■ JAPAN
Neighbours catch baby
A five-month-old baby was caught by neighbors after her mother threw her from the third-floor window of a burning building in Osaka yesterday, police said. Rion Morioka was uninjured in the fall but was being treated for smoke inhalation, as was her mother Miyuki, 24, Kyodo news agency said. She and the baby's father, Junichi, 22, both jumped from the window, about 7m above the ground. Junichi suffered broken bones. Neighbors had spread bedding on the ground and shouted to the couple to throw the baby after the fire broke out, the agency said.
■ MALAYSIA
Fight disrupts wedding
A wedding for 22 couples in Sabah state was abandoned after the imam leading the ceremony came to blows with a religious official, the Star newspaper said yesterday. An officer from the Sabah Islamic Affairs Department claimed the imam -- who was from Borneo -- did not have permission from the town's religious affairs unit to conduct the marriages. The argument degenerated into a scuffle between the two men, causing the 22 couples and their family members to flee.
■ JAPAN
Velvet Revolver banned
US hard rockers Velvet Revolver have canceled a tour after being denied visas. The band, featuring three members of rock legends Guns N' Roses and the Stone Temple Pilots' former frontman Scott Weiland, issued an apology to Japanese fans on their Web site. "We don't understand why the authorities won't give us visas when they granted them for us in 2005 for what was a successful tour and a great experience. We love Japan and look forward to our return there," they said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Kidman says she was scared
Nicole Kidman told a judge yesterday that she was "really, really scared" when chased in her car by Jamie Fawcett two years ago. Fawcett sued the Sun-Herald for defamation over an article that said he was Sydney's most disliked freelance photographer and that his behavior toward Kidman was so ``intrusive and threatening'' that he scared her. A jury has already found that the article defamed Fawcett. The court is mulling whether to award damages.
■ KENYA
Lion, hyenas attack man
Kenyan surgeons have amputated the arms and reconstructed the face of a herder who slew a lion, only to be mauled later by a pack of hyenas, an official said yesterday. Moses Lekalau, 35, on Friday speared a lion to death in Samburu, about 260km northeast of the capital Nairobi, only to be savaged by hyenas that emerged from the bush. Lekalau speared the lion that had attacked him while walking home with his livestock, then bludgeoned it to death. Lekalau hails from a nomadic pastoralist community where boys are ritually required to kill lions as a signature of maturing into manhood.
■ ITALY
Berlusconi starts party
Opposition leader and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi announced the creation of a new political party on Sunday, saying the People of Liberty party would ensure democracy, development and freedom for the future. The hasty announcement came as a surprise: Berlusconi announced it during an impromptu news conference in a Milan piazza where his existing Forza Italia party was collecting signatures calling for early elections. The media mogul said his supporters had gathered so many signatures calling for change -- 7 million by his count -- that he felt the time was right to announce the creation of a new party.
■ SPAIN
Right-wing supporters rally
Hundreds of demonstrators nostalgic for the country's right-wing past held a rally on Sunday to commemorate a hardline leader killed during the civil war. The rally, held next to the royal palace in Madrid's old quarter, was in remembrance of the killing of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1936 by leftist forces. Tensions between opposing political forces have been high since a teenager was stabbed to death by a right-wing activist during a clash between rival groups on Nov. 11. Primo de Rivera founded the Falange, the political movement linked to dictator Francisco Franco's regime, which ended in 1975. Most of those attending were elderly.
■ BELGIUM
Protesters call for unity
An estimated 35,000 people marched in the capital on Sunday to vent their anger about a political deadlock that has prevented a government from taking office and stoked fears the nation of Dutch and French speakers may break apart. The demonstrators, members of both linguistic groups, gathered at a park in Brussels to sing the national anthem and hear speakers call for unity. A petition signed by some 140,000 people urges politicians "to stop wasting money at our expense on quarrels that interest only a small minority." The issue of more self-rule for Dutch and French-speaking regions has deadlocked bids to form a center-right government since June elections.
■ RUSSIA
Crew rescued from sea
Nearly all of the crew and passengers of the cargo ship that sank on Sunday during a storm in the Sea of Japan were rescued overnight, with only one still missing, news agency Interfax reported. Of the 30 crew and six passengers that were cast adrift on the high seas after escaping the sinking ship, 35 were rescued, Interfax said. The ship, registered in the Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, had been transporting timber to China. The vessel sunk 180km south of the port of Nakhodka.
■ UNITED STATES
Cattle run through town
Cattle roundups are mostly a thing of the past, and this is western Pennsylvania, but on Thursday a Stoystown resident called to report a herd of cattle stampeding through her yard. Mayor Bill Boyd was first on the scene, honking his horn at the nine bulls, cows and calves that were plodding along, barely 90m from Main Street in this borough of just over 400 people. A handful of residents joined in and together they managed to get the wandering herd corralled on a nearby field. Boyd said he did not know who owned the cattle.
■ UNITED STATES
Order agrees to pay US$50m
A Roman Catholic religious order has agreed to pay US$50 million to more than 100 Alaska Natives who allege sexual abuse by Jesuit priests, a lawyer for the accusers said on Sunday. The settlement with the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus is the largest one yet against a Catholic religious order, said Anchorage lawyer Ken Roosa. "These are people who were altar boys and altar servers and altar girls," Roosa said. "These are people who tried to tell their story and in many instances were beaten or told to shut up and told, `How can you say such things about a man of God?'" The sexual abuse allegations involved 13 or 14 clerics and children aged five years old to teenagers.
■ UNITED STATES
Kucinich joins protest
Thousands of people demonstrated outside a big US Army base on Sunday to demand the closure of a defense department training school they say promotes torture and murder in Latin America. Long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich joined the annual protest outside the Fort Benning Army base in Georgia to shut down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Protesters say it teaches security personnel from Latin American countries to use repressive tactics and that graduates have overthrown legitimate governments, citing a coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 as an example.
■ UNITED STATES
Reverend refuses vow
A Lutheran church in Chicago has ordained a lesbian who refuses to take a vow of celibacy, becoming the first in the denomination to test a new resolution that gives bishops leeway in disciplining such violations. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America requires vows of celibacy for gay but not for heterosexual clergy -- a policy the Reverend Jen Rude, 27, calls discriminatory. Rude, whose father and grandfather are both Lutheran ministers, expressed gratitude to the congregation. "It's meaningful to me in the sense that my call is being affirmed not only by God, but the people of God," she said.
■ COLOMBIA
FARC landmines kill seven
Seven soldiers were killed by landmines and four guerrillas died in a subsequent gun battle over control of a longtime rebel stronghold near the center of the country, the army said on Sunday. A soldier tripped a landmine that set off a chain of explosions in Tolima province late on Saturday. Those who survived the blasts fired on members of Colombia's biggest rebel force, the FARC, which was born in Tolima in 1964. Four of the FARC rebels were killed in that exchange. President Alvaro Uribe has pushed the guerrillas on to the defensive with his US-backed security policies but thousands are still killed every year in this war involving a mosaic of militias funded by the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade.
‘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