■ India
Migrant workers murdered
Suspected separatist rebels kidnapped five migrant workers from a bakery in the remote northeast, drove them to a secluded spot and killed them, police said yesterday. The bodies of the five men, who worked at a bakery in the Bishenpur region of the volatile state of Manipur, were discovered riddled with bullets from automatic weapons, leading police to believe that a rebel group was behind the killings, Bishenpur police chief Jayanta Singh said. Some 17 militant groups have been fighting for decades for independent homelands in Manipur and the neighboring state of Nagaland.
■ South Korea
New prime minister named
President Roh Moo-hyun named a former finance minister as his new prime minister on Thursday and replaced his chief of staff, the presidential office said. Han Duck-soo, a career official who served as Roh's finance minister from 2005 to last year, was nominated to succeed Han Myung-sook, who stepped down earlier this week to focus on her career as a lawmaker amid media reports she may run for president. An election is set for December. Roh also replaced his chief of staff, appointing a longtime confidant and former civil affairs aide, Moon Jae-in, to the post. The new prime minister, 56, who has a doctorate in economics from Harvard University, has long served as an economic expert in the government.
■ Australia
Islamic clerics gagged
Five of most powerful Islamic clerics in the country have reportedly been banned from speaking to the media in an attempt to stop local imams inflaming anti-Muslim sentiments with controversial comments. The nation's Muslims say they feel under pressure after a number of radical clerics inflamed tensions earlier this year by airing extremist views about women, jihad and Jews. The Lebanese Muslim Association has gagged the imams from Lakemba Mosque in Sydney to stop them delivering "anti-Australian" messages, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday.
■ India
Calf caught eating chickens
When his chickens started disappearing a few weeks ago, a farmer in eastern India figured dogs or jackals were to blame -- until he discovered his calf making a meal of his poultry. Moloy and his one-year-old calf have since become local celebrities, with the carnivorous cow appearing on television in India's West Bengal State and hundreds of people flocking to see them in Chandipur, a village 230km southwest of Calcutta. "To catch the culprit, Moloy got up very early ... and to his disbelief found that it was his calf which came out from the cow shed and was eating the chickens alive," Debjyoti Chatterjee, a local resident said on Thursday.
■ Chile
Bus gropers to be punished
People caught groping fellow passengers on Santiago's packed buses and trains will be seriously punished, President Michelle Bachelet said on Thursday. Bachelet said she would announce measures within 48 hours to deal with problems on the transit system, which is so strained that passengers complain of hours-long delays. Despite a system overhaul a month ago, trains still broke down and buses couldn't accommodate the long lines of passengers.
■ United Kingdom
Historic sites protected
Britain unveiled proposals on Thursday to protect ancient buildings in a move it hopes will be enough to prevent the historic Tower of London from being put on a blacklist of endangered world heritage sites. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell published plans to throw buffer zones around antiquities such as Durham Cathedral and Stonehenge to prevent ugly developments being built nearby. Britain is responsible for 27 of UNESCO's world heritage sites, but these are not formally covered by the country's planning laws. Last year inspectors from UNESCO expressed concerns about a series of planned skyscrapers looming over the Tower of London and threatened to put the historic fortress on its "in danger" list.
■ United States
Fridge tosses beers
An engineering graduate has built a contraption to help remind him of campus life: a refrigerator that can toss a can of beer to his couch with the click of a remote control. When John Cornwell graduated from Duke University in North Carolina last year, he landed a job as a software engineer in Atlanta but found himself longing for his college lifestyle. It took the 22-year-old about 150 hours and US$400 in parts to modify a mini-fridge into the beer-tossing machine, which can launch 10 cans of beer before needing a reload. A video featuring the device is a hit on the Internet, where more than 600,000 people have watched it.
■ France
Robot used in health study
Small steps for a robot salamander may just be a leap toward understanding spinal cord injuries, a study by French and Swiss scientists that appeared on Science magazine yesterday said. Scientists of the University of Bordeaux, France, and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL) created Salamandra Robotica, a four-legged yellow creature that follows the impulses of a simple computerized drive. "We used the robot to show that our model actually reflects reality," EPFL professor Auke Ijspeert said. "The robot was very useful to validate that our model could effectively modulate speed, direction and gait."
■ United States
Gonorrhea evades tests
There is global dissemination of a type of gonorrhea that lacks an enzyme used by many commercial kits to confirm a diagnosis of infection, investigators report. The enzyme, called prolyliminopeptidase, was previously thought to be common to all gonorrheal strains and its absence can result in incorrect, doubtful, or delayed diagnosis, they said. Doctors at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden found that most of these prolyliminopeptidase-negative strains of gonorrhea -- identified in Australia, New Zealand and Scotland -- were indistinguishable or highly related to a strain previously reported in a UK and Danish outbreak.
■ United States
Teen admits hate crime
A young man who attacked two Asian youths because of their race, leaving both with facial injuries, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, prosecutors said. Kevin Brown, 19, pleaded guilty to second and third-degree assault as a hate crime, prosecutors said. He was also sentenced to two-and-a-half years of post-release supervision on Thursday. Brown, who is white, acknowledged beating John Lu and attacking Reynold Liang when he tried to intervene, District Attorney Richard Brown said. Liang and Lu, both 19, were driving in New York's Queens borough in August when they were rammed by a car carrying two white men shouting racial slurs and cursing, police and prosecutors said at the time. Liang said he drove away but was attacked by the men when he pulled over to check his car for damage.
■ Germany
Fan counters foul with karate
A 42-year-old German man was so enraged by a foul during a boys' soccer match that he invaded the pitch and felled the eight-year-old culprit with a karate kick, then jumped on him, police said on Wednesday. "It seems likely the man was related to the player who was fouled, but it's not entirely clear at this point," a spokesman for police in the southwestern town of Hassloch said. Other spectators, mostly parents of the children playing in the indoor match, piled in behind the angry spectator to restrain him and prevent any serious injuries to the boy.
■ United States
Missing words mystify Mint
In God We Trust. In machines? Not so much. An unknown number of new US$1 coins bearing the image of George Washington are missing the words "In God We Trust" and other lettering along the edges, the US Mint said on Wednesday. The Mint released more than 300 million gold-colored, George Washington US$1 coins last month, but it recently discovered a problem. The coins, made by the Philadelphia Mint, were supposed to have the inscriptions "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum," the date and the mint mark around the edge. It is unclear how the mistake occurred or how many of the coins are in circulation.
■ Mexico
Hitman's corpse stolen
Gunmen stormed into a cemetery in southern Mexico and stole the buried corpse of a suspected drug gang hitman killed days earlier in a shootout, officials said on Thursday. The four armed men broke into the graveyard in the town of Poza Rica, Veracruz state, on Tuesday night, tied up a security guard, smashed Roberto Carlos Carmona's gravestone with hammers and made off with the coffin containing his corpse.
■ United States
Transsexual fights for job
A Florida local official facing dismissal after going public with plans to pursue a sex-change operation said on Thursday he planned to fight to keep his job. A courier delivered City Manager Steve Stanton's appeal on Thursday to Largo City officials. The City Commission that voted 5-2 last week to begin the process of firing him must now hold another public hearing so he can make a final appeal to keep the job he has held for 14 years. "I want to get my job back," Stanton said. "I'm good at it. I miss it. I miss my friends and I miss this community." Stanton is currently on paid leave from his US$140,000-a-year job. The commission voted to remove Stanton a week after he confirmed that he was a transsexual.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in