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■ CHINA

Bus crash kills 13

A long-distance bus collided with a van and plunged off a road into a river in Hunan Province, killing at least 13 people and injuring 10, a state news agency said yesterday. The bus fell 15m into the river on Friday, Xinhua news agency said. It was bound for Chongqing from Shenzhen. Police said the bus, with 33 people aboard, hit the van while overtaking it on a road and fell "due to its own misoperation," Xinhua said.



■ CHINA

Authorities seize bad milk

Health authorities seized 4,167 boxes of milk from a dairy in the southeast and issued a public warning after more than 100 children who drank from the same batch were sickened, a state news agency reported yesterday. Some 75 children began to vomit after drinking the milk on Wednesday at daycare centers in the cities of Zhuhai and Jiangmen, Xinhua news agency said. It said another 30 children fell ill later. Tests on the milk found staphylococcus aureus intestinotoxin, which can cause an infection of the digestive tract, Xinhua said. The Zhuhai Weiwei Daheng Dairy Co in Guangdong Province has recalled 2,706 boxes of milk in addition to those seized, Xinhua said. The incident is the latest in a series of deaths and injuries blamed on tainted food and drugs in China. The government says it is overhauling its product safety enforcement system.



■ AUSTRALIA

Farmer finds `space junk'

A cattle farmer in the remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal that he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites. Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800km west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane. But Stirton only started inquiring into what the ball of metal really was, and where it had come from, in the past week. "I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Stirton said on Friday. "I know a lot about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."



■ INDIA

Suspected witch tied, beaten

A woman accused of being a witch was tied to a tree and badly beaten by villagers in an incident broadcast on television. The attack came to light after footage of the beating was aired late on Friday. Sunita Devi, 50, was accused of practicing witchcraft by fellow villagers in Gumaria, in the poverty-ridden state of Bihar, the United News of India said. The footage showed villagers, who said she brought misfortune to their families, tying her up on Thursday and beating her despite her cries of innocence. She was later paraded through the village. Police intervened, arresting half of a dozen villagers, local news reports said, adding the woman was expected to give evidence against her attackers. Countless numbers of people are beaten or killed each year accused of practicing "black magic," especially in rural areas where superstition is rife, social activists say. Attacks are not usually filmed. Reports said police were investigating why the local journalist who filmed the attack on Devi had not called them to stop the assault. On Monday, a woman in the eastern state of Chattisgarh was accused of witchcraft and dragged from her home, beaten and burned with a hot iron before being pushed onto a burning pyre, police said. She later died.



■ BRAZIL

Boy claims 12 murders

Police on Friday said they were investigating a 16-year-old boy's claim that he had murdered 12 people since November. The teen was arrested last week on suspicion of homicide and made the startling killing-spree claim during interrogation, said Enizaldo Plentz, police commissioner of Novo Hamburgo. "The number of murders could be higher or lower" than 12, Plentz said. "As of now we know that he is implicated in at least six murders. Perhaps he invented some of the murders," said Plentz, who described the adolescent as "deranged." Plentz said the youth spoke in a "totally natural way" about the murders and that they had been committed for "trivial reasons."



■ GUATEMALA

Top criminal still at large

Mexico's most wanted man is not among 11 victims of a drug gang shootout this week as had been suspected, Guatemalan officials said on Friday. Two of the bodies found at the scene of the gunbattle were charred beyond recognition and investigators had been testing blood samples to see if either could be Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the fugitive head of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel. The attorney general's office said investigations continue and authorities were waiting for full forensic results. Police say the battle with high-caliber weapons and grenades in front of a hotel was probably a drug deal gone bad.



■ MEXICO

Beastly bull jailed

A prisoner is behind bars for acting beastly. Residents of the town of Canalumtic say the bull devoured their corn crops and destroyed two wooden shops, so they had it thrown in the slammer. The bull will not be released until the owner pays damages, to be determined by a local judge, police commander Felipe Gomez said on Friday. The owner, Moises Santiz, said he would pay a maximum of US$400 -- the same price he forked over for the bull four months ago. Santiz said he bought the animal on Nov. 4 and let him out to graze. The bull disappeared on March 1 and was later found tied up in the patio of a private home, held there by an angry resident.



■ UNITED STATES

Agency loses firearms

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is losing more guns but fewer laptops than it was five years ago, the Justice Department's inspector general said on Friday. The follow-up report found that policies for storing weapons and laptops are not always followed. The report credited the DEA with a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen. But it said officials often have no idea what was on the laptops when they were stolen. The DEA lost 22 firearms and had an additional 69 stolen over the last five years, including shotguns and a submachine gun.



■ UNITED STATES

Airport screeners in trouble

A woman who said she was ordered by snickering federal airport screeners to remove her nipple rings with pliers demanded an apology from the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Thursday. Mandi Hamlin, 37, also called for an investigation into the Feb. 24 incident in Lubbock, Texas, saying that the male agents violated TSA policy. "I felt surprised, embarrassed, humiliated, scared and angry," Hamlin told reporters at the offices of her Los Angeles attorney, Gloria Allred. "This situation was totally out of control." The TSA said it was investigating the incident.
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