■ PHILIPPINES
Nine killed in land dispute
Armed residents clashed with police protecting demolition crews that were clearing illegal shanties in Kalinga Province, killing at least nine residents and wounding 10 officers, officials said yesterday. Police were on their way to the squatters colony in Rizal on Monday when settlers in foxholes and trenches opened fire, Chief Superintendent Raul Gonzales said. Five men were arrested and several firearms and grenades seized, he said. A lawyer for the residents, Rustico Gagate, said the fatalities included an old woman and elderly men, all Kalinga natives who were in the village to reclaim their ancestral land. He said 50 residents were brought to a hospital for treatment.
■ CHINA
Japan accused of abduction
A North Korean woman accused Japan yesterday of abducting her in 2003. To Chu-ji told a news conference at the North Korean embassy in Beijing that she was "abducted by bad people" while she was in North Korea in October 2003. To said she was taken to the Japanese consulate in Shenyang. She flew to Japan two weeks later after negotiations between Beijing and Tokyo. To said she left Japan last Thursday to return to the North. Japanese Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Noriyuki Shikata denied that the woman had been abducted. "We are assuming that the person who held the press conference is someone who we have identified. That lady fled from North Korea in November 2003," he said. To was born in Japan in 1949 and went to the North in 1960 with her North Korean father and Japanese mother.
■ CHINA
Lightning kills tomb workers
Lightning struck a tomb in Zhejiang Province and killed five people working around it, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Seven workers were caught on a small hill near Zhiwan Village by a heavy thunderstorm on Monday afternoon. Five were killed on the spot and one injured, while the seventh escaped unharmed to raise the alarm, Xinhua said.
■ HONG KONG
Police find body in suitcase
Police are investigating the death of a woman whose body was discovered dumped inside a suitcase on Monday evening. The badly decomposed body was in a suitcase placed inside a manhole near some luxury homes in Stanley, the police said. The cause of death has yet to be determined or the woman's identity established. Police said the victim's feet were bound with a towel and it was believed she had been dead for at least three days.
The body was discovered after a maid reported to police that an odd smell was coming from a manhole.
■ NETHERLANDS
Anne Frank items released
Anne Frank's cousin gave up custody on Monday of thousands of letters, photographs and documents that archivists say will reveal details about the background of the teenage diarist who became a symbol of the Holocaust. Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, 82, had kept the materials for decades in his Swiss attic before permanently loaning them to the Anne Frank House -- the museum incorporating the tiny apartment where the family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands -- to mark Monday's 60th anniversary of the first publication of The Diary of Anne Frank.
■ SOMALIA
Five killed in Mogadishu
Police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu on Monday, and five civilians were killed, witnesses said. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that had been turned into a food distribution center, said Halima Mudey, who was in the crowd. "People were waiting for the distribution of the food, but some of them tried to storm and steal the maize and cooking oil, then police opened fire and killed five people including my brother," Abdiqadir Mohamed Ilbir said as he wept. He said his brother was shot and killed by the police.
■ RUSSIA
Robotic cop unleashed
Unlike many policemen, this one won't take bribes and is always polite. Meet R. BOT 001, the country's first robot cop now patrolling the streets of the city of Perm. The prototype of a robot built at a Moscow institute is the only one of its kind in the country, the state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported yesterday. With a shape somewhere between a bomb and an egg, the robot bears no resemblance to its cousin in the Hollywood Robocop films. But at 250kg, a height of 180cm, and a form specially designed to make him almost impossible to manhandle, this robot is no pushover.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
A682 named most dangerous
A short section of road in Lancashire has been named as the most dangerous in the country in a new survey. The 20km stretch of the A682, running between junction 13 of the M65 and Long Preston, has killed or seriously injured 100 people in the last decade, said a report by the Road Safety Foundation for the European Road Assessment Program. The Foundation, a charity set up to cut road casualties, said that meant the A682 was the country's only road which fell into the report's highest risk category. "The A682 fails on every collision type," said Joanne Hill, the Foundation's research head.
■ VATICAN
Pope names dialogue chief
Pope Benedict on Monday named Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran as head of the Vatican department that oversees dialogue with Islam. The appointment completes a process of restoring prestige and power to the Vatican's Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, which Benedict controversially downgraded last year. Cardinal Tauran, a Frenchman who previously served as the Vatican's foreign minister, will take up his post in September. He is currently the Vatican's librarian and archivist. Last month, Benedict returned the Council to its status as a separate department after he relegated it in March last year by putting it under joint presidency with the Vatican's Culture Ministry and removing its president.
■ UNITED STATES
Hilton released from jail
Paris Hilton left jail yesterday after a bizarre, three-week stay in which the hotel heiress was briefly released to her Hollywood Hills home because of an unspecified medical condition, then sent screaming and crying back to a county lockup. Hilton smiled as she left the jail and waved to the crowd. Hilton will complete her probation in March 2009, though she can reduce that time by 12 months if she does community service that could include a public-service announcement, the city attorney's office has said.
■ CANADA
Trivial end to legal pursuit
A Canadian man failed on Monday to convince a Nova Scotia judge that he hatched the idea for one of the world's top-selling board games, Trivial Pursuit, the court said, ending a 13-year legal battle. Justice David MacAdam of Nova Scotia Province's high court said in his decision not a single witness supported David Wall's claim. In court documents, Wall had claimed that he shared his idea for the game with Chris Haney, one of four owners of Trivial Pursuit, in November 1979 after Haney picked him up while hitchhiking with a friend. Lawyers for Trivial Pursuit dismissed the allegations, saying Haney and his friend Scott Abbott, both journalists, came up with the idea for the game, which has seen US$47 million in sales, in Montreal in December 1979, after arguing over a Scrabble match.
■ PERU
Guinea pigs celebrated
Peru's celebration of the guinea pig included contests for the biggest, the best-dressed and the tastiest. The second annual festival of the cuy, as guinea pigs are known in the Andes, was held in Churin on Sunday to celebrate all things related to the furry rodents. Foreigners may cringe at seeing the critters served for lunch, but people came from across Peru to savor the meat and to compete in a cuy cookoff. There was also a competition for the biggest guinea pig; the winner weighed in at 3.5kg of flesh, fat and fur. And some competed in a fashion show of traditional Andean dress, with guinea pigs decked out in fedoras and frilly skirts.
■ UNITED STATES
Mayor bans bottled water
Thirsty San Francisco city workers will no longer have bottled water to drink under an order by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who says it costs too much, worsens pollution and is no better than tap water. Newsom's executive order bars city departments, agencies and contractors from using city funds to serve water in plastic bottles and in larger dispensers when tap water is available. Newsom estimates San Francisco could save US$500,000 a year under his directive, and the measure also addresses environmental concerns over the amount of oil used to make and transport the plastic water bottles.
■ MEXICO
Drug cartels negotiate
Two main drug cartels are reaching out to each other in an attempt to end a recent round of bloody turf battles, Mexican and US officials confirmed on Monday. The officials said talks are aimed at stopping battles to control lucrative trafficking routes to the US market. The circumstances of the negotiations between the Sinaloa and the Gulf cartels -- first reported in The Dallas Morning News on Monday -- were not clear. The gangs decided that the turf battles were costing them too much money and weaponry and too many deaths in their own ranks, leading them to seek a nonaggression pact.
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