■ NEPAL
Prince OK after heart attack
The health of the country's unpopular crown prince has improved after he suffered a major heart attack last week and he is likely to leave the hospital within two days, his doctor said yesterday. Crown Prince Paras, 35, was hospitalized on Thursday after having the heart attack at his home. "His health condition has improved and he is feeling much better," his doctor Yadav Bhatta said at Katmandu's Norvic Hospital. Bhatta said the prince was already strong enough to take short walks in the hospital.
■ VIETNAM
Collapse kills illegal miners
Two men who sneaked into a zinc mine in the north of the country died when a tunnel collapsed on them, an official said yesterday. Rescuers spent 12 hours trying to recover the bodies of the two men, aged 37 and 40, from the mine in Luong Bang village in Bac Can, some 200km north of Hanoi, village chief Ma Dinh Oanh said. At least eight other people who had also entered the mine illegally escaped unhurt when the tunnel collapsed on Friday, he said. They were all trying to illegally extract zinc from the mine, which is owned by a private company.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Adultery ruling requested
A judge has asked the Constitutional Court to rule once again on whether adultery should remain a crime. "Sex is a natural human desire and it is inappropriate to restrict it by law," yesterday's Korea Times quoted district court Judge Do Jin-gi as saying in his petition to the court. The law sets a maximum two-year prison sentence for those committing adultery, but the law is rarely enforced. However, the constitutional court rejected three previous appeals against it on the grounds that social morality may be weakened.
■ GERMANY
Host fired over Nazi praise
The nation's NDR public broadcaster fired a talk show host and author on women's issues after she praised Nazi Germany's attitude toward motherhood, the station said on Sunday. NDR said Herman, who has written books urging a return to more traditional gender roles, was fired after confirming to station management that she made the statement reported in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. The statement was: "What I wanted to express was that values which also existed before the Third Reich, such as family, children and motherhood, which were supported in the Third Reich, were subsequently done away with by the 68ers" -- a reference to 1960s leftists.
■ SPAIN
ETA car bomb fails
A large car bomb placed by the Basque guerrilla group ETA in the northern city of Logrono failed to explode late on Sunday after only the detonator ignited, town Mayor Tomas Santos said yesterday. The group telephoned a warning to a Basque newspaper at 11pm and 30 minutes later a small explosion was heard in a car park in the city. "It's been a very intense night of vigilance," Santos told State radio. "It was a major charge of explosives placed in the town center -- it could have been a tragedy." News media quoted police sources as saying there could have been between 100kg and 150kg of explosives in the bomb.
■ SOMALIA
Mortar attack kills four
Four people were killed and eight wounded when a mortar crashed into a house in the Somali capital, where the government is battling insurgents, witnesses said yesterday. The mortar hit the house near the presidential palace in Mogadishu's Wardhigley district overnight and killed a mother and her three children, said Hussein Adan Luqman, a local elder. It was not clear if the palace had been the target. Another resident, Farah Mohamed Sahal, said eight civilians had been wounded in the same incident.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
McCanns arrive in England
The British couple named as suspects in the case of their missing four-year-old daughter have returned to England -- and to a storm of media speculation about evidence that police believe ties them to the case. Four months after leaving for a family holiday in Portugal, Gerry McCann said it was heartbreaking to come home without his daughter Madeleine, despite an extensive effort to find her. "Whilst it is heartbreaking to return to the UK without Madeleine, it does not mean we are giving up the search for her," he said in the village of Rothley on Sunday.
■ ITALY
`F' campaign wins support
An Italian comedian's campaign using a rude word to tell off politicians has won the support of more than 300,000 Italians who signed petitions to sweep away a generation of lawmakers they say are corrupt and ineffective. Popular comic Beppe Grillo, 57, has sent shock waves through the political system with the level of support for his campaign which, if successful, would bar convicted felons from parliament and would limit politicians' careers to two terms in office. An estimated 40,000 people attended Grillo's rally in Bologna on Saturday and many more went to hundreds of similar "Vaffanculo-day" protests around the country. The word is the Italian equivalent of the "f"-word in English.
■ UNITED STATE
Naked carpenter cleared
A California carpenter caught hammering nails and sawing wood in the nude has been found by a judge to be not guilty of indecent exposure. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Julie Conger ruled on Thursday that although Percy Honniball of Oakland was naked, he was not acting lewdly or seeking sexual gratification. Honniball, 51, was arrested last year after he was spotted building cabinets naked at a home where he had been hired to work. The carpenter said he likes to work in the nude because it is more comfortable and it helps him keep his clothes clean.
■ COLOMBIA
Quake strikes off coast
A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific Coast on Sunday, collapsing homes and injuring at least four people in the country's rural southwest corner. The quake was centered 32km from the surface near the town of El Charco, about 380km southwest of Bogota, Colombia's geological institute, Ingeominas, reported. The quake was felt across several states in western Colombia, including the cities of Cali and Popayan. So far authorities have reported no deaths or major damage.
■ UNITED STATES
Aldrin speaks up for Novak
Buzz Aldrin said a former astronaut charged with attempted kidnapping should be "admired" for allegedly not stopping when she traveled cross-country to confront a romantic rival, according to a published report. Lisa Nowak was arrested in February after police said she had driven more than 1,600km from Houston,Texas, to Orlando, Florida, using diapers to avoid taking breaks. "I think Nowak should be admired for traveling across the country at night and not getting out of her car to put in gas or go to the restroom," Aldrin said in an interview published on Time magazine's Web site. "It is not excusable, but it is understandable for an achiever to fall into a trap."
■ UNITED STATES
Burger sickens police officer
A McDonald's employee in Union City, Georgia is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty -- so salty that he says it made him sick. Kendra Bull was arrested on Friday and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct. Bull, 20, said she accidentally spilled salt on hamburger meat and told her supervisor and a co-worker, who "tried to thump the salt off." On her break, she ate a burger made with the salty meat. ``It didn't make me sick,'' Bull told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But then Police Officer Wendell Adams got a burger made with the oversalted meat, and he returned a short time later and told the manager it made him sick. Bull admitted spilling salt on the meat.
■ COLOMBIA
Red Cross delivers bodies
The Red Cross on Sunday delivered 11 bodies -- presumably of lawmakers who were killed while being held hostage by rebels -- to forensic experts who will try to determine their identities and how they died. The cadavers were recovered in the southern state of Narino, said Barbara Hintermann, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Colombia. A team of forensic scientists will examine the remains to try to sort out conflicting accounts of the lawmakers' fate. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said that the hostages were killed in a raid by an unidentified military group. The government accused the rebels of executing the hostages but later said they died in a mistaken clash between two guerrilla fronts.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing