■ Philippines
Troops clash with rebels
Troops clashed with a group of rebels in the country's south, leaving 10 guerrillas and two soldiers dead, a regional army spokesman said yesterday. The daylong gunfight took place on Thursday near Malaybalay city in Bukidnun Province, about 800km southeast of Manila, where troops encountered about 30 New People's Army rebels, said spokesman Major Samuel Sagun. Ten rebels and two soldiers were killed and three government soldiers were wounded, he said. Troops also recovered weapons and one land mine, he said. The rebels have been fighting for a Maoist state for 38 years.
■ Thailand
Man arrested for murders
A man out on bail awaiting trial for robbery has been arrested for the murder of two Russian women as they sat on the beach at the resort of Pattaya to watch the sun rise, police said yesterday. Anuchit Lumlert confessed to shooting Tatiana Tsimfer and Liubov Svirkova, the eastern region police chief, Lieutenant General Aswin Kwanmuang, said. "He said he wanted to rob them, but had to kill them because one of the two victims saw his face," said Aswin, who led the investigation in a city 150km from Bangkok. Aswin said investigators were not wholly convinced by his confession and suspected he may have been a hitman.
■ Australia
Hair fetishist jailed
An airline baggage courier who stole women's hair to satisfy a sexual fetish was jailed for two years and eight months yesterday. Rodney Petersen, 30, had pleaded guilty to 50 counts of stealing head and pubic hair from brushes and underpants in women's luggage. Petersen had a previous conviction for attempted rape. He put the hair he found in plastic slips and recorded the owner's personal details in an exercise book, the Victorian County Court in Melbourne was told, the national AAP news agency reported. Petersen's sentence took into account a suspended jail term for the 2004 attempted rape conviction.
■ Nepal
State, rebels negotiate
The government and former rebels were to begin talks yesterday to set up an interim government that would include ex-guerrillas for the first time, officials said. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was due to meet with top Maoist rebel leaders yesterday to begin talks, said Tourism Minister Pradeep Gyawali, a member of the government's peace negotiating team. The talks would include determining which ministries the former rebels would get in the new administration. The Maoists joined a temporary parliament last year. The interim government being planned would conduct elections later this year for a special assembly that would rewrite the Constitution.
■ Germany
Man forced to pee in bottle
Exam supervisors at a university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet. Overseers at the University of Freiburg told the 27-year-old, whose bladder control was impaired in an accident that left him on crutches, that he would be failed if he left the room during the exam. None of the three supervisors would accompany the man to the toilet despite other students' protests. Eventually a female student emptied her water bottle so the man could go to a corner of the room and relieve himself. In a letter written on Wednesday, university deputy head Karl-Reinhard Volz apologized to the student.
■ Spain
Hunger striker moved
A convicted ETA guerrilla will serve the rest of his jail sentence under house arrest to prevent his death in a hunger strike, authorities said on Thursday. Photos of an emaciated Ignacio de Juana shackled to a hospital bed with a tube in his nose for force-feeding reinforced his iconic status among supporters of ETA, which wants independence for the Basque Country. An ambulance transferred de Juana to a hospital in the Basque Country where he can recover before being allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home, officials said.
■ Italy
Prodi wins confidence vote
Prime Minister Romano Prodi easily won a vote of confidence in the lower house of parliament yesterday, formally ending a political crisis sparked by his resignation last week. Prodi's center-left prevailed in the Chamber of Deputies by 342 to 253, with two abstentions by far-left members. The result was expected given the center-left's comfortable majority in the lower house, but leaves the coalition with little room to maneuver in the Senate, where it enjoys a mere two-seat advantage. It was a good vote," Prodi told reporters. "A great margin, but also the debate showed the center-left is much more united than the center right and that means the government's work will go ahead strongly."
■ United Kingdom
Jury to hear Diana case
The High Court yesterday ruled that the inquest into the death of Princess Diana should be heard by a jury, overturning an earlier court decision that a coroner could hear the case alone. The ruling came after a legal challenge from Harrods department store owner Mohamed Al Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, Diana's last boyfriend, who died with her in a Paris car crash in August 1997. In January coroner Elizabeth Butler-Sloss ruled that she would hear the probe into the deaths sitting alone. The three senior judges sitting at the High Court yesterday ruled that she should hold the inquest "sitting with a jury."
■ United States
Hilton lifts ban on Cubans
The Hilton hotel group on Thursday reversed its ban on Cuban delegations staying at its hotels in Europe and called on Britain and the US to resolve the contentious issue, which arises from the US trade embargo on Cuba. The action came after unions and parliamentary groups in Europe announced plans to boycott the organization after a Cuban trade delegation was banned from a Hilton hotel in Oslo and excluded from the group's hotels throughout Europe.
■ El Salvador
Convict caught with grenade
An inmate at a jail was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside -- a novel attempt to disguise his apparent escape plans. Guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison outside the capital San Salvador found the V40 grenade, about the size of a golf ball, lodged up the man's rectum during a security clampdown, a prison spokesman said on Thursday. They also caught another 16 inmates who each swallowed a mobile phone. "We'll have to expel the objects and if they won't come out we'll have to perform surgery in hospital," said Alberto Uribe, a spokesman for the El Salvador prison service.
■ Mexico
Young suitor gets the boot
A 98-year-old woman has filed a legal complaint against a suitor 50 years her junior who she said tried to kiss her and threatened to kill her if she didn't let him move in with her. Maria de Jesus Flores from the central city of Irapuato got to know Manuel Martinez, 48, when he started delivering her groceries. But he began propositioning her to the point of harassment, Flores told the daily Reforma. "He said he couldn't live without me, that he loved me, but that's not for me ... I can't have sexual relations any more, I'm 98," the newspaper quoted her as saying.
■ Honduras
Castro could return soon
Fidel Castro "could return to work soon," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said during a visit to Honduras on Thursday. Perez Roque and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close friend of Castro who visited the communist leader recently in Cuba, have said repeatedly that Castro is recovering well after a complicated gastrointestinal surgery in July. The foreign minister's comments follow a growing number of positive assessments about Castro's health from officials and family members.
■ United States
Sex offender law proposed
Lawmakers in Ohio said on Wednesday they want to force convicted sex offenders to use a fluorescent-green license plate on their cars so they can be easily identified. A Republican and a Democrat in the state legislature in Columbus have joined forces to propose the law, which echoes measures in several US states that require convicted drunken drivers to use a yellow, pink or red plate on their cars. "The license plate will make the most egregious sex offenders easily identifiable," state Democratic Representative Michael DeBose said in a statement. Police said the green plates would allow them to track sex offenders, who are already required to register with the local sheriff's office and are prohibited from living within 305m of a school.
■ Paraguay
Dengue emergency declared
A state of emergency has been declared following a wave of dengue fever cases as concerns over the mosquito-borne illness rise across Latin America. Paraguayan health officials have reported some 14,000 cases of the disease this year. Opposition lawmakers accuse the government of drastically underestimating the outbreak. "The statistics that are being given out should be multiplied tenfold," opposition spokesman Anibal Carrillo said on Thursday, adding he believes more than 130,000 cases have gone unreported because many poor Paraguayans cannot afford doctors' fees. President Nicanor Duarte said he was allotting funds to fumigate breeding areas for the disease-spreading aedes aegypti mosquito, and signed a decree this week declaring a 60-day emergency.
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