■ CHINA
River clean-up launched
Beijing and the EU have launched a campaign to clean up the massive Yellow and Yangtze rivers, state media reported yesterday. The five-year program will cost an estimated US$247 million to develop environmental policies intended to cut industrial and human pollution along the middle reaches of the Yellow River, particularly in Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. The fund -- nearly half of which will come from a World Bank loan -- will also be used to pay people in Yunnan, Guizhou and Hubei provinces to plant trees along the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze.
■ AUSTRALIA
Man survives nine-story fall
A man wearing only his underpants survived a 30m fall from his ninth-floor apartment in Perth after trying to walk to a neighbor's balcony while balancing on a plank, police said on Tuesday. A garden gazebo broke the 35-year-old man's fall, and he was taken to a hospital in a serious condition. Ros Weatherall, a spokeswoman for Western Australia state police, said rescue workers found the man, who was not immediately identified, wearing only his underpants. "He was skylarking around, building planks across to his neighbor's place, when it happened," she said. "He was very lucky."
■ HONG KONG
Drunken man drinks blood
A man who knocked back two vials of blood after a drinking binge has been jailed for two months, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Li Man-yiu, 29, told a court on Monday he was "extremely thirsty" when he staggered into a hospital on Sept. 13 for treatment for an injured toe, the South China Morning Post reported. Surveillance cameras showed Li "walk up to the laboratory counter, take three tubes containing blood samples, drink the contents of two and then dump the vials in the lift lobby," the newspaper reported. When he realized the vials had contained blood, Li rushed to the toilet to vomit, the report said. The court accepted that Li had drunk the blood under the influence of alcohol, but jailed him after he pleaded guilty to theft.
■ JAPAN
Girl stabbed to death
Police were hunting yesterday for a man accused of stabbing to death a seven-year-old girl found in front of her grandparents' home in the latest crime against children to shock the nation. Yuzuki Unose was found Tuesday evening lying face down with stab wounds to her back and abdomen outside her grandparents' home in a suburb of the western city of Kobe. Her mother called an ambulance but the girl died less than two hours after being admitted to a hospital, a police spokesman said. The girl "told the ambulance crew on her way to the hospital that she was stabbed by an adult male," a fire department official said separately.
■ MALAYSIA
Cuddly couple cause crash
A young Muslim couple tried to speed off when police caught them making out in their car but got into an accident, causing a five-car pile up, a report said yesterday. A police patrol car spotted the couple locked in an intimate embrace late on Monday in their car parked at a hypermarket in Muar town in southern Johor State, the Star newspaper said. As the patrol car neared them, the couple sped out of the car park and collided with a passing car, causing three other vehicles to crash. The unidentified couple, both in their 20s, have been detained and referred to the district Islamic religious department.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
McCanns `realistic'
The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann have accepted that she is probably dead, their official spokesman admitted for the first time yesterday. Speaking to reporters, Clarence Mitchell said: "Kate and Gerry are realistic enough to know that there is a probability she is dead." Mitchell also said that a computer used by Gerry McCann that was reportedly seized by Portuguese police, would be of no use to detectives. According to Mitchell, the computer that was taken was "gathering dust" in the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
■ HUNGARY
Toddler killed by dogs
A toddler missing for two months was killed by the dogs of his parents, who buried his body in a field, police said on Tuesday. The body of two-year-old Dominik was found in a field in Monorierdo, about 42km south of Budapest after the parents confessed, Lieutenant Colonel Zsolt Bodnar told a press conference. The mother gave no details of the attack but said the parents "had left the child alone in the courtyard and that he headed toward the dogs," the police officer said. The parents transported the boy's body by wheelbarrow to the nearby fields and buried it, he said.
■ ITALY
Bank robberies top EU
While robbing banks is losing its appeal among Europe's criminal classes, the country's small-time crooks have proved the exception by attempting just over 3,000 robberies last year -- 57 percent of the European total. New figures released by banking union FIBA showed Lombardy was a favorite haunt of masked bandits, with 640 successful robberies compared to 274 in Sicily. Nationwide, bank clerks now face a one in 10 chance of being held up every year, FIBA wrote in its staff magazine. "These are not the tunnel-digging professional gangs of the 1970s but a growing number of small-time crooks robbing small branches, usually armed with knives not guns," FIBA spokeswoman Angela Cappuccini said.
■ ISRAEL
Defense project launched
The US and Israel agreed to work on a layered missile defense system to intercept ballistic missiles from Iran and Syria and smaller arms like those lobbed from Gaza and Lebanon, officials said on Tuesday. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a meeting at the Pentagon, agreed to set up a joint committee to study how Washington might help the Jewish state produce the system, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. An Israeli security source also said Barak and Gates talked about upgrading one of Israel's missile defense systems, Arrow II, designed to intercept missiles like those deployed by Iran and Syria. "This proposal now has to go to the relevant work teams," that source said. US officials, however, have expressed skepticism about the ability of the Israeli systems to defeat shorter range missiles. The Pentagon already is a partner on the Arrow II program. Israeli and US engineers also are working on a parallel project, David's Sling, to defend against medium-range rockets like those fired by Hezbollah guerrillas during the war last year in Lebanon. Israel has been developing a third system called Iron Dome, which is meant to shoot down short-range Palestinian rockets.
■ UNITED STATES
Parrot plays `stool pigeon'
A parrot chirping "hello" woke his Texas owner up to find, and then shoot, a burglar in his garage on Tuesday, police said. "I guess you could call him a stool pigeon," owner Dennis Baker told the Dallas Morning News. It was the fifth time the home had been burgled this month. So when Baker woke to the sounds of Salvador, his Mexican Red-headed parrot, saying "hello, hello" he knew something was wrong. Baker grabbed his gun and shot the burglar. The man died at hospital, police said.
■ UNITED STATES
Report shows `superbug' risk
More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the US government reported on Tuesday. Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That is an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study.
■ UNITED STATES
Boy held over brother's death
A 13-year-old boy accused of killing his younger brother over a dessert will be charged as a juvenile, prosecutors said. The Florida state attorney's office has not filed formal charges, but said on Tuesday that Demetrius Key would stay in juvenile court in Orlando because he was an abuse victim with no prior record. Authorities said Demetrius told investigators he choked and beat Levares Key, 8, because the boy ate a chocolate dessert and picked a scab that bled. Demetrius told police he feared being blamed for those things when the boys' mother, Tangela Key, returned home.
■ UNITED STATES
`Toilet rage' woman cited
A woman who allegedly shouted profanities at her overflowing toilet within earshot of a neighbor was cited for disorderly conduct, authorities said. Dawn Herb could face up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to US$300. "It doesn't make any sense. I was in my house. It's not like I was outside or drunk," Herb told the Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pennsylvania. "The toilet was overflowing and leaking down into the kitchen and I was yelling [for my daughter] to get the mop." Her next-door neighbor, a city police officer who was off-duty at the time, asked her to keep it down, police said. When she continued, the officer called police.
■ UNITED STATES
Child killer to die
A man who threw a five-year-old girl into a Florida swamp to be devoured by alligators after trying to strangle her mother has been sentenced to death by a Florida court. "The defendant ... caused this five-year-old to die, alone in the wilderness, and to be mutilated by monsters of the swamp," Miami-Dade County Judge Leonard Glick said on Monday before announcing the sentence to Harrel Franklin Braddy, 58. He was accused by the mother who survived his attack, the online edition of the Miami Herald reported on Tuesday. Quatisha Maycock and her mother Shandelle Maycock were kidnapped in November 1998 from their home by Braddy, who was angry at being rebuffed by the mother. He drove his victims to the Everglades National Park where he strangled the mother and tossed her daughter into a swamp. The mother came to after her attack. The girl's body was found two days later with bite marks on her body and her left arm missing.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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