■ INDIA
Prisoner makes HIV threat
An HIV-positive prisoner has threatened to infect inmates and officials if he is not given special privileges, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported yesterday. The 24-year-old man -- charged with attempted murder, robbery and assault -- has been threatening to injure himself and touch jailers if they do not serve him better food, give him cigarettes and allow him more time outside his cell, it said. "This is his usual modus operandi. Officials fear going near him," said Sunil Gupta, an official at New Delhi's Tihar jail, the largest prison in Asia.
■ MALAYSIA
Body found in refrigerator
A man who bought a luxury apartment in an upper class suburb found a dead body chopped into 11 pieces in the refrigerator, reports said yesterday. Police said the owner, in his 30s, made the gruesome discovery on Sunday when he went to the apartment in Mont Kiara, a suburb in Kuala Lumpur, after receiving the keys last week. "When he [the owner] opened the door he suspected something amiss when he smelled a strong stench and immediately called the security guard," said Ku Chin Wah, the criminal investigation department chief. "They found the body in a refrigerator which was sealed with masking tape."
■ VIETNAM
Dengue up 40.5 percent
Dengue fever has killed 35 people so far this year and nearly 33,000 others have been infected with the mosquito-borne disease, officials and state media said yesterday. The number of cases increased 40.5 percent in the period from January to this month, as compared with the same period last year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said. The GSO did not give a death toll, but the deputy head of the country's preventive healthcare department, Nguyen Van Binh, told the Nhan Dan newspaper that 35 people had died. The illness has spread rapidly in Vietnam's central and southern Mekong Delta provinces, Binh said.
■ NORTH KOREA
North Koreans vote
North Korea reported yesterday a 99.8 percent turnout for nationwide local elections, with 100 percent of the electors choosing the candidates on offer. The official Korean central news agency said Sunday's local polls "marked an important occasion in reinforcing as firm as a rock the revolutionary government of the DPRK [North Korea] led by Kim Jong-il." The agency, quoting the Central Election Guidance Committee, said 99.82 percent of all registered voters turned out to elect deputies to provincial, city and county people's assemblies.
■ FRANCE
`La Cage' actor dies
Actor Michel Serrault, whose hit performance as a transvestite in La Cage aux Folles catapulted him to international stardom, has died, his priest said yesterday. He was 79. Serrault died on Sunday of cancer in his home in the northwestern city of Honfleur, Reverend Alain Maillard de La Morandais said. Serrault appeared in more than 130 films during a career that spanned half a century. After debuting as a comic actor, Serrault became one of France's most versatile stars, playing a serial killer, a grizzled farmer and a crooked banker. "I'm against those who only want to entertain," Serrault said in 2002.
■ ITALY
Kissing gay men arrested
Gay activists said on Sunday they would organize a sit-in "with collective kissing" at the Colosseum to protest against the arrest of two men, for what police described as an "oral relationship." They risk being tried for public indecency, punishable by up to two years in jail. Government politicians deplored the arrests as exemplifying a rising tide of harassment of gay people. But a Carabinieri spokesman insisted the officers had merely applied the law. The equal opportunities minister in Prime Minister Romano Prodi's center-left government warned of a growing number of "homophobic acts," some organized by the far right.
■ JORDAN
Court halves jail term
A court in Amman has halved the jail term of a man who beat his daughter to death because she visited her estranged mother without his permission, a judicial source said on Sunday. The criminal court initially jailed the man to 15 years' hard labor after the killing but then reduced it to seven-and-a-half years "to give him a chance to improve himself," the source said. The 41-year-old father clubbed his daughter to death on Jan. 23 last year because she left home without his permission to visit her mother, who had left the family home after a dispute with her husband. According to court papers the victim "insulted her father" when he slapped her before he then beat her to death.
■ JORDAN
Health, water officials fired
Prime Minister Marouf Bakheet fired the health and water ministers on Sunday after hundreds of people were hospitalized suffering from diarrhea after drinking contaminated tap water. Bakheet told reporters that Water Minister Thafer al-Alem and Health Minister Saad Kharabsheh tendered their resignations after an inquiry found official negligence in the maintenance of the public water system that caused the outbreak of the virus in a rural village in the north. The dismissal of ministers is rare in the kingdom where few public officials are held accountable.
■ RUSSIA
Abbas travels to Moscow
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, making his first trip to Moscow since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, planned to meet yesterday with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Abbas was also scheduled to meet President Vladimir Putin during his three-day trip. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Abbas as saying that, during his visit, he intended to "discuss all the pressing problems, especially as many such problems have amassed. Our friendship with Russia is rooted in history, and we will preserve and strengthen this relationship.''
■ MEXICO
Rebels attack jail
A left-wing rebel group that bombed fuel pipelines in Mexico earlier this month said on Sunday it carried out an attack on a jail in the southern state of Chiapas. The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, opened fire on the federal jail in the municipality of Chiapa de Corzo on Saturday and locked three guards in a security booth, it said in a statement. The EPR said the attack was part of a campaign demanding the release of two fellow activists it says were jailed or abducted by government forces in May. The state government confirmed the attack, in which no one was injured, without saying who carried it out.
■ UNITED STATES
Lightning strikes man twice
Lightning can strike twice. Just ask Don Frick of Hamlin, Pennsylvania. Frick said he survived his second lightning strike on Friday -- 27 years to the day of his first -- and emerged a bit shaken, with only a burned zipper and a hole in the back of his jeans. Frick was attending a festival when a storm came up quickly. He and six others sought refuge in a shed shortly before lightning struck the ground nearby. The strike sent a shock through Frick and four others. "When I came to and realized I was alive, the first thing that came to my mind was that I'm pretty lucky," Frick, 68, said. None of the others were seriously injured, he said.
■ UNITED STATES
Face off in Boston
A Boston hospital has given a surgical team permission to perform partial face transplants to certain disfigured patients, the Boston Globe reported yesterday. Brigham and Women's is the second US hospital to make public its plans to offer the rare and controversial procedure. The first is the Cleveland Clinic. Only three partial face transplants have been announced worldwide -- two in France and one in China. Critics argue it is unethical to expose patients to the risks of a transplant for a non-lifesaving procedure, but the report said that Brigham and Women's would sanction transplants only for patients taking immunosuppressant drugs. That would minimize the risk of tissue rejection and infection.
■ UNITED STATES
Dead birds in Metro probed
Three Metro train stations were briefly closed in the US capital while hazardous materials crews investigated a few dozen dead birds and a substance that eventually was identified as a commercial pest poison. All signs point to a contractor making a mistake, Candace Smith, a spokeswoman for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, said on Sunday. The poison was spread outside at least six Metro stations. "We want people to know they weren't in any danger," Smith said. She did not have details on what may have caused the problems or the contractor's name. An FBI task force and National Institute of Health officials joined the probe as reports of the dead birds increased during the day.
■ UNITED STATES
`Exorcism' ends in death
Police officers responding to a report of an exorcism on a young girl found her grandfather choking her and used stun guns to subdue the man, who later died, authorities in Phoenix said on Sunday. The three-year-old girl and her mother, who was also in the room during the struggle between 49-year-old Ronald Marquez and officers, were hospitalized, police said. Their condition was unavailable. The relative who called police said an exorcism had also been attempted on Thursday.
‘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