■ AFGHANISTAN
Taliban fighters killed
Coalition airstrikes killed nearly a dozen Taliban fighters in the southern province of Zabul overnight, the US military said, as the bloodiest period since the militants' 2001 ouster grinds on. Local military and coalition troops called in air support after detecting a group of more than 20 Taliban preparing to ambush them near a village in the Arghandab district of the province on Tuesday, it said. "The Afghan National Army called in coalition close-air support to strike the insurgents before they could launch their attempted ambush," the US military said in a statement.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Melting ice problematic
Melting glaciers and low snowfalls on the country's highest mountain have forced a climbing guide company to cancel treks there because of dangers posed by thinning ice and snow, the company said yesterday. The Linda Glacier, a favorite route up 3,754m Mount Cook, has become heavily crevassed, forcing climbers to clamber under avalanche-prone ice cliffs, said Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, founder of the Alpine Recreation company. "Usually at this time of year we expect a much, much thicker snow pack, at least another 10m I would say," Braun-Elwert said on National Radio. He has been a guide on the mountain for 31 years.
■ MALAYSIA
Mahathir eats `healthier' food
Former leader Mahathir Mohamad is surprising people after a recent bypass surgery by eating local favorites -- including fried noodles and oily bread dishes -- that have an artery-clogging reputation. But his daughter, Marina Mahathir, assured the country yesterday that Mahathir's doctors knew what they were doing, stressing that the National Heart Institute was feeding the 82-year-old retired prime minister with "healthier version of these foods." Mahathir chose to have surgery on Sept. 4 -- his second since 1989 -- after he suffered heart attacks in November last year and May.
■ CHINA
New strategy on cigarettes
Cigarette packs will have skulls, blackened teeth or diseased lungs printed on them in the latest effort to tackle smoking, but one specialist said the images may actually attract younger people to take up the habit. The images would have to take up at least 30 percent of the pack's surface area under rules that would come into force from January 2009, the Beijing Morning Post said, citing an official at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Similar images are already printed on packs in countries including Singapore, Thailand and Canada. It was part of a plan that would also see tobacco advertising banned by 2011, the report said.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Massage parlor trip on TV
The education ministry launched an inquiry yesterday day after a TV program showed youths entering a hotel massage parlor for sex during a school trip to China. The ministry ordered school authorities nationwide to investigate all field trips to China. "The alleged incident should not have happened," said Ko Young-kyu, a senior ministry supervisor. "Local education offices have been asked to throughly investigate and report the results." He said some 30 schoolmates of his bought sex there, adding: "Those who have been there all had it because we went there for that."
■ PORTUGAL
Madeleine case considered
An investigating magistrate was considering yesterday what further lines of inquiry to pursue after receiving the file on missing British girl Madeleine McCann. After handing the file over to the magistrate, the country's chief prosecutor said on Tuesday that further investigation would continue into the May 3 disappearance of the three-year-old girl and that further action may be taken against her parents, who have been named as suspects. "The investigation is not finished and new steps are needed after which the possibility will be considered of placing restrictions" against Kate and Gerry McCann, Prosecutor General Fernando Jose Matos said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
EU relents on measures
In what was being celebrated as a triumph for the British David over the European Goliath, the European Commission has capitulated to "metric martyrs" and reprieved the imperial measure. Traditionalists will still be able to walk a mile to the local for a pint of bitter after popping into the greengrocer for a pound of carrots without fear of prosecution from the commissars of metric Europe, despite longstanding orders to Britain and Ireland to phase out their system of measurements by 2009.
■ UNITED STATES
Garlic stomping a no-no
Stomping on garlic with your shoes on is apparently not the correct way to prepare food. The Rockland County, New York, health department hit the Great China Buffet restaurant with two violations after someone took pictures of an employee stomping on a bowl of garlic with his boots in an alley. The man alerted health inspectors. "I go back there and the guy's stepping on garlic," said Dan Barreto, who used to eat at the restaurant. "There he was just jumping up and down on it, smashing it up, having a good time." The health department does not consider a person's shoe or boot a proper instrument to use in food preparation, senior public health sanitarian John Stoughton said on Tuesday.
■ LITHUANIA
Transsexual wins case
A transsexual unable to complete a sex change to become a man due to a gap in the law has won a case against the predominantly Catholic country in the European Court of Human Rights, the court said on Tuesday. The Strasbourg-based court said in its ruling that the country had to adopt a law on gender-reassignment within three months or pay 40,000 euros (US$55,300) for the person, identified as "Mr L", to undergo surgery abroad. "That legislative gap had left the applicant in a situation of distressing uncertainty as to his private life and the recognition of his true identity," the ruling said.
■ GREENLAND
Sex imbalance probed
Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program said. The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north.
■ BRAZIL
Security vault robbed
Heavily armed bandits blasted a hole into a security company's vault and apparently made off with millions of dollars in cash early on Tuesday, despite a shootout with police in which two people died. Police recovered more than US$2.5 million, but believe the robbers escaped with millions more, said Tatiane Brito, a spokeswoman for Sao Paulo state police. About 20 gunmen wearing hoods broke into a building adjacent to the Protege company headquarters in Sao Paulo, then used explosives to blast through a wall to the company vault, authorities said. Police found the US$2.5 million inside cars abandoned by the bandits.
■ UNITED STATES
Child-killer electrocuted
A man convicted of murdering four children with an assault rifle was executed yesterday, becoming the first Tennessee inmate put to death by electrocution since 1960. Gulf War veteran Daryl Holton, 45, had confessed to shooting his three young sons and their half-sister in 1997 in the town of Shelbyville, Tennessee. Holton told police he killed the children because his ex-wife had refused to let him see them. He said he intended to kill her and himself, but instead turned himself in. Holton chose the electric chair over the state's preferred execution method of lethal injection. State law allows death row inmates to choose, if their crimes were committed before 1999.
■ BRAZIL
Chips implanted in pit bulls
A city has begun implanting microchips in pit bulls in an effort to track the dogs and punish the owners of pets involved in attacks. So far seven dogs have been implanted with the chip, which contains information about the animal and its owners, said Maria do Carmo Araujo, coordinator of the Center of Animal Control in Belo Horizonte. Some 2,500 pit bull owners have complied with a state law requiring them to register the animals for the procedure. The city is paying for the chips and owners of pit bulls found without them will face a US$440 spot fine, Araujo said.
■ UNITED STATES
Man bungles robbery
A man robbing a bank demanded the money by writing a note on one of his own checks, authorities said. Forest Kelly Bissonnette, 27, tried to black out his name on the check, then handed the note to a teller on Sept. 5 at the Bank of the West in Englewood, Colorado, authorities said. "We could still make it out even though he blacked it out," FBI agent Rene VonderHaar said. Nearly US$5,000 was taken. Surveillance video showed a suspect similar to Bissonnette's description, a federal complaint said. Bissonnette remained in federal custody on Tuesday after turning himself in last Friday.
■ UNITED STATES
Craig granted hearing
A Minnesota court on Tuesday granted US Senator Larry Craig a hearing on his request to let him take back the guilty plea he made after his arrest in a men's room sex sting. The Hennepin County District Court said the hearing would be held on Sept. 26 -- just days before the Sept. 30 deadline the Idaho Republican set for himself to resign if his name is not cleared. Craig was arrested on June 11 at the Minneapolis airport by an undercover officer who said Craig tried to solicit a sexual encounter.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not