■ INDIA
Bollywood star weds
Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt, jailed last year for illegal weapons possession and links to Mumbai's underworld, has tied the knot with his long-time girlfriend while out on bail, a friend said. Dutt had a secret court wedding with former starlet Manyata Dilnawaz Shaikh in a Goa beach resort on Thursday and was celebrating formal Hindu nuptials in Mumbai yesterday, a friend said. The 48-year-old actor, who was sentenced to six years in prison, was released on bail in November.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Roh accepts resignation
Outgoing President Roh Moo-hyun has decided to accept the resignation of his spy chief, who offered to quit last month over the leak of a document detailing his secret trip to Pyongyang in December, his spokesman said yesterday. Kim Man-bok, head of the National Intelligence Service, offered to resign, saying he had ordered his agency to pass to a media outlet a document containing transcripts of conversations between him and his North Korean counterpart during his trip to Pyongyang on the eve of the Dec. 19 presidential election in the South.
■ INDIA
Kashmir strike closes shops
Insurgency-hit Indian Kashmir was brought to a halt by a general strike yesterday as locals marked the anniversary of the execution of a prominent rebel commander. The one-day strike was called by the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front in memory of founder Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged in a New Delhi jail on Feb. 11, 1984, for the murder of an intelligence officer. The strike, also supported by other separatist groups opposed to Indian rule over part of the disputed Himalayan region, closed down most of the shops, businesses and offices in the region's summer capital Srinagar.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Security raised after attack
Passenger security screening at its regional airports will be upgraded after a woman attempted to hijack a short-haul domestic flight last week, Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday. Somali immigrant Asha Ali Abdille, 33, was charged with attempted hijacking, wounding and injuring with intent to injure after she allegedly stabbed both pilots and another passenger on Friday on a domestic commuter flight. Abdille demanded to be flown to Australia. The plane landed safely in the southern city of Christchurch. Final recommendations on tighter security measures at regional airports are expected from officials within a week.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Bomb, bullets kill four
A militant mullah and two of his children were killed when a bomb he was preparing in his home exploded prematurely in southern Afghanistan, while NATO troops killed a civilian whose vehicle came too close to a military convoy, officials said yesterday. Mullah Abdul Wasay was tinkering with the explosives at his home on Saturday night in Helmand Province when they blew up, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal. Troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, meanwhile, killed an Afghan riding in a car that had driven too close to the soldiers in the western province of Farah. The troops fired a warning shot that ricocheted and injured the car's driver and killed the passenger, the international military alliance said.
■ UNITED STATES
Roy Scheider dies at 75
Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie Jaws, has died. He was 75. Scheider died on Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital was not releasing his cause of death. However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.
■ UNITED STATES
Disney ride catches fire
A ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida has closed after a small fire broke out, sending one woman to the hospital with minor injuries. Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger says a truck engine at the Kilimanjaro Safari ride caught on fire Sunday when an engine hose failed. The blaze was mostly out by the time fire officials arrived. The unidentified woman was taken to hospital after complaining of a knee injury when she jumped from a truck. Finger said three other guests have been treated on the scene for minor injuries.
■ UNITED STATES
Unit heads for Philippines
A unit of the National Guard was scheduled to leave yesterday for a training exercise in the Philippines, the first time New Mexico guard troops will visit the Pacific islands since World War II. Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 200th Infantry, based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, will participate in the Balikatan 2008 Training Exercise later this month. The unit is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Marc Arellano. New Mexico has a special connection to the Philippines because of the infamous Bataan Death March at the hands of the Japanese during World War II, which included captured troops from the New Mexico National Guard's 200th Coast Artillery.
■ UNITED STATES
Ski resorts hit by reforms
The standoff in Congress over immigration reform is hitting home in ski country this winter. Vermont's Stowe Mountain Resort, for example, usually relies on about two dozen seasonal foreign workers as instructors. Not this year. Stowe had to do "heavy duty recruiting" for its ski school, including a first-ever hiring clinic in last month, human resources director Julie Frailey said. "We need to find some folks," Frailey said. "We do whatever we can without dropping our standards at all." Ski resorts are among the first of seasonal businesses to feel the pinch from a change in federal law that cut back the number of visas for foreign workers.
■ UNITED STATES
Cancer Web sites have errors
Five percent of breast cancer Web sites have mistakes, with those involving alternative or comple-mentary medicine the most likely to be misleading, US researchers reported yesterday. But breast cancer information available on the Internet is more accurate than others carrying health information, the team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in the University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston found. "Our current recommenda-tion to patients is to be skeptical, make sure what patients read is applicable to their specific medical well-being and not to take action without consulting a clinician," said Funda Meric-Bernstam, who led the study.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS