■ INDIA
Ten electrocuted on bus
Ten people were electrocuted when an 11,000-volt power line touched the bus they were riding in northern India, a newspaper reported yesterday. Sixteen other passengers suffered burn injuries, the Hindustan Times said. The packed bus was traveling through Chandpur village in Uttar Pradesh state on Sunday morning when it touched the low-hanging overhead wire, which set the tires on fire. Seeing that more people were being electrocuted when they tried to get down to safety, one passenger tried to lift away the wire using a wooden flagpole he was carrying, but the wire fell back and electrocuted him.
■ INDIA
Low-caste cook attacked
Children at a school have gone without their state-funded midday meals for two months because upper-caste officials have been attacking the school's low-caste cook, a newspaper reported yesterday. As a Dalit, Lali Devi, the cook at a school in Pipri village in the eastern state of Bihar, is at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. Upper-caste men on the school's committee think she is a lesser human being who can taint things simply by touching them. Disgusted at the thought of her preparing their children's food, they dragged her from the kitchen and assaulted her, the Hindustan Times said yesterday. The men also assaulted her husband and hid Devi's utensils because she had touched them, the newspaper said.
■ Pakistan
Flight attendant packs heat
A flight attendant was caught trying to carry a pistol on board a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on Monday, police and airlines officials said. The woman, in her mid-20s, was carrying the pistol in her hand luggage as she tried to board a PIA flight from Karachi to the port city of Gwadar, they said. "She was caught this morning by Airports Security Force personnel and has been handed over to the police now," said Maqsood Ahmed, a Superintendent of Police. It was not immediately clear as to why the woman tried to take the weapon onto a flight. Ahmed said police were investigating.
■ Malaysia
Twenty killed in bus crash
Twenty people were killed and several others critically injured yesterday in a bus crash thought to be one of the country's worst traffic accidents. The driver apparently lost control of the vehicle, which skidded before overturning near a village in northern Perak state, the official Bernama news agency said. The accident left seven people in critical condition. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi blamed human error for the crash, saying the road was well maintained and was "in first class order."
■ CHINA
Jiang Zemin suffers setback
Former president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) suffered a political blow when his son and the security chief were left out of the running for seats in the Communist Party Central Committee, sources with ties to the leadership said. The setback, coupled with the arrest of a former secretary to a late vice premier and a son of Shanghai's disgraced party boss, strengthened the hand of incumbent President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) ahead of the party's five-yearly 17th congress in the autumn. Jiang Mianheng (江綿恆), a vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and You Xigui (由喜貴), director of the party's Bodyguards Bureau, lost in Central Committee straw votes earlier this year, the sources said.
■ EGYPT
Reptiles found in luggage
A Saudi passenger tried to smuggle a large number of reptiles, including cobra snakes and infant Nile crocodiles, out of the country in his luggage, the official Middle East News Agency reported on Sunday. The discovery of the reptiles in the passenger's bags triggered a brief panic among security personnel at the Cairo International Airport, witnesses said. The 22-year-old passenger, identified only as Anas, said he needed the reptiles, which also included chameleons, for scientific research at his university in Saudi Arabia. His collection will be handed over to the main zoo in Cairo.
■ FRANCE
Woman shot in the back
A young woman was shot in the back outside a Paris nightclub on Sunday when a fierce pre-dawn gunfight broke out between police and a gang of robbers armed with machine guns, police said. Police said three or four masked men, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, burst into the Plaza Madeleine nightclub in the capital's upmarket eighth district just after 5am, making off with around 1,000 euros (US$1,350) from the coatroom till. On their way out, they ran into a passing police van, leading to a "sustained exchange of gunfire" in which a woman bystander was shot in the back. The victim was rushed to hospital, but her life was not in danger, police said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Teens arrested over murder
Detectives were questioning six teenagers on Monday over the murder of a 57-year-old man attacked outside his home, police said. The man, who has not been named, died in hospital on Sunday after he was assaulted in a residential street in Warrington, Cheshire. Police arrested six youths aged between 15 and 19. Three others were held and later released without charge. Neighbors said the victim was attacked after remonstrating with youths throwing stones at his car on Friday evening, according to media reports. He died in Warrington Hospital.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Shooting keeps road closed
The M40 motorway remained closed yesterday a day after a motorcyclist was shot dead on the southbound carriageway, police said. The man, who has not been named, was killed between junctions 13 and 12 near Leamington Spa in Warwickshire on Sunday afternoon. "He was traveling with a couple of friends ... when there was an incident," Detective Superintendent Ken Lawrence. "The evidence would probably tend to suggest that [he was shot] although I am reluctant to confirm anything until we have got the result of the post mortem later on today."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Lecturer to shame students
A university lecturer is to publicly shame his students' lack of orthographical ability after becoming increasingly unimpressed at their poor spelling. Bernard Lamb, a reader in genetics at Imperial College, London, hopes that by publishing the errors he has noted during years of marking papers, it will put pressure on education ministers into raising teaching standards. "Errors in the English of highly selected undergraduates," to appear in the next issue of the Queen's English Society's journal Quest, will outline howlers such as students discussing "cows inseminated by seamen." The students were all in the second and third years of undergraduate degrees.
■ UNITED STATES
Rove quitting at month's end
Top White House political adviser Karl Rove, who masterminded President George W. Bush's political campaigns in 2000 and 2004, said in an interview published yesterday that he would resign at the end of this month. "I just think it's time," Rove told the Wall Street Journal. "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family." The paper said Rove's resignation as White House deputy chief of staff would become effective on Aug. 31. Rove has been under fire since 2003 over allegations of leaking a covert CIA employee's identity.
■ UNITED STATES
Shooter kills three in church
Three people were killed and up to five others were wounded on Sunday when a gunman opened fire during a church service in Neosho, Missouri, the Neosho Daily News reported on its Web site. A suspect was under arrest in the shooting, a spokesman for the Newton County Sheriff's Department said, but gave no more details of the incident. The shooting occurred during Sunday afternoon service, held in the Spanish language, at the First Congregational Church, attended by some 50 people, the daily said. Neosho police chief Dave McCracken did not disclose the identity of the shooter, but said the suspect had had an incident on Saturday with a family that was attending the church service.
■ UNITED STATES
Deer deterrent tested
A device using a flashing light and a shrill alarm is being road tested to see whether it can deter deer. The devices, installed by Mount Laurel company JAFA Technologies Inc, are activated when the unit senses headlights on an approaching vehicle up to 150m away. The device then emits a shrill noise and flashes a blue strobe light. "What makes this device so much more effective than others is that this can detect headlights before a deer sees them and gets mesmerized," Ed Mulka, project manager for JAFA, told the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill for Sunday's newspapers. The firm has installed 38 of the devices on a stretch of road near military base Fort Dix that local officials say has about 60 to 80 accidents a year involving deer.
■ RUSSIA
Serial killer hearing starts
Alleged Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin attended a preliminary hearing yesterday in his trial for the grisly murders of dozens of people in a Moscow park. Pichushkin, 33, appeared at the start of a long-awaited trial in the so-called "Bitsevsky maniac" case, referring to a sprawling park where he supposedly bludgeoned his victims with a hammer and then disposed of their bodies. The case created a media stir in the years leading up to Pichushkin's arrest last year, during which police followed numerous false leads as increasing numbers of corpses were found around the park.
■ ARGENTINA
Guevara becomes citizen
Celia Guevara March, the Cuban-born daughter of legendary communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, became a citizen, the daily Clarin newspaper reported on Sunday. Guevara, who was four years old when her Argentine-born father was killed in Bolivia in 1967, took her oath at the Argentine consulate in Havana, it said. A veterinarian in charge of animal health at Havana's National Aquarium, Celia Guevara has told Argentine officials she has no plans to leave Cuba.
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
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
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