■ Singapore
Air pollution goes up
Forest fires in Indonesia have sent air pollution to the highest level in Singapore this year, the National Environment Agency said on its Web site. The agency said south-southwesterly winds had helped blow smoke from land and forest fires in Jambi and South Sumatra to Singapore, obscuring sunlight and reducing temperatures and visibility. The city-state's Pollutants Standards Index (PSI) level reached 73 -- or "moderate" -- on Monday, although rain was expected to bring some relief. Each year, uncontrolled slash-and-burn practices by farmers, plantation owners and loggers on the Indonesian islands sends billows of smoke to Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand.
■ Singapore
Police probe floating body
Police said yesterday they started an investigation into the death of an ethnic Indian man whose body was found floating in the Singapore River a day earlier. Police said the case is being investigated as an unnatural death. The man, believed to be in his 20s, was found on Monday morning floating face down near a busy office complex. He was dressed in blue jeans and a black T-shirt, but barefoot. Police said he had no injuries. The man was carrying no identification and police have not yet identified him.
■ South Korea
Highway pileup kills 11
At least 11 people were killed and 50 injured yesterday in a multiple-car pileup on a key highway bridge on South Korea's west coast, officials said. Two trucks collided on the Seohae Grand Bridge around 8am and caused more than 20 vehicles to crash into each other because of heavy fog that created blinding conditions for motorists, police officer Choi Kyung-wook said. Lee Eun-seok, an official at Korea Highway Corporation, said a total of 29 vehicles were involved in the collision. The incident occurred as millions of South Koreans began traveling to meet relatives for the Korean Thanksgiving holidays.
■ India
Meeting to tackle dengue
The government was set to hold an emergency meeting yesterday on an outbreak of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease that has killed 14 people in northern India in the past six weeks, media reports said. The meeting was called after thousands of health workers in New Delhi went door to door spraying pesticides to stop the spread of the disease on Monday. New Delhi health administrators, meanwhile, were also set to meet after one city hospital was found to be a central breeding ground of mosquitoes that spread the disease, the Times of India daily reported. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the country's premier state-run health institute, 19 doctors and students have fallen ill with the disease and one has died.
■ Australia
Olympic medalist dies
Peter Norman, the Australian who stood between the US athletes staging the civil rights protest from the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics, died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 64. The medal presentation for the 200m at Mexico City was significant for the black power salute by American gold and bronze medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Norman, the silver medalist, wore a human rights badge on his shirt during the ceremony, in support of the two Americans. "It was like throwing a pebble into the middle of a pond, and the ripples are still traveling," Norman said last year.
■ Ireland
Restaurateur wins shell-off
A local man was the proud winner on Saturday of the 2006 World Oyster Opening Championship, beating the competition from 17 other countries to open 30 oysters in the fastest time. At 2:35, Irish restaurateur Michael Moran was five seconds ahead of Sweden's Hasse Johannesson and 46 seconds faster than Britain's Frederick Lindford. "It's just great to bring it home for Ireland," said Moran, whose father Willie took the title twice in the 1970s and whose time of 1:31 seconds has never been beaten.
■ Russia
Chess resumes after row
It went down to the wire but in the end the Russian turned up to play. A 12-round chess match between Russia's Vladimir Kramnik and Bulgarian Veselin Topalov to decide who is the world's top player resumed on Monday after a row over toilet breaks forced a two-day suspension. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, World Chess Federation president and head of the south Russian republic Kalmykia, which is hosting the match, interrupted a conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker a successful truce between the two teams over the weekend. Kramnik, the reigning Classical World Chess champion, leads Topalov, the World Chess Federation champion, 3-2.
■ United Kingdom
Guide offers racy tips
For hundreds of years, Debrett's has guided Britain's aristocracy through the niceties of meeting royalty, going to the races or eating soup in the correct way. Now the publishers are straying into previously unmentionable areas with a new book offering guidance on adultery, toplessness and celebrity gossip. The first edition of Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage was published in 1769. But according to its editor, Jo Aitchison, the new book Etiquette for Girls is a sign that the traditional arbiters of civility are catching up with the times.
■ United Kingdom
Council guilty in drownings
The Barnet Council pleaded guilty on Monday of failing to ensure the health and safety of two teenagers who drowned in a police swimming pool in 2002. The boys were discovered lying at the bottom of the pool in July 2002 during a summer holiday play scheme run jointly by the Barnet Council and the police. The Metropolitan Police pleaded not guilty to the same charge and the Metropolitan Police Authority did not enter a plea. The Health and Safety Executive accused all three of breaching health and safety regulations after the death of 15-year-old William Kadama and 14-year-old Gameli Akuklu, who drowned in the pool at a police training center.
■ Kenya
Elephant kills honeymooner
Patrick Smith, 34, was attacked in front of his wife Julie while they were on a walk in the Masai Mara game reserve. They had been married for a week, local officials said. The rare attack took place when the couple were out with a Masai guide at about 9:30am on Sunday. Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, said: "The elephants showed no sign of agitation, and in that area they're pretty habituated to visitors. Something spooked them. They rushed away and the visitors were in their path. It was a tragic accident." Mr Smith, an employee of Reuters in London, was set upon by one of the elephants and killed, he said, but his wife and the guide escaped unharmed. The guide was not carrying a firearm.
■ United States
Accused waives extradition
The husband of Nevada's late state controller waived extradition on Monday to face first-degree murder charges for her death. Chaz Higgs, 42, was arrested Friday in Hampton, where he had been staying with relatives. He is accused of injecting Kathy Augustine, 50, with a lethal dose of muscle relaxant in July. Augustine was campaigning for state treasurer at the time of her death. She had been impeached by the Nevada Assembly, convicted by the Senate for using state equipment on her 2002 campaign and censured, but she had not been removed from office.
■ United States
Karr's computer probed
The FBI is comparing information found on computer equipment belonging to the man once suspected in the slaying of former child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, to data on a national database of child porn victims, a country attorney said on Monday. The digital files found on John Mark Karr's computer are unrelated to the current child porn possession case against the defendant, but contain pornographic images of teenagers, Deputy Sonoma County Counsel Anne Keck said. The FBI is trying to determine whether child porn victims from the database appear in the photos, she said.
■ United States
Health program launched
Massachusetts began signing up its poorest residents for low-cost health insurance, the first step in the state's goal to be the first in the US to require all citizens to have health insurance. "This is a historic day for us," said Governor Mitt Romney on Monday. "It's real today," he said. Romney signed the state's new health care law in April. This summer, the federal government gave the state its approval for a first-in-the-nation program that will require everyone 18 and older to carry health insurance. The state's universal health insurance program will use a combination of subsidies and penalties to make coverage more affordable and to encourage people to buy it.
■ Venezuela
Minister denies ETA link
The justice minister on Monday denied that the government of President Hugo Chavez is employing members of the Basque separatist group ETA. Jesse Chacon's comments came after opposition candidate Manuel Rosales accused Chavez of flirting with terrorist groups, citing Spain's announcement last week that it was investigating reports that Arturo Cubillas -- an alleged former ETA militant -- has been working at Venezuela's agriculture ministry since October last year. "No member of ETA exists in the government," Chacon said on Monday. The justice minister told reporters that Cubillas has lived in the country since 1989 with his Venezuelan-born wife, who works for the government.
■ United States
Man threatened Bush
An engineer at a nuclear power plant has been charged with sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to a country club where US President George W. Bush was scheduled to appear yesterday for a Republican campaign event. Michael Braun, 51, appeared in court on Monday on two federal charges of sending threats through the mail. The FBI said he is also a suspect in the distribution of dozens of similar threats shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The charges are connected to two letters prosecutors said Braun mailed to a country club. Bush was scheduled to visit.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the