■Former PM leaves clinic
Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad left a top heart clinic yesterday after being hospitalized for nearly seven weeks following bypass surgery. Mahathir, 82, waved to media photographers as he walked with his family out of Kuala Lumpur's National Heart Institute, where he had spent much of his time in an intensive care ward since the Sept. 4 surgery. Mahathir chose to have the bypass after suffering two heart attacks since November.
■ AUSTRALIA
Child killer suspect charged
A woman appeared in court yesterday charged with murdering a two-year-old boy whose body was found in a suitcase dumped in a pond in Sydney. The 26-year-old Sydney woman, whose name cannot be released for legal reasons, was refused bail. The woman, whom media reports said was believed to be the victim's mother, was arrested late on Saturday. A group of children found the naked body last Wednesday stuffed into a suitcase and floating in a duck pond at a suburban Sydney park.
■ SRI LANKA
One soldier, 16 rebels killed
A Tamil Tiger rebel artillery attack killed a government soldier and wounded three others on the front lines in the north, an official said yesterday, a day after army artillery killed 16 rebels in the same area. The guerrillas attacked soldiers guarding a defense line on Saturday in Vavuniya District's Thampane village, just south of the rebels' de facto state, a defense ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Retaliatory fire wounded 20 insurgents, the official said. He said two separate artillery duels in the same region killed 16 rebels Saturday. The military's claims could not be independently verified.
■ SOUTH KOREA
N Korea cries foul at sea
North Korea yesterday accused Seoul's warships of recent intrusions into its territorial waters, saying the actions were an attempt to undermine a recent accord. The North's Navy Command claimed 54 South Korean warships intruded deep into the North's waters near the disputed western sea border last week, despite its repeated radio-broadcast warnings to sail back to the South. "The behavior is an unpardonable and undisguised provocation" to a joint declaration signed by the leaders of the two Koreas earlier this month, the command said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. A defense ministry official in Seoul disputed the claim, saying its navy vessels didn't violate the border.
■ JAPAN
Postcard comes 64 years late
A postcard mailed by a Japanese soldier from a World War II battlefield in Burma reached his friend 64 years after it was sent, thanks to a Japanese exchange student and the family of a former US soldier who kept the card. The card was handed to Shizuo Nagano, 80, in southern Kochi Prefecture by a student from Mukogawa Women's University. The postcard was written by Nobuchika Yamashita, who used to work with Nagano at their neighborhood store before being drafted. The student received the card from a woman in Hawaii whose dead father-in-law had brought the card to the US after a tour of duty in Nagasaki in World War II. The postcard, dated Feb. 16, 1943, begins: "Mr. Nagano, it's been a long time." Yamashita died of an illness in November 1944 at age 23 in Burma.
■Rebels fight nationalists
Clashes broke out between rebels and a pro-government militia in the eastern part of the country, forcing people to flee their homes, a UN official said. The fighting on Saturday in two villages in North Kivu Province pitted rebels loyal to former army General Laurent Nkunda against Mai Mai militiamen, said Major Prem Kumar Tiwari, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Congo. Tiwari did not know how many people had fled the fighting, which took place about 95km north of the regional capital, Goma.
■ GAZA STRIP
Israeli plane fires on boat
Military aircraft on Saturday fired a missile at a fishing boat carrying two Palestinians, including an Islamic Jihad militant, the military said. It was not immediately clear whether both were killed in the strike offshore. Body parts washed ashore, but identification was difficult, medics said. The two men were identified as Nizar Abu Arab, 22, an Islamic Jihad member, and Raed Shamalakh, 22. Both worked as life guards for the Gaza City municipality. Their clothes and ID cards were found on the beach. The army said Abu Arab was the target of the missile strike. Several hours after the missile hit, rescue workers were still looking for remains.
■ GAZA STRIP
`Hamas takeover a mistake'
Hamas' violent takeover of the territory in June was a "serious strategic mistake," a former Hamas government spokesman wrote in a scathing letter posted on a Web site affiliated with Hamas' political rival, Fatah. It is unusual for Hamas members to go public with internal disagreements, and it was not immediately clear whether the five-page letter by the former spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, was intended for publication. Hamad could not be reached for comment yesterday. He stepped down from his post after Hamas defeated Fatah-allied security forces in the territory in a week of fighting this summer.
■ ISRAEL
Surfing champion detained
Police detained eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater early on Saturday after a scuffle with photographers who were trying to take pictures of him with supermodel Bar Rafaeli, police said. Photographers were waiting outside as Rafaeli and the American surfer left a hotel in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya before dawn Saturday, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. In an effort to prevent the cameramen from taking pictures, Slater pushed them, a photographer at the scene told Channel Two TV. "A brawl broke out and Slater was taken for questioning and later released," Rosenfeld said.
■ SUDAN
Violence erupts in camp
A number of people have died and others have been injured during recent violence at a camp in southern Darfur, an African Union (AU) spokesman said on Saturday. Al Sahafa, the independent daily newspaper reporting from Darfur, said at least five people were killed and nine others were injured inside the Kalama camp. Al Sahafa said the clashes were sparked by differences among tribal groups that signed a peace agreement with the government last year and those who did not sign the agreement. The violence comes a week before Darfur rebel factions and the government are set to meet in Libya to try to put an end to violence in the region.
■Immigrant drop raided
Police in Arizona raiding a drop house for illegal immigrants discovered several, including a pregnant woman, who had been beaten and tortured by their handlers, authorities said. One man's head had been wrapped in a plastic bag and submerged in a waste-filled toilet, said Maricopa County sheriff spokesman Captain Paul Chagolla. The man's pregnant wife was severely beaten and probably will lose her baby, he said. Deputies were investigating reports that smugglers held at least five other immigrants at gunpoint and demanded more money. Police took 54 people into custody after the raid on Friday, including four children and seven suspected smugglers.
■ UNITED STATES
Ladybugs fight pests
Ladybugs -- 720,000 of them -- have been released in the middle of New York City to help protect one of the city's biggest apartment complexes from pests. They will crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex in search of insects, leaf-sucking aphids and mites. Buying the bugs -- at US$16.50 for 2,000 -- means the complex can avoid using chemical insecticides. "In most cases, we reach for a can of pesticide and we kill not only the `bad guys,' but the `good guys,'" said Eric Vinje, owner of Planet Natural, which supplied the pest-killers.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman rescued at sea
A 49-year-old woman stayed afloat for 19 hours in the Pacific Ocean, clutching a water container, until she was rescued, she said. Lillian Ruth Simpson said her canoe flipped in strong winds about 1.6km off the Hawaiian coast. She could not right the canoe and tried to swim to shore and failed. "The times I thought, `I'm going to die, I'm going to die,' I would say, `No, I have three kids and you're not taking me anywhere,'' she said. She spent a long night dozing off, accidentally swallowing sea water, throwing up and trying to keep warm by wrapping her bathing suit top around her head.
■ COLOMBIA
Man sews mouth shut
An unemployed man has sewn shut his mouth and locked himself behind an iron mask to demand the government attend to his family's desperate economic plight. Luis Miguel Aldana, 52, said on Saturday that he started the peculiar protest five days ago, after being locked out of his apartment in Bogota. Instead of paying two months of rent, Aldana says he bought shoes for his three children. Now he is demanding the government provide a loan to jump-start a cottage textile business and pay health care bills for his wife and children. Without the loan, he says his family will end up living on the streets.
■ CANADA
Facts on crash emerge
Government investigators on Saturday sifted through the wreckage of a small plane that crashed into an apartment building in a Vancouver suburb, killing the pilot and injuring two residents. Witnesses said the twin-engine Piper Seneca appeared to be flying erratically soon after taking off on Friday afternoon from Vancouver International Airport. It was not known if the 82-year-old pilot, the plane's lone occupant, had any communication with air traffic controllers. The plane hit with such force that it traveled through a ninth-floor apartment and hit the elevator shaft, a transportation official said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in