecstasy in one of the city's discos on Wednesday last week. The police operation, which got underway on Tuesday night, will see teams of up to 80 officers carry out three to four raids each week, targeting video-game arcades, bars, karaoke parlors, billiard halls and public sports grounds in the area close to where the girl lived.
■ Singapore
US hospitality school opens
The University of Nevada at Las Vegas opened a branch campus in Singapore yesterday for students eager for a career in the hospitality industry and with an eye toward two massive casino resorts planned in the city-state. Well-known in the US for its hotel-management courses, the university is the first among niche institutions to set up in the city-state under a government push to make specialized education available. The school has filled 33 of its 50 undergraduate positions, and its master's program has taken three students so far. With the two casino resorts expected to generate 35,000 jobs when completed in 2009, dean Andy Nazarechuk expressed confidence in the quality of the degrees.
■ Ireland
Bodies reveal Iron Age style
Life in the Iron Age may have been nasty, brutish and short but people still found time to style their hair and polish their fingernails -- and that was just the men. These are the findings of scientists who have been examining the latest preserved prehistoric bodies to emerge from Ireland's peat bogs -- the first to be found in Europe for 20 years. One of the bodies, churned up by a peat-cutting machine at Clonycavan near Dublin in 2003, had raised Mohawk-style hair, held in place with gel imported from abroad. The other, unearthed three months later and 40km away in Oldcroghan by workmen digging a ditch, had perfectly manicured fingernails.
■ United Kingdom
Fish dish joins icons list
Fish and chips, Sherlock Holmes and Monty Python have joined cricket, pubs and red double-decker buses on a growing list of England's national treasures. More than 350,000 people have voted in a government-backed project to catalog the icons which capture the essence of England. Other new entries joining the list on Tuesday include the Oxford English Dictionary, Robin Hood, the Mini and the long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers. "Choosing the things that most represent England has really got the nation's creative juices going," said Jerry Doyle, managing director of the Icons project.
■ Turkey
H5N1 preparations initiated
The Health Ministry asked regional health authorities to prepare for the possibility of bird flu outbreaks during the autumn migration and brace for new and deadlier strains that could spread from person to person, an official said on Tuesday. A bird flu outbreak killed four children in eastern Turkey in January, and the government culled some 10 million fowl in affected areas. Those children apparently became ill after coming into direct contact with infected birds.
■ Germany
Explosive luggage probed
Federal prosecutors began an investigation on Tuesday after a suitcase and another piece of luggage with explosive material were found on a train and in a railway station in western Germany. The first case, which was discovered on Monday and handed over to authorities at Dortmund's central station, contained a propane gas tank, a detonator, batteries and three bottles of gasoline, prosecutors said. An examination of the materials determined that they were potentially explosive, but authorities could not say why they did not explode or if they were intended to do so, Dortmund prosecutor Henner Kruse said. The second piece of luggage, which was also found Monday in the main station in Koblenz, also contained a propane gas tank, they said.
■ Togo
Cabbies bring city to a halt
Hundreds of taxi drivers in the capital went on strike on Tuesday, protesting alleged illegal fines and arbitrary arrests by police. The taxi drivers blocked Lome's main roads with their cars, temporarily bringing the city's traffic to a standstill. The strikers said police made random arrests and charged exorbitant fines amounting to US$10 in a country where one-third of the population lives below the poverty line. The drivers staged a sit-in and shouted slogans protesting against the government. A spokesman for the Transportation Ministry said he would not comment until after a meeting to negotiate with the drivers had ended.
■ Canada
Crash report ready
Investigators said on Tuesday they had completed a draft report on the cause of the Air France Flight 358 crash in Toronto one year ago, and expect to release it within months after a peer review. "We've collected all the evidence, interviewed witnesses and completed our analysis," Canadian Transportation Safety Board spokesman Christian Plouffe said. Thereafter, the final report will be made public, he said. The Air France Airbus A340-313 aircraft, on a flight from Paris, overran the end of a runway and came to a rest in a ravine just outside Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2 last year.
■ United States
Butterfly smuggler arrested
US authorities have arrested a Japanese national on charges of trafficking in protected butterflies in violation of treaties that protects endangered species. Hisayoshi Kojima, 55, was arrested without incident at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after arriving from Japan with several butterfly specimens in his possession, the US District Attorney's office said on Tuesday. The arrest followed a three-year undercover investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service that found that Kojima allegedly sold and smuggled numerous endangered butterfly species to the US.
■ Canada
Buffalo take over town
Wild buffalo have taken over a small town in the far north, a local official said on Tuesday. The wood bison wandered into Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories in May and seemed to like it, Darren Campbell said by telephone. The buffalo rub siding off houses, knock down fences, kick dogs and trucks, and scare children off playgrounds, he said. Some of the buffalo have returned to a nearby forest in search of mates, but two very "troublesome" giants were shot by resource officers. The town is now looking to hire two people to convince the rest of the herd, which outnumber townsfolk 2,400 to 800, to leave town for good, Campbell said.
■ Canada
Abducted boy found
A 10-year-old boy believed to have been abducted by a convicted pedophile was found on Tuesday as police tried to talk his alleged abductor into releasing another boy. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that Zachary Miller was in an abandoned farmhouse in Kipling,Saskatchewan Province, 60km southwest of his hometown of Whitewood. Police said they were alerted on Tuesday after a Kipling-area resident spotted a van that matched the description of Whitmore's vehicle. "As this person was investigating, 10-year-old Zachary Miller ran out from a building," said Russell.
■ Venezuela
Election campaigning opens
The election campaign officially opened in Venezuela on Tuesday under new regulations instituted by the National Electoral Council, however the opposition claims they do not limit the president's use of state media. Incumbent President Hugo Chavez is running for a third term of office in the Dec. 3 polls, the first time a president in the history of the country has sought a third consecutive term. Though the new election regulations stipulate that public officials cannot campaign for themselves or for others during their regular work hours or at their place of work, there are no restrictions of presidential transmissions via the state television channel.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was