■ PHILIPPINES
McDonalds to power cars
Makati City police are looking to convert their patrol cars to run on a mixture of diesel and used cooking oil from McDonald’s, officials and the company said on Tuesday. With oil prices at crippling highs, the project would convert cars in the financial capital to run on a mix of 40 percent diesel and 60 percent cooking oil, city police chief Senior Superintendent Gilbert Cruz said. Used cooking oil will be donated by Makati outlets of the hamburger giant, McDonalds franchising manager Buth Salaya said. Other restaurants are also considering donating their used cooking oil, Cruz said. If the project is successful, Metro Manila police chief director Geary Barias said he might recommend it be adopted by police across the country.
■ JAPAN
Man hurt in knife attack
A man was stabbed and seriously injured at a suburban office north of Tokyo yesterday, police said, in the latest in an almost daily series of such attacks that have unnerved the relatively crime-free country. A 51-year-old unemployed man was arrested on the spot in Niiza, a police spokesman said. On Monday, a woman stabbed and hurt six people at a station in Hiratsuka, southwest of Tokyo, in what local media said was a random attack carried out in rage after a failed suicide.
■ SRI LANKA
Conflict kills 24 people
Air force jets bombed and destroyed a base used by Tamil Tiger rebels early yesterday as new battles in the civil war killed 24 people, the military said. The airstrike targeted a training center used by the so-called Black Tigers and took place deep inside rebel territory, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. The pilots confirmed destroying the base, he said. Other fighting on Tuesday across the front lines in the north killed 20 rebels and four soldiers, he said. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment.
■ NEPAL
President seeks solution
President Ram Baran Yadav has invited former rebel Maoists to form the first government in the world’s newest republic in a bid to end weeks of political deadlock, state media reported yesterday. Yadav gave the Maoists seven days to form the administration. Political wrangling has left the nation without a formal government since last month, when it became a republic after abolishing its monarchy. The former rebels, who command more than a third of seats in the constituent assembly, said last week they were willing to lead a new administration if certain conditions were met. Those included a guarantee from the other three main rival political blocs that they would make no attempt to topple their government for at least two years.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Man wins suicide appeal
A South Korean man won his appeal against a one-year jail term for assisting in a suicide by throwing a lighter to his gasoline-soaked rival in love. The Seoul appeal court reversed a lower court ruling, saying that the 30-year-old man had not believed the ex-lover of his girlfriend would actually set light to himself, Yonhap news agency reported yesterday. Last September, the former boyfriend had stopped the couple in their car after dousing himself in gasoline, threatening to kill himself is she did not get out. The defendant then threw him a lighter, saying: “Go ahead and kill yourself,” the news agency said. The man died of his burns.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Sikh girl can wear bangle
A 14-year-old Sikh girl won a High Court discrimination battle against her school on Tuesday where she will now be allowed to wear a religious bangle known as the kara. Sarika Singh, from Cwmbach, in Wales, was excluded from her girls’ school last year for refusing to take off the slim steel bracelet, which teachers said contravened rules on jewelry at the school. Sarika’s lawyers said wearing the bangle was important to her as a symbol of her faith. She will now return to the school in September. The High Court judge ruled that the school was guilty of indirect discrimination under race relations and equality laws. The bangle denotes “God’s infinity” and was effectively a “handcuff to God,” said the judge. Sarika said after the ruling that she was overwhelmed by the outcome. “I’m so happy to know that no one else will go through what me and my family have gone through and no other pupil will ever get banned from wearing their kara again.” she said.
■ RUSSIA
Blast kills two in Ingushetia
At least two people were killed and five wounded when a car exploded outside a police station in the southern region of Ingushetia yesterday, police sources said. Police said an explosive device blew up under a vehicle in a parking lot full of service cars outside police headquarters in Nazran, the region’s main city. “We will have exact information on this only after an investigation is completed,” a local police source said. Attacks, shootouts and bombings occur frequently in Ingushetia, a region in the Caucasus.
■ ITALY
Migrants feared dead
News reports say seven would-be immigrants are feared dead after the boat that was carrying them to Europe capsized between Italy and Libya. The ANSA and Apcom news agencies say the boat capsized on Tuesday in Libyan waters about 241km southeast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. ANSA says two fishing vessels rescued 21 survivors. The agency quotes one of the fishing ship’s captains as saying several bodies were seen in the water but had yet to be recovered.
■ ZIMBABWE
Currency to lose zeros
The government will re-denominate the dollar by removing 10 zeros from Aug. 1, central bank Governor Gideon Gono said yesterday. “The Zimbabwe dollar will be redenominated by a factor of one to 10, which means we are removing 10 zeros from our monetary value. Ten billion [Zimbabwean] dollars today will be reduced to one dollar with effect from Aug. 1,” Gono said in a television broadcast. “The new currency will co-circulate together with the family of bearer cheques ... which shall cease to be legal tender on the 31st of December 2008,” Gono said.
■ TURKEY
Police discover 13 bodies
Police yesterday discovered 13 bodies, believed to be of illegal immigrants, dumped in a field in Istanbul’s outskirts, media reports said. Most of the dead were believed to be Pakistanis, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on its Web site. The police suspect they were dumped by human traffickers after the migrants suffocated while being clandestinely transported in a packed truck, it said. A local elder said that a truck had dropped the bodies and about 130 illegal immigrants there early in the morning after the suspected traffickers apparently panicked over the deaths. Police were looking for the immigrants who ran away from the spot, he said. Agencies
■ UNITED STATES
Letter lost for 60 years
A letter detailing the mood after Harry S. Truman was elected president — lost in the postal system for nearly 60 years — turned up in the mailbox of a Kansas woman. Xan Wedel found the letter, postmarked Nov. 11, 1948, in her mailbox on Friday, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. The envelope was stamped with “Return to sender” and “Found in supposedly empty mailbox,” the newspaper said. The letter was addressed to a Ruth Willisten in Rockfall, Connecticut, but it never reached its destination. It was sent by Gertrude Gilmore, who lived at Wedel’s house in 1948. “All Lawrence is in mourning since the election,” the letter says. Truman, a Democrat, beat Republican Thomas Dewey for the presidency.
■ UNITED STATES
Gator stops highway traffic
Louisiana state police say an alligator somehow got into the elevated eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 on Tuesday morning — miles from an exit — and was hit by a car. Rush-hour traffic slowed to a crawl on the Bonnet Carre Spillway across the western edge of Lake Pontchartrain. The mystery of the tagged, 1.5m gator’s ascent to the elevated highway was still unsolved. St. Charles Parish wildlife nuisance control officer Kenny Schmill said the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department was attempting to track its origins. “I think someone put him up there for a joke,” said Schmill, who had to euthanize the alligator because of its injuries.
■ MEXICO
Sea turtle eggs seized
Police in the south say they have seized 9,000 protected sea turtle eggs and arrested seven men suspected of intending to sell them. Police in Guerrero said in a statement on Tuesday that the eggs were discovered at a highway checkpoint in a truck driven by the suspects. Sea turtles are a protected species, but their eggs are considered a delicacy and an aphrodisiac. The suspects face prison terms of up to nine years. Authorities did not specify the species of sea turtle, but it appeared likely they were from Olive Ridley turtles.
■ BRAZIL
Balloon priest found dead
The body of a priest who floated out over the ocean suspended by hundreds of helium-filled party balloons has been found off the southeast coast, police confirmed. The corpse of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was spotted by a tugboat at sea, three months after he disappeared while flying a contraption buoyed by balloons over the Atlantic Ocean in a fundraising stunt. “We were almost certain that it was the priest due to various elements, such as the clothes and material used in the balloon trip,” Macae’s chief of police, Daniel Bandeira, said on Monday. “The DNA only confirmed our suspicions.”
■ CANADA
Chunk breaks off ice shelf
Officials said on Tuesday a chunk of ice about 18km² in area broke off the country’s largest remaining ice shelf last week. Trent University researcher Derek Mueller said it wouldn’t surprise him if more ice broke off this summer from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, a vast frozen plain off the north coast of Ellesmere Island. In a development consistent with climate change theories, the enormous icy plain broke free last week and began slowly drifting into the Arctic Ocean. The piece had been a part of the shelf for 3,000 years. A crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002. Last spring, a patrol found the weakness had spread into an extensive network of cracks.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not