■INDIA
Train crash claims 16 lives
Rescuers searched through the wreckage of smashed carriages yesterday after a train derailed in the east, leaving 16 people dead and almost 200 injured, rail officials said. The high-speed Coromandel Express, connecting the eastern metropolis of Kolkata and the southern city of Chennai, derailed on Friday night while changing tracks at Jajpur. Witnesses said 12 carriages had jumped the tracks while traveling at high speed. “The train had acquired speed and minutes later it crossed the station and just toppled,” said Hemant Bhalotia, whose 70-year-old father died. The accident came on a day when Federal Railways Minister Lalu Yadav took credit for turning round the giant state-run transport network, which was once headed for bankruptcy. The Press Trust of India news agency reported that Yadav has ordered an inquiry into the accident as well as compensation for families of the dead and those injured.
■INDIA
‘Stone man’ killer sought
Police are searching for a killer — dubbed the “stone man” for his choice of weapon — who has struck for the sixth time in less than two months. The murderer’s latest victim was a young man whose badly battered body was recovered on Friday from outside a Hindu temple in Guwahati, the main city in the northeastern state of Assam. Police said the modus operandi was almost the same in the five other murders in Guwahati, whose victims were all men. The attacker targets the victim before dawn, bludgeoning him around the head with a stone-like object. The killer appears to be targeting beggars and homeless people, police said. The killings come as The Stoneman Murders, a film based on the unsolved serial murders of pavement dwellers in Mumbai in 1983, hit movie theaters across the country this week.
■CHINA
Military causes quake scare
Military exercises caused earthquake panic to break out when detonations made the ground shake, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday. About 100,000 people fled onto the streets on Wednesday in the cities of Hengyang, Zhuzhou and Chenzhou in Hunan Province as news about the possible earthquake was spread over mobile phones and the Internet. Thousands slept outdoors out of fear of a quake despite repeated assurances from government authorities that no quake had occurred.
■CHINA
US charges alleged spy
A woman was charged on Friday with exporting miniature controls for small unmanned aircraft to China. The US government said the controls were the world’s smallest and involve a technology that cannot be shared with China. The devices can be used to fly small military reconnaissance planes. Yaming Nina Qi Hanson of Silver Spring, Maryland, is accused of taking the controls to China last August without a required export license. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a US$1 million fine. Qi Hanson and her husband, Harold Hanson, arranged over e-mail to buy the controls from a Canadian company, MicroPilot, the complaint said. Company officials told the couple they could ship the controls to the US but the couple would have to get an export permit to send the controls to another country. Harold Hanson said the controls were going to be used by a model airplane club in Xian, China. When Canadian officials asked why automated controls would be used for model airplanes that are typically flown manually, Hanson replied that “typical of Asian men, these modelers want the very best product on the market.”
■INDIA
Court sentences two to die
A court sentenced a businessman and his domestic employee to death on Friday for the murder of a young girl — one of 19 victims in a case that has shocked the country. Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surinder Koli were found guilty on Thursday of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Halder, and face trial on 18 similar counts plus charges of abduction. Most of their alleged victims were children. There was nationwide revulsion in December 2006 after police recovered skulls, bones and body parts from sewage drains near Pandher’s house — dubbed the “House of Horrors” — in Noida, a wealthy satellite city of New Delhi. Koli confessed to cannibalism and necrophilia. Judge Rama Jain called the gruesome crimes the “rarest of rare” in declaring the sentence. India has not carried out an execution since 2004, although death sentences are still handed down.
■SINGAPORE
Uncle sentenced for abuse
A man was sentenced to 18 years in prison and 16 strokes of the cane for sexually abusing two of his nieces, the father of whom was also jailed for raping one of the girls, a newspaper reported yesterday. The Singapore High Court was told on Friday that the cleaner, 39, who was taking care of his sickly sister’s daughters, began abusing the eldest girl in 2001 when she was nine, the Straits Times said. The abuse ended in 2005 when the girl threatened to tell her teacher and father about it. He continued to live with the family and turned his attention to the younger girl, who was then eight. The elder girl eventually reported the case to her teacher in April. Investigations found the father had raped one of his daughters in 2006. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and 18 strokes of the cane a month ago.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Madoff case claims life
A former soldier killed himself after losing his life savings in an alleged US$50 billion fraud run by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, news reports said on Friday. William Foxton, 65, who had served in the British Army and more recently worked as a defense contractor in Afghanistan, died from a single bullet wound to the head in the southern English port city of Southampton on Tuesday, police said. News reports said his death was a suicide and quoted his son, Willard, as linking it to the loss of his life savings of close to £1 million (US$1.45 million) in the alleged Madoff fraud.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Manhunt called off
A nationwide hunt for a suspected murderer was called off on Thursday after a man was found hanged in a derelict building. Greater Manchester police found the body, believed to be George Appleton, 40, in the Blackfriars area of Salford in northern England, just 100m from where his red Ford Escort was abandoned this week. Appleton was wanted by police on suspicion of killing his former girlfriend, Clare Wood, 36, whose burned body was found at her home in the area. A formal identification has yet to be made. Appleton met Wood, a mother of one, on a dating Web site. He was unemployed and lived nearby, at Adelphi Court in Salford.
■GERMANY
Honor killer gets life in jail
An Afghan-born man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for murdering his sister in a case alleged by prosecutors to have been an “honor killing.” Morsal O, aged 16, was stabbed 23 times on May 15 last year, a day after she approached welfare officials in Hamburg for protection from her brother, Ahmad-Sobair O, now 24. The brother had objected to the pretty schoolgirl’s Western lifestyle that included wearing fancy clothes and staying out all night. The judge spoke of a “bloodbath” that the accused deliberately planned after all other measures “to discipline” his sister had failed. Pandemonium broke out in court after the verdict was read out, with relatives and friends of the accused screaming at the judge and banging on the bullet-proof glass surrounding the spectators gallery. One family member had to restrain the accused’s mother from jumping out of a window, while other relatives attacked reporters and threatened them.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bishop castigates police
A bishop who was arrested for taking photographs of his children perched on a rooftop said on Thursday he may take legal action against police. Neighbors called police after seeing Open Episcopal Church bishop Jonathan Blake’s sons on the roof of the house in London. Blake said the boys, aged 7 and 8, were wearing harnesses and never in danger. He took the photographs for a school competition. London police arrested Blake on Jan. 29 and referred the case to their child abuse investigation unit, but released him 24 hours later without filing charges. Blake said the police punched and kicked him when they came to arrest him.
■FRANCE
Former spy to be released
A Paris judge is ordering a former spy who was convicted on bribery charges but received a presidential pardon to be freed from prison. A judicial official says Jean-Charles Marchiani will be freed tomorrow. The official spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, in accordance with judicial policy.
■UNITED STATES
Man laid to rest with llamas
A northeast Ohio farmer who died of cancer has been laid to rest with the help of some of the llamas he raised on his farm. Two of Terry McCrone’s llamas made up an honor guard at his funeral on Friday at Perry Christian Church. Four others from a statewide drill team joined them, wearing purple ribbons as they lined up outside the church. The llamas also escorted a hearse to Perry Cemetery, the News-Herald newspaper reported. The 61-year-old McCrone died on Feb. 7. The Reverend Bob Ladygo of Bible Baptist Church said McCrone’s llamas would visit him at his window after he became sick.
■UNITED STATES
Human traffickers convicted
Four Guatemalans and one Mexican were convicted of trafficking women and forcing them into prostitution in Los Angeles, the Justice Department said on Thursday. The five were found guilty on Wednesday of “conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and importation of aliens for purposes of prostitution” a statement said. All five now face life imprisonment and four will serve at least 15 years behind bars under minimum sentencing rules. Investigators said the group — most of whom were members of the same extended family — had targeted young uneducated girls from Central America. “There were at least 10 victims,” the Justice Department said.
■ARGENTINA
Penguins are starving
Penguins nesting off the country’s coast are starving because changing ocean patterns have forced their mates to swim 40km farther than they did a decade ago to find food, researchers said on Thursday. “They also have to swim another 40km back and they are swimming that extra 80km while their mates are back at the breeding grounds, sitting on a nest and starving,” said Dee Boersma, a University of Washington biology professor. Overfishing, pollution and climate change have contributed to the loss of fish stocks near the Punta Tombo animal preserve about 1,600km south of Buenos Aires, Boersma said. The colony has shrunk by more than 20 percent to 200,000 breeding pairs from 300,000 pairs 22 years ago.
■UNITED STATES
Sensitive computers missing
Eighty computers have been lost, stolen or gone “missing” at a major US nuclear weapons lab, the nonprofit watchdog group Project On Government Oversight said on Friday. The group posted online a copy of what they say is an internal letter outlining what appear to be worrisome losses at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The letter said that 13 lab computers were lost or stolen during the past year, three of the machines taken from an employee’s home in January. Another 67 computers are deemed “missing.” “The magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued,” it said.
■UNITED STATES
Behavioral problems costly
Mental illness, substance abuse and behavioral problems among children and young adults cost the country US$247 billion a year in treatment and lost productivity alone, an expert panel said on Friday. The panel, set up by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, which advise policymakers, urged the White House to set prevention goals and coordinate government action. The panel looked at the financial toll from mental illnesses including depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia, as well as drug and alcohol abuse and behavioral problems by people up to age 24.
■INDIA
Train crash claims 16 lives
Rescuers searched through the wreckage of smashed carriages yesterday after a train derailed in the east, leaving 16 people dead and almost 200 injured, rail officials said. The high-speed Coromandel Express, connecting the eastern metropolis of Kolkata and the southern city of Chennai, derailed on Friday night while changing tracks at Jajpur. Witnesses said 12 carriages had jumped the tracks while traveling at high speed. “The train had acquired speed and minutes later it crossed the station and just toppled,” said Hemant Bhalotia, whose 70-year-old father died. The accident came on a day when Federal Railways Minister Lalu Yadav took credit for turning round the giant state-run transport network, which was once headed for bankruptcy. The Press Trust of India news agency reported that Yadav has ordered an inquiry into the accident as well as compensation for families of the dead and those injured.
■INDIA
‘Stone man’ killer sought
Police are searching for a killer — dubbed the “stone man” for his choice of weapon — who has struck for the sixth time in less than two months. The murderer’s latest victim was a young man whose badly battered body was recovered on Friday from outside a Hindu temple in Guwahati, the main city in the northeastern state of Assam. Police said the modus operandi was almost the same in the five other murders in Guwahati, whose victims were all men. The attacker targets the victim before dawn, bludgeoning him around the head with a stone-like object. The killer appears to be targeting beggars and homeless people, police said. The killings come as The Stoneman Murders, a film based on the unsolved serial murders of pavement dwellers in Mumbai in 1983, hit movie theaters across the country this week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema