■ 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.
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
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number