■ BANGLADESH
Mystery illness strikes
Health officials were investigating the cause of a mysterious illness that left dozens of students and teachers unconscious at a school near the capital, officials said yesterday. At least 50 students and four teachers this week suffered headaches, nausea or convulsions before losing consciousness at a high school about 30km east of Dhaka. Public health official Birendranath Sinha said a virus, chemical or gas contamination, could be responsible.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Bomber pardoned
A 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber from Pakistan, caught while on a mission to blow up an Afghan provincial governor, was pardoned yesterday by President Hamid Karzai. "Today we are facing a hard fact, that is a Muslim child was sent to madrasah to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him towards suicide and prepared him to die and kill," Karzai said. "His family thought their child was learning Islamic studies. That is not his fault, nor his father's, the enemies of Islam wanted him to destroy his life and those of other Muslims. I pardon him and wish him a good life," the president said.
■ NEPAL
Armed groups warned
Nepal's government warned ethnic minorities and other small armed groups in the south to join peace talks within two weeks or face "serious consequences." Home Minister Krishna Sitaula said late on Saturday the government would take stern action to restore law and order in the south, where at least 60 people have been killed this year in violence linked to ethnic minorities' demands for greater rights.
■ AUSTRALIA
Polio program begins
Health authorities began an emergency immunization program yesterday for passengers who shared a Thai Airways flight with a man diagnosed with polio. Almost 250 people were on the flight from Bangkok to Melbourne early this month with a 22-year-old student from Pakistan who was later diagnosed with the first case of polio in the country in 20 years, officials said. About 100 of the mostly Australian passengers had been contacted and efforts were being made to get in touch with the others after a national health alert was issued on Friday.
■ CHINA
Kids to dance in large groups
Authorities will ensure that children taking part in new compulsory dance exercises at school do so in large groups, an attempt to calm parents worried about puppy love blossoming between their offspring, local media reported. The Education Ministry said last month it was introducing seven sets of dance steps to all primary and secondary schools from September. One routine would involve senior pupils learning to waltz together prompting some parents to air their concerns. The Xinhua news agency said they feared that encouraging boys and girls to dance hand in hand would heighten the risk that their children would fall in love and neglect their studies.
■ INDIA
Show offers scholarships
Two thousand schoolchildren began a televised battle last night to win five scholarships to English universities in a new prime-time show, Scholar Hunt -- Destination UK, tipped to grip the nation this summer. Over eight weeks the students will sit exams, undergo Mastermind-style general knowledge quizzes, IQ tests and endure interviews with academics from Leeds, Warwick, Cardiff, Sheffield and Middlesex, the universities which have offered fully funded places. By September five winners will move to England for three years to study engineering, management, media, biomedicine or computing on US$90,000 scholarships. Cameras will follow them for the duration of their degree as they experience culture shock and come to understand the delights of freshers' week and English food.
■ CHINA
Food imports suspended
Imports of frozen chicken feet, pig ears and other animal parts have been suspended from 10 companies in the US, Vietnam and the Philippines after inspectors found traces of chemicals and dangerous bacteria. The affected companies included two of the US largest food producers, Tyson and a Cargill subsidiary, as well as Vietnam's Nachimex and the Philippines' Iexco. The notice did not say how long the suspensions would last, but ordered the firms to immediately report to the government's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
■ PHILIPPINES
Ailing man kills four
Four people including a village official were killed in a stabbing spree by an ailing man in Cebu Province, police said yesterday. The suspect, identified as Taquilio Tuling, escaped after the killings in Tabuelan on Saturday. Inspector Camelo Gonzaga, town police chief, said Tuling was ill and on his way to hospital when he suddenly ran amok. He first stabbed his sister-in-law and wife, who both died in hospital. Terrified residents sought the village captain Romualdo Montecalvo to calm down Tuling, but the official was also stabbed and killed.
■ LIBYA
UN and AU discuss Darfur
The UN and the African Union (AU) hosted a meeting in Tripoli yesterday to evaluate the troubled peace process in Sudan's war-torn Darfur. The meeting aims to unify competing peace plans and set the stage for negotiations, UN Sudan envoy Jan Eliasson said. Eliasson and his AU counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim, have led four recent missions to Sudan and had numerous contacts with rebel groups and neighboring countries. Last week Eliasson expressed optimism that "the moment of truth" for Darfur was approaching.
■ AUSTRIA
Counterfeiting gang caught
A special police unit has arrested a counterfeiting gang and seized 14 million euros (US$19.3 million) in fake banknotes, a police spokesman in Salzburg said on Saturday. Seven men were arrested in the middle of the week in Villach. It was the largest euro-counterfeiting ring busted by Austrian police in recent years. The banknotes were of such a poor quality that even untrained consumers could have spotted them, the APA news agency reported. In an attempt to disguise the poor quality of the bills, the counterfeiters had placed genuine 500-euro bills on top of each bundle.
■ ALBANIA
Boycott hampers election
An opposition boycott continued to hamper efforts to elect a new president in the third round on Saturday, leaving only two more attempts before the possibility of a government collapse. If the parliament fails to elect a president in five rounds, it is dissolved and the country goes to early general elections within 60 days, according to the Constitution. Three candidates failed to garner the necessary 84 votes to secure the post on Saturday. Bamir Topi, deputy leader of the governing Democratic Party-led coalition of Prime Minister Sali Berisha, led the pack with 50 votes.
■ FRANCE
Killer escapes in chopper
A convicted killer who had already made one helicopter-assisted prison break and organized another, escaped by helicopter from a prison on Saturday for a second time. Pascal Payet, 43, broke out of Grasse prison after a helicopter hijacked by four masked men landed on the roof of one of the prison buildings, a source close to the investigation said. The helicopter, which had been hijacked earlier in the evening at the Cannes-Mandelieu airport, landed some time later at Brignoles, 38km northeast of Toulon, on the Mediterranean coast. Payet and his accomplices released the pilot unharmed and fled the scene. Payet is a career criminal with a long record of violent crimes.
■ EGYPT
Radical group arrested
Authorities have arrested 35 men described as members of an al-Qaeda inspired group that was planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Egypt, police said on Saturday. The suspects, all Egyptian, were secretly arrested in April and are currently being investigated by the State Security Court, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The men are suspected of joining a radical group that aimed to topple the Egyptian regime and carry out terrorist attacks financed by a militant organization in Iraq affiliated with al-Qaeda, he said. Police arrested the suspects after receiving a tip that the group was promoting its goals through its Web site, but the leader of the group fled to a neighboring country.
■ UNITED STATES
Gilmore drops from race
The crowded field for the Republican nomination for next year's presidential election shrank by one on Saturday when former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore announced he was withdrawing. "I believe that it takes years of preparation to put in place both the political and financial infrastructure to contest what now amounts to a one-day national primary in February," Gilmore said in a statement on his campaign Web site. There are now nine Republicans vying for their party's nomination.
■ UNITED STATES
Families slam government
The families of four security workers kidnapped in Iraq appealed for public support and criticized the US government for what they claim has been a slack effort to find them. "We are very frustrated," said Thomas Young, a cousin of Paul Reuben, who was kidnapped with his colleagues on Nov. 16 in Iraq. Mark Koscielski, a Minneapolis gun-shop owner and friend of Reuben who went to the Middle East to conduct his own investigation in March, said he and others have raised US$150,000 to use as ransom to gain the men's release. "If we can get into Iraq to talk to Iraqis who know where they are, we can resolve this in a peaceful way," he said.
■ UNITED STATES
Shuttle one `u' short
NASA moved space shuttle Endeavour a step closer to liftoff without an essential part -- the "u." The spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday, and officials welcomed it with a banner reading "Go Endeavor." The shuttle's name, however, is spelled the British way, with a "u." It is named after the first ship commanded by 18th century British explorer James Cook. The banner was up for about 90 minutes before being replaced. The shuttle's launch is scheduled for Aug. 7.
■ UNITED STATES
Troops parachute into jail
A unit of 25 military paratroopers landed inside the perimeter of a Colorado prison by mistake. No violence was reported, and prison guards escorted them off the grounds. The paratroopers, armed with exercise rifles that shoot rubber bullets, landed in a corn field outside the Fremont Correctional Institute early on Thursday, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti told the Rocky Mountain News. Sanguinetti said she did not know which military unit was involved. She said an investigation is under way but it appears guards handled the inadvertent intrusion correctly. The newspaper said the Army and Air Force denied knowledge of the episode.
■ LIBYA
Compensation deal reached
Families of children infected with AIDS have accepted compensation topping US$400 million, the Qaddafi Foundation confirmed yesterday, a move that could pave the way for a death sentence to be lifted against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The Supreme Judicial Council was expected to examine the deal today, and could rule that the six now on death row may serve prison time rather than face execution. "The families have accepted compensation in the order of a million dollars for each victim," said Salah Abdessalem, director of foundation. But Idriss Lagha, the spokesman for the families, insisted yesterday that "An agreement will not be signed until the money has been paid to the families."
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of