■ PAKISTAN
Eight die in explosion
At least eight people died and seven were injured when a three-story building in Rawalpindi collapsed yesterday morning after fireworks stored on the ground floor exploded, police said. A dozen residents remained trapped inside the remains of the building, but rescue teams had recovered the dead and injured from the rubble, Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said. "The building collapsed in the wake of explosions of illegally stored fireworks," he said. The building was located near the local police station and contained both residential apartments and shops on the ground floor.
■ CHINA
Registry to open on Aug. 8
Beijing's wedding registry said it would stay open for business on the Summer Olympic Games' opening day, an auspicious date expected to attract thousands of couples hoping for a little extra luck, state media reported yesterday. Guo Xusheng, a spokesman for the city's Civil Affairs Bureau, denied rumors that the registry would close for the start of the games on Aug. 8, Xinhua news agency said. The number eight is considered especially lucky because it rhymes with the Mandarin word meaning to get rich. Beijing set the opening date for the Olympics to fall on the eighth of August, the eighth month of the year, with the games to start at 8:08pm.
■ CHINA
Test compensation paid
The government has begun compensating military and civilian veterans of its atomic bomb tests, state media reported, offering a small peak into the highly secretive program. The compensation was included in an overall 15.12 billion yuan (US$2 billion) paid out last year to military veterans or their families, Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju (李學舉) was quoted as telling Xinhua news agency on Saturday. No details were given about the numbers of nuclear bomb test veterans compensated, or the amounts they were given, although Xinhua said they included both uniformed personnel and civilians.
■ AUSTRALIA
Deckhand attacked by shark
A mako shark attacked a fisherman on his boat deck, biting him on the leg after the man reeled it in while fishing off the east coast yesterday, an official said. The 20-year-old deckhand was airlifted by helicopter rescue, said Brian Russell, a spokesman for the rescue service. He was flown to the Gold Coast Hospital where his condition was reported as stable before he underwent surgery. The man had been fishing for tuna when he reeled in a 3m, 90kg mako shark and landed it on the deck. "He stepped on its tail and it whipped around and latched on to his tight calf, biting through to the bone," Russell said. "The shark had his leg clamped in its jaws for several minutes until other deckhands cut its head off."
■ CHINA
Officials to be punished
Railway officials who hired untrained workers to adjust tracks are to be punished over a train accident in eastern China that killed 18 people and injured nine, investigators said. The deaths occurred on Wednesday when a train hurtling through the night at more than 120kph slammed into a group of about 100 workers carrying out track maintenance near Anqiu, Shandong Province. Investigators found the China Railway 16th Group hired unlicensed, part-time migrant workers and failed to provide them with required safety training, Xinhua news agency said, citing an official with the regional railway bureau.
■ UNITED KINGOM
Helicopter crash kills two
Two people died on Saturday when a civilian helicopter crashed near a golf course in Harrogate, Yorkshire, the local fire and rescue service said. The victims of the crash, both of whom were in the helicopter, were not immediately identified. No one else was believed to be aboard, said Carl Bosman of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. Inspector Tad Nowakowski of North Yorkshire Police said the victims were a middle-aged man and woman who lived in northern England.
■ POLAND
Customs officers strike on
Hundreds of trucks lined up on the border with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia on Saturday, as a strike by Polish customs officers stretched into its sixth day. Fourteen checkpoints on the border with the three ex-Soviet states have been clogged as only a handful of Polish officers showed up for work, Russia's NTV television reported. Only drivers with nothing to declare and vehicles with diplomatic plates are being allowed through, the report said. At the Belarusian town of Brest, a major East-West cargo crossing point, only one customs booth was operating Saturday, Russia's Vesti 24 television said.
■ ITALY
Jesuit leader meets pope
The new leader of the Jesuits met yesterday with Pope Benedict XVI and told him the religious order would study the pontiff's invitation to confirm their "total" adhesion to Catholic teaching, including the topics of divorce, homosexuality and liberation theology. The Jesuits have had a tense relationship with the Vatican on issues of doctrine and obedience. The Reverend Adolfo Nicolas, a Spanish missionary and theologian with extensive Asian experience also discussed Japan with the pontiff. Nicolas served there for 33 years and has said the West doesn't have a monopoly on meaning and spirituality and that Asia has much to offer the Church.
■ ALGERIA
Two killed in clashes
Two armed Islamist militants were killed in clashes with security forces, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Saturday. Kadour Romane -- a 29-year-old who was thought be a top leader of the Arkam Falange, an affiliate of local branch of al-Qaeda -- was killed on Friday in the town of Beni Khalifa, southwest of Algiers, the statement said. He was thought to have been involved in several attacks in the region over the past years, the statement said. A police patrol killed a second militant, identified as 41-year-old Ould Laamri Sofiane, as he entered a grocery store in the northern town of Tidjelabine on Friday, the statement said.
■ FRANCE
Oil spill case appealed
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace said on Saturday it would respond to French oil giant Total SA's appeal of a guilty verdict against it in the 1999 sinking of the oil tanker Erika by launching its own appeal. In a statement, the group said it thought that Total was trying to limit the full legal consequences of the Jan. 16 verdict against it. "Greenpeace is going to take advantage of this appeal to make [Total] put the right value on the damages" it caused, the statement quotes Greenpeace France staffer Yannick Jadot as saying. The oil spill -- France's worst-ever -- soiled 400km of Atlantic coastal beaches in the northwestern region of Brittany and killed up to 75,000 birds.
■ United States
Tantric master breaks record
A Dutch man who calls himself a tantric master has broken his own world record by standing in ice for 72 minutes. The 48-year-old Wim Hof stood on a Manhattan street in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes on Saturday. He set the world record for full body ice contact endurance in 2004, when he immersed himself in ice for one hour and eight minutes. Hof says he survives by controlling his body temperature with the tantric practice of tumo. His feat kicks off BRAINWAVE, a five-month series of events in New York exploring how art, music, and meditation affect the brain.
■ United States
Christian Brando dies
Christian Brando, the troubled eldest son of the late actor Marlon Brando, has died from pneumonia at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 49. Brando died on Saturday morning at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, said David Seeley, an attorney representing Marlon Brando's estate. Seeley said Christian Brando was taken to the hospital on Jan. 11. "This is a sad and difficult time for the family," Seeley said. Born on May 11, 1958, Christian Brando was a high school dropout and never had much of a career. He had small roles in a handful of movies, including 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! but he was better known for his brushes with the law. He spent five years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in 1990 for killing his sister's boyfriend, Dag Drollet, at the Brando family's hilltop estate.
■ United States
Miss America crowned
Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, was crowned Miss America 2008 on Saturday in a live show in Las Vegas billed as the unveiling of the 87-year-old pageant's new, hipper look. Haglund, of Farmington Hills, Michigan, sang Over the Rainbow to clinch the title. She beat Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, the first runner up, and Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto, the second runner up for the US$50,000 scholarship and year of travel that comes with the crown. Haglund, who studies music at the University of Cincinnati, grew up in a pageant family. Her mother is an active volunteer, and her grandmother Iora Hunt, competed for the crown as Miss Michigan 1944.
■ United States
Cat to lose two of five legs
Cats may have nine lives, but one unique feline has five legs -- for now. The cat, named Babygirl, will undergo surgery to remove the extra leg and another crippled leg, though the operation has not yet been scheduled. The surgery is expected to leave the cat with three legs, and improve her quality of life, according to the Washington Area Humane Society in western Pennsylvania, where the cat will live until a home can be found for her.
■ United States
Five killed in car crash
A car speeding down a private airport runway in Ocala, Florida, ran off an embankment and was airborne for 60m before smashing into a tree early on Saturday, killing all five young men in the vehicle, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Investigators did not know whether the BMW was alone or was racing another car on the air strip at the exclusive "fly-in" community of Jumbolair Aviation Estates, officials said. According to the preliminary investigation, the car ran off the 26m-high embankment at the end of the runway.
‘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