■ CHINA
Storms decimate forests
Around one-tenth of China's forests were damaged by recent winter storms, the worst in at least five decades, and in the hardest-hit regions nearly 90 percent of forests were ruined, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The State Forestry Administration said total losses reached 17.3 million hectares of forest in 18 provinces in southern China, Xinhua said. The agency did not give any value for the losses, but in an earlier report the administration said that by the end of last month the storms had caused about US$2.5 billion in damage.
■ MALAYSIA
Cash for rats
Authorities in Kuala Lumpur have ushered in the Year of the Rat by offering a bounty on rats to help fight the city's age-old rodent problem, a newspaper said yesterday. "There's no incentive like money," Yew Teong Look, a member of parliament for a Kuala Lumpur precinct, was quoted by the New Straits Times as saying. Dead or alive, the rats are worth 2 ringgit (US$0.62) each, he said. "All residents have to do is place the vermin at drop-off points where City Hall officers will collect them for disposal," he said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Man guilty of killing wife
A Welsh-born man who hid his wife's body for 23 years in a steel drum in the couple's suburban backyard was convicted yesterday of her murder. Frederick Boyle, 58, claimed he hid the body of Edwina Boyle out of panic after finding her dead in bed at their home on the outskirts of the southern city of Melbourne. But a Victoria state Supreme Court jury found him guilty yesterday of the murder on Oct. 6, 1983. He pleaded not guilty at the outset of his trial. Boyle told the court he found his 30-year-old wife dead in bed with two bullets in her head and one of his neckties around her throat. He said he thought he would be a suspect because he was having an affair, so he hid the body.
■ INDONESIA
Roof riders to be sprayed
Commuters riding on the roofs of trains will be sprayed with colored liquid so that security officers can identify and arrest them, a report said yesterday. Electric trains linking the Indonesian capital and its neighboring towns are packed with passengers during rush hours, with many sitting on the roofs due to a lack of space inside or to avoid paying. "We will confiscate their IDs and give them a ticket," the Jakarta Post quoted regional rail spokesman Akhmad Sujadi as saying. Although illegal, roof riding is rampant because of a lack of efficient and affordable means of transport for commuters in the greater Jakarta area. At least 53 roof riders have been killed in the past two years, the Post said.
■ INDIA
Avalanches kill 20
Twenty people were killed by avalanches and 15 were missing in Indian Kashmir as the heaviest snowfall in recent years brought the Himalayan region to a standstill, officials said yesterday. More than 300 people have been rescued from avalanche-hit areas, while many villages remained inaccessible, police said. Six members of a family, including two children, were killed when an avalanche swept away their home late on Friday in the Banihal area, 110km south of Srinagar, police said. In the neighboring area of Kapran an avalanche killed another family of six. The Indian army said it would airlift 1,500 people yesterday who have been stranded for more than a week on a snowbound mountain highway that connects the Kashmir Valley with the rest of India.
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