■ 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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not