■ India
Moon mission mulled
The government on Thursday held out the possibility of sending astronauts to the moon by 2020 and called for a national debate on whether it should enter a space race with richer nations. The Indian Space Research Organization says it could have a manned spaceship ready in eight years to orbit the Earth and put astronauts on the lunar surface in 14 years. To date India has shied away from putting humans into space as the costs have been considered prohibitive.
■ Afghanistan
Six police killed in ambush
Suspected militants ambushed a police patrol killing six policemen and wounding three others, an official said. The police car was sprayed with bullets in the Adraskan district of Herat Province late on Thursday, said Nasar Ahmad Paykar, the provincial deputy police chief. Adraskan's district police chief was among those killed, he said. Paykar blamed Taliban militants for the ambush. Three wounded policemen were brought to Herat hospital for treatment.
■ China
Students felled by poisoning
Twenty-one young students fell ill and were hospitalized after eating in a school's cafeteria, state media reported yesterday, in the latest in a series of such food poisoning cases. The students at the private school in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region complained of headaches, abdominal pain and vomiting after lunch on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency quoted a local health official as saying. Nineteen of the students, ages 6 to 14, were discharged from hospital the same day after treatment, while the others were still hospitalized but not in critical condition, the official was quoted as saying.
■ United Kingdom
Man jailed for killing child
A man who killed his daughter with chloroform to punish his wife for being unfaithful was jailed for 15 years on Thursday. Gavin Hall, 33, a hospital radiographer, murdered Amelia, 3, as her mother and sister slept in their Northamptonshire home. The jury at Northampton Crown Court heard that he gave his daughter sleeping pills before he smothered her with a rag soaked with chloroform, media reports said. Hall, who admitted manslaughter but denied murder, tried to commit suicide after the killing. Hall suffered an emotional breakdown after discovering his wife was having an affair with a judge she met on the Internet, media reports said.
■ Norway
Halloween prank backfires
A police bomb squad raced across the country by helicopter on Thursday to investigate a mysterious, wired package that turned out to be a discarded Halloween prop left behind by a young man who had dressed up as a suicide bomber. The package, with wires sticking out of it, was found on a car said Asbjoern Andersen of Bergen police. The car's owner had no idea what the package was, so police evacuated the surrounding area. Then they summoned bomb experts from Oslo, who flew 300km by helicopter to assess the threat. "We really had no choice," Andersen said about bringing in experts from the capital.
■ United Kingdom
Migration trend continues
An estimated 380,000 people migrated from Britain last year, with Australia the most popular destination followed by Spain and France, according to data published on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics. The level of migration has grown steadily from 264,000 in 1996. Nearly 200,000 of those who left last year intending to live abroad for more than 12 months were British citizens, with the rest foreign nationals returning home. The data also shows that the number of people coming into the country for longer than 12 months last year stood at 565,000, slightly down on the previous year.
■ Germany
Euros contaminated
Officials are trying to figure out how some 1,500 euro banknotes were contaminated with acid, sometimes causing the brittle bills to disintegrate. The notes, most of them in denominations of less than 100 euros (US$128), started surfacing in June, according to Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. So far, the disappearing cash has been found in 17 cities. The bills "apparently were contaminated with an acid and may disintegrate," Interior Ministry spokesman Stefan Kaller told reporters on Thursday. He said that there were "no clear information yet as to how acid got onto the notes."
■ United Kingdom
Titanic baby ashes scattered
The ashes of a 92-year-old British woman conceived onboard the Titanic, whose parents are thought to have inspired the hit film, have been scattered at sea, a coastguard official said on Thursday. Ellen Walker was born nine months after her mother, 19-year-old sweet shop assistant Kate Phillips and father Henry Morley, 40, eloped on the vessel, which sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg in 1912. The couple, who traveled under the name Mr and Mrs Marshall, are believed to have inspired the characters of Jack and Rose, played by Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet in the Oscar-winning 1997 film.
■ United States
Former inmate sparks scare
Jail officials in White Plains, New York, feared an escapee was on the loose on Halloween night when a former inmate was spotted trick-or-treating in his orange prison jumpsuit, authorities said. A corrections officer spotted the former inmate, Oscar Aponte, 32, going house to house with his son in his hometown of Peekskill, north of New York City. The officer alerted the Westchester County Jail and the prison was locked down while all inmates were accounted for, said Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to the county executive. Authorities believed the former inmate smuggled the orange jumpsuit out of the jail when he was released in September.
■ United States
Abstinence hasn't worked
US efforts to promote abstinence as a cornerstone of sexual education have not lowered levels of sexually transmitted diseases, two former US surgeon generals said on Thursday. Joycelyn Elders and David Satcher told a news conference in San Francisco that a broad effort was needed to promote the "sexual literacy" of Americans to counter unacceptable levels of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies, especially among teens and young adults. "The vows of abstinence break far more easily than latex condoms," said Elders, who was fired by President Bill Clinton after she suggested that schools teach children about masturbation.
■ Canada
Child abuser arrested
A 34-year-old man was arrested hours after he sent live images of himself sexually abusing a pre-school girl this week to a shocked undercover officer, police said on Thursday. "The officer was in conversations with the accused at the time," Detective Constable Paul Krawczyk, a Toronto police officer who witnessed the violent abuse, told reporters. "I can't get into details of what exactly happened but certain things in the images and in the chat with the person, it was obvious that it was happening live ... We saw live abuse happening." Krawczyk said the Toronto child exploitation unit had struck up an online conversation with the suspect, when he sent the undercover officer images of himself sexually assaulting a girl "in the moments following the assault."
■ Colombia
Bungled bombing kills two
A jeep carrying explosives went up in flames just south of the capital of Bogota, killing two passengers and injuring five, authorities said. The apparent accident late on Thursday, which authorities believe may have pre-empted a planned terrorist attack by leftist rebels, comes a day after 17 police officers and two civilians were killed during a guerrilla raid on a remote hamlet in the country's northwest. Two other car-bombings, one of them deadly, have occurred in the past two weeks.
■ Panama
Police investigator poisoned
An official who died just after opening an investigation into possible ties between traffickers and the nation's anti-narcotics forces was poisoned in a contract killing, the government said on Thursday. Franklin Brewster, a high-ranking police investigator, became ill and died in July, days after launching the probe into suspected infiltration of drug-fighting forces by traffickers. A spokesman for the public prosecutor's office said that the killers were paid US$500,000 to murder Brewster, and that three people who worked with the victim were under investigation for murder.
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
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