■INDIA
Ritual performed for storks
Scores of Buddhist villagers in the country’s northeastern state of Assam performed a unique funeral ritual for more than 800 endangered storks that died after a tree where they were nesting fell, a news report said on Monday. The Asian openbill storks died when the 200-year-old banyan tree that served as their colony crashed last week into a pond inside a Buddhist monastery some 300km east of state capital Guwahati, the IANS news agency reported. The villagers, most of them farmers, considered the banyan tree sacred and believed that the storks were their guardian angels.
■CHINA
Authorities target bad blood
Agents who collect or supply blood that causes death or serious illness face stricter punishments starting yesterday in an attempt by authorities to crack down on the illegal sale of blood. Those found guilty of collecting or supplying blood that causes at least five people to contract AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C or syphilis, or that leads to severe anemia or organ malfunction, could face 10 years to life in prison, said a statement by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate carried by the official Xinhua News Agency. Unhygienic blood-buying rings were responsible for infecting thousands of people with HIV/AIDS in rural areas of central China during the mid-1990s.
■CHINA
Patient goes on rampage
A 20-year-old man angered at recent surgery killed one person and wounded five in a stabbing rampage at two hospitals in eastern China, state press said yesterday. The man, surnamed Zhou, entered a hospital in the city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, with a pair of tailor’s scissors on Monday afternoon, stabbing two staff members before fleeing, the Beijing News said. Shortly after, he went to a nearby clinic where he attacked doctors and nurses, killing one person and injuring three others, it said. Zhou was unhappy about a surgical procedure he underwent in July, it said, without giving other details. He was arrested by police.
■INDIA
Workers kill boss: report
Sacked workers allegedly beat to death the local chief executive of an Italian company that had laid them off, media reports said yesterday. Scores of former employers at auto parts maker Graziano Transmissioni attacked chief executive Lalit Kishore Choudhary after a meeting to discuss a long-running labor dispute, local newspapers reported. “A total of 40 injured from both sides have been admitted,” Mahesh Sharma, a doctor at Kailash hospital in New Delhi, told the Indian Express. “Half a dozen are in the intensive care unit.” Choudhary, a 47 year-old father with one son, was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, reports said.
■INDONESIA
Rebels arrested over flag
Police have arrested 18 suspected rebels in the country’s easternmost province of Papua for hoisting a separatist flag, officials said yesterday. The detainees allegedly raised the “Bintang Kejora,” or “Morning Star” flag on a street outside the office of the independent Papuan Customary Council in Papua’s Timika Kwamki Baru sub-district, about 100m from a police precinct station. Besides nabbing 18 men, the police also confiscated a number of home-made spears and knives during a raid on houses in the neighborhood, the state-run Antara news agency reported. Timika’s district police chief said the men were would be prosecuted under subversion laws.
■BRAZIL
Gunmen kill 15 people
Hooded gunmen killed 15 people on a ranch owned by an alleged drug trafficker on Monday, in what police described as an apparent settling of scores. Five assailants invaded the ranch of a man known to police by the nickname “Polaco,” federal police officer Claudio Cesar said by telephone from Guaira city. The alleged trafficker and two of his sons were among the dead. Five more people were wounded, Cesar said, two of them seriously. The gunmen apparently fled by boat to neighboring Paraguay. Police in both countries were searching for the suspects, Cesar said.
■UNITED STATES
Elvis museum on sale
The Elvis Is Alive Museum is once again for sale on eBay. The museum’s collection includes photographs, books, FBI files, DNA reports and other memorabilia that aim to support the theory that Elvis Presley never died. Its owner, Andy Key of Mississippi, says military duties will keep him away from home for at least five months. Key set a minimum starting bid of US$15,000 on the listing, which ends on Friday. He bought the museum on eBay last year for US$8,300. Key told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that he hopes someone local buys the contents of the museum and continues running it in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
■PUERTO RICO
Tempest kills four
Heavy rains drenched the country on Monday as a slow-moving tropical disturbance lingered, killing four people, flooding streets and neighborhoods and forcing public schools to close. Firefighters and rescue crews spent much of the day helping people stranded in deluged towns along the island’s southern coast, where scores of residents took refuge in shelters. Families abandoned their homes by boat in a submerged neighborhood in Combate, a small southwestern town. The mayor of the town of Penuelas said burial vaults popped up out of the drenched ground in the municipal cemetery, disgorging a few coffins. More than 60cm of rain fell in 24 hours in Patillas county in southeastern Puerto Rico, said Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila. At a news conference, he warned that 30cm more could fall in the next 24 hours.
■UNITED STATES
Veteran reporter dies
Nancy Hicks Maynard, the first black female reporter at the New York Times who, with her husband, became publisher of the Oakland Tribune and the founder of a renowned institute that trains minority journalists, has died. She was 61. Maynard died on Sunday, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education said. She had been ill for several months. “She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media,” A. Steve Montiel, a former president of the institute, said in a statement posted on the site. “We’ve lost a leader who made a difference.” After marrying Washington Post reporter Robert Maynard in 1975, the couple helped found the nonprofit institute that bears their name to train minority journalists.
■UNITED STATES
Mars rover eyes big crater
After conquering one Martian crater, the NASA rover Opportunity is setting out to explore a far bigger one measuring about 21km. Whether the six-wheel rover will get there is another story. It must drive 11km across the equatorial plains — equal to its total distance traveled since landing in 2004. “We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway,” chief scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University said in a statement on Monday.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
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