■ 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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion