■ Indonesia
Bird flu kills 11-year-old boy
An 11-year-old boy has died of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, raising the national death toll from the disease to 53, the director of the hospital where he was being treated said yesterday. The boy, who wasn't named by officials, was admitted to hospital on Thursday and died on Saturday night, Dr Santoso Suroso said. The boy was believed to have become infected by dead chickens near his home in Jakarta, Suroso said.
■ China
Beijing acts on sign gaffes
Beijing will try to stamp out embarrassingly bad English on bilingual signs as part of the city's image make-over in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, state media said yesterday. The municipal government will issue translation guidelines for signs in hotels, shopping malls, public transport and tourist attractions by the end of the year, Xinhua news agency reported. Translation gaffes in the capital have long drawn giggles. The Park of Ethnic Minorities is identified as "Racist Park," while emergency exits at Beijing's international airport read, "No entry on peacetime."
■ Thailand
Ex-PM can return but not yet
Ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra can return home if he wants, but must wait until political tension eases following last month's military coup, the country's new leader said. Thaksin has not returned to his homeland since the coup removed him from power, opting to stay in London. Interim Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said late on Saturday that authorities would have to see when would be the right time for Thaksin to return. "If he wants to come back, that's his right, but I have to talk to other sides involved," Surayud said.
■ China
Bacteria sickens hundreds
The number of students and teachers suffering from food poisoning in a school in Guangzhou has risen by 37 to 237, the official Xinhua news agency said. About 10 students were still hospitalized after the incident last week at the school attached to Zhongshan University. Two teachers and 50 students aged 6 to 12 suffered from vomiting and abdominal pain on Wednesday after consuming soybean milk and red bean cakes served as a snack. More people fell ill later. A preliminary analysis by disease-control authorities indicated they suffered from a bacterial infection.
■ India
Bus swerves off mountain
A bus packed with school children and teachers swerved off a steep mountain road and plunged into a gorge in northern Uttaranchal state, killing at least 10 people, including six children, police said yesterday. The bus was returning from a science exhibition when the accident took place on Saturday night near Bageshwar. Villagers and local police used ropes to reach the bus and help pull out survivors. At least 20 students and teachers were injured in the crash. They were taken to nearby hospitals where the condition of four was serious.
■ Japan
Mom delivers grandchild
A woman in her 50s gave birth to a child she had carried for her daughter, who was unable to conceive as she had her womb removed due to a cancer, an obstetrician said yesterday. Yahiro Netsu, the head of a maternity clinic in the central prefecture of Nagano, said at a news conference that the woman gave birth in the first half of last year using an egg from her daughter and sperm from the daughter's husband, both in their 30s. Kyodo news agency said it was the first time in Japan that a woman has acted as a surrogate mother for the child of her daughter -- effectively delivering her grandchild.
■ Malaysia
Self-censorship of the media
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has denied that the local media is tightly controlled, but admitted the local press practices self-censorship. "It is not very, it is not tightly controlled. The Malaysian press have freedom," Abdullah said on Saturday. Press freedom body Reporters Sans Frontieres last year ranked Malaysia 113th out of 167 countries on its annual World Press Freedom Index. But Abdullah said there cannot be absolute media freedom, adding that total freedom of the media could lead to mistrust and tension in society.
■ Sweden
Trade minister resigns
Trade Minister Maria Borelius resigned on Saturday amid mounting allegations of tax evasion, just eight days after taking office with the new center-right government. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt insisted the resignation would not affect the stability of his four-party coalition, which took office on Oct. 6, ending 12 years of Social Democratic rule. "She feels that she cannot carry on and we have agreed that she should resign," Reinfeldt told public broadcaster Swedish Radio. Borelius came under intense pressure last week after the media revealed she had hired a nanny in the 1990s without reporting it to tax authorities and paying the required employment fees.
■ United Kingdom
Blog for the national record
The details of a day in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Britons will be recorded and compiled into a digital time capsule that will be stored permanently at the British Library, the Sunday Times reported. The "One Day in History" project, described as a "blog for the national record," will feature British celebrities and writers contributing to the compilation, along with any Briton with access to the Internet who wants to participate. Students and teachers at 29,000 schools have also been invited to join in the project, along with pupils at the Dubai British School, who will blog about expatriate life in the Middle East.
■ Ivory Coast
UN pushes for elections
Yamoussoukro must hold presidential polls which had been due at the end of October within 12 months if it is to emerge from a political crisis, a senior UN official said on Saturday. The former French colony has been split in two since rebels seized its northern half after a failed attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002 and a stuttering peace plan has since failed to cement lasting stability. A UN-backed transition gave Gbagbo a further 12 months in office when polls failed to take place in October last year. With history due to repeat itself, the rebels and opposition are demanding Gbagbo step down.
■ Russia
No more flights to island
A disputed Russian island about 25km off Japan's coast has lost its only air link with the rest of the country, leaving a 12-hour boat trip the only option for its 9,900 inhabitants, Russian media said yesterday. The dilapidated state of the runway has caused authorities to ban passenger aircraft from landing at the only airport on Kunashir, the closest of the 56 Kuril islands to Japan, ITAR-TASS reported. A bitter dispute with Japan, which claims four of the Kuril islands as its own, means that to get supplies the island's residents must travel roughly 300km to Sakhalin island.
■ Egypt
Border guard killed
A border guard was killed on Saturday in a gun accident while on patrol in the Sinai peninsula along the border with Israel, officials said. An Interior Ministry spokesman said the guard was shot in the head when another guard's gun discharged two bullets as he was loading it. Earlier, some security sources said preliminary investigations showed one guard was killed and another wounded after a dispute with a third guard. Other sources said a probe would include the possibility shots may have come from Israel.
■ Lebanon
Grenades wound four
Two rocket-propelled grenades hit a building near the headquarters of the UN in Beirut early yesterday, slightly wounding four people, security sources and witnesses said. They said the grenades, fired from a small hill in central Beirut, hit a building that houses offices, a bank branch and a nightclub in Riad el-Solh some 30m from the UN offices. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the pre-dawn attack. Police and army soldiers cordoned off the street and began investigations. A stun grenade exploded near a police barracks in Beirut last week causing little damage and no casualties.
■ United States
Floods threaten Buffalo
A flood watch was posted as western New York state's record snowfall melted, and around 325,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity. More than a day after nearly 60cm of snow buried the region, travel bans were lifted on Saturday, the airport was open, stores reopened and the evening's Buffalo Sabres game was on. However, the National Grid still had more than 229,000 customers without power at noon Saturday and New York State Electric & Gas reported 96,500 customers still in the dark. "This is going to be the worst [outage] we ever had in western New York," said National Grid spokesman Steve Brady.
■ Mexico
Oaxaca protesters shot
Gunmen shot two people at a roadblock on Saturday, killing one in the latest unrest in the Mexican tourist city of Oaxaca, where protesters are demanding the ouster of the state governor. The assailants fired at protesters along a street barricade in the predawn darkness, hitting one person in the head and another in the arm, activists' spokesman Omar Olivera said. The victim with the head wound died later in the hospital, according to another spokesman, Florentino Lopez. Seven people, mostly protesters, have now been killed in the conflict that began four months ago, when striking teachers and leftist activists occupied much of the colonial city.
■ United Kingdom
`Human shields' want inquiry
A group of air passengers who were held hostage as human shields by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Gulf War after their British Airways flight landed in Kuwait will demand a public inquiry into how the government allowed the plane to land there, the Sunday Times reported. The renewed calls for an inquiry follow the news that a new documentary will claim that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's government allowed the plane to land, despite the fact that Iraqi troops had crossed into Kuwait. John Major, who succeeded Thatcher as prime minister, has in the past denied accusations that any military personnel were on the flight and lives were knowingly put at risk.
■ Italy
Kidnapped tourist released
Two Italian tourists kidnapped on Aug. 22 by bandits in Niger were released in Libya by their captors, the Italian foreign ministry said on Saturday. The ministry thanked Libyan authorities, saying that help from a Libyan foundation was key to resolving the case. The two men were abducted while traveling with a tour group in Niger's vast desert near the border with Chad. Claudio Chiodi and Ivano De Capitani were held by a rebel group known as FARS, the foreign ministry said. The two returned to Italy on Saturday evening aboard a flight from Tripoli, the Libyan capital.
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
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Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese