■ INDIA
Man beheads employee
An employer in the east beheaded one of his workers for failing to milk his cows, police said yesterday. Neighbors watched in horror as Upendra Yadav was dragged out of his house in Jharkhand state on Friday by his angry employer. The employer's father and brother held Yadav down before he was beheaded with a sword, police said. The employer has been charged with murder.
■ SRI LANKA
Police seal off Colombo
Police and security forces sealed off the capital yesterday, searching every vehicle entering and leaving the city amid fears of a Tamil Tiger attack, officials said. Huge traffic jams were reported at every entry point to Colombo with motorists spending several hours before they could be allowed in. Doctors and others essential services were also stuck at roadblocks. "This is part of the operations to prevent Tigers getting into the city," a police official said, adding that the operation would last about three hours.
■ VIEtNAM
Notorious disco raided
More than 1,100 youngsters were arrested early yesterday morning following a raid on the biggest disco in Hanoi, state media said. Hanoi's notorious New Century club was surrounded by hundreds of police. Initial tests showed that at least 500 people had taken drugs. Police found various substances in the club, including heroin and ecstasy pills, media said. Hanoi police were not aware of the raid, which had been carried out secretly by national police. National police forces involved in the raid refused to comment. Ecstasy and most synthetic drugs available in the country are thought to come from Cambodia, Hong Kong or the Golden Triangle region, stretching across parts of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
■ SRI LANKA
Child soldiers still held: UN
A pro-government Tamil militant group is holding at least 194 child soldiers despite promises it would free underage combatants, UNICEF said yesterday. The UN agency for children said the Tamil Tiger faction known as the "Karuna group" was failing to honor its public promises not to recruit child soldiers. Out of 285 children known to have been recruited by the Karuna faction, there were 194 outstanding reported cases as of the end of last month, UNICEF said in a statement. Last year, the UN accused government forces and police of rounding up children in the embattled east of the island to be recruited by the Karuna group, a charge vehemently denied by the authorities.
■ CAMBODIA
Tribunal legal fees cut
The bar association yesterday dropped demands that foreign lawyers in the country's Khmer Rouge tribunal pay hefty legal fees, in a major step towards bringing perpetrators of genocide to justice. The stalled trials were being threatened by the row over fees. The bar association was demanding foreign lawyers pay some US$4,900 a year if they wished to defend former Khmer Rouge leaders. But the bar has cut the payment to US$500 for the entire period of the trials, said Nou Tharith, vice president of the association, which must approve all foreign defense counsel. Judges on the UN-backed tribunal said if the bar did not drop the high fees, the adoption of tribunal rules necessary for the trials to go forward was in doubt.
■ POLAND
Police face punishment
Six police officers face disciplinary action after a former government minister committed suicide in her bathroom as the officers searched her home in a corruption investigation, Poland's minister for secret services said on Friday. Former Construction Minister Barbara Blida shot herself in the chest with a revolver after asking to use the bathroom to brush her teeth Wednesday as officers from Poland's Internal Security Agency staged an early-morning search of her home, officials said. Officers gave her permission and had a female officer accompany her. The female officer was standing outside the bathroom with the door open when Blida shot herself.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Tremor strikes southeast
An earth tremor struck parts of southeast England yesterday morning, residents said. Some witnesses said cracks appeared in walls, and chimneys collapsed across parts of Kent county. Kent Police said they believed there had been an earthquake and emergency services were responding. Residents said a tremor lasting about 10-15 seconds struck at around 8:15 am. "I was lying in bed and it felt as if someone had just got up from bed next to me," said Hendrick van Eck, 27, of Canterbury, 100km southeast of London. "I then heard the sound of cracking, and it was getting heavier and heavier. It felt as if someone was at the end of my bed hopping up and down."
■ RUSSIA
Helicopter crashes
A military helicopter heading to the scene of a clash with separatist rebels crashed in Chechnya, killing all 18 people aboard, emergency officials said. There were conflicting reports about whether the craft was shot down, but the fact that it was en route to a military operation underlined that Chechnya's insurgency remains active, although significantly quieter than a few years ago. It was the largest single-day loss of life reported by the Russian military in Chechnya in at least two years. The Mi-8 helicopter went down on Friday while flying to southern Chechnya as part of an operation against militants, an official at the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give his name to the media.
■ UNITED STATES
Condoms cause evacuation
Several classrooms at Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa were evacuated after college officials became nervous about a suspicious package. Officials contacted police and postal inspectors after the box was delivered on Thursday. What they found inside was not a bomb but 500 condoms. The package was sent to a teacher of a human sexuality class, and was sent by a person who had been a previous speaker at the class, Rob Denson, the college's president, said.
■ UNITED STATES
Prehistoric bones found
Workers digging at the future site of a Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa have unearthed the bones of a prehistoric camel that is estimated to be about 10,000 years old. Arizona State University (ASU) geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site on Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree. The bones will go directly on display at ASU.
■ UNITED STATES
Student forced to urinate
A teacher in Sacramento, California, instructed a teen student to urinate in a bottle in class instead of allowing him go to the bathroom, the boy and his mother said. Thirty-one classmates heard Michael Patterson, 14, relieve himself into an empty Gatorade bottle in a corner, they said on Friday. When he was finished, Michael said, his science teacher told him to go to the restroom to wash his hands and dispose of the bottle. The boy's mother and the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are demanding that the district fire the teacher.
■ UNITED STATES
Sheriff explains leaving gun
A county sheriff in Jacksonville, North Carolina took out a paid advertisement to explain why he accidentally left his gun and holster in a grocery store bathroom. In the ad, which appeared in Friday's edition of The Daily News of Jacksonville, Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown said he was preoccupied with the needs and safety of his grandchildren, whom he was caring for at the time. Brown said he placed the holster and gun behind the toilet paper rack, but forgot them when he walked out to meet his young grandchildren who were waiting outside. A preacher found the equipment minutes later and returned it.
■ UNITED STATES
Time capsule opened
There were a few surprises for the University of Washington's Class of 1957 when they opened a time capsule in Seattle sealed 50 years ago. Among audiotapes and copies of the yearbook and school newspaper were 1980s-era porn, a condom and some dirty underwear. The capsule had been placed in an interior wall of the then-new Communications Building in 1957. The capsule is being replaced by another created by a student-faculty team.
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