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■CHINA

Rioters arrested in Yueyang

Police detained 11 people accused of rioting during a strike involving 1,000 cab drivers, state media reported. Cab drivers in Yueyang, Hunan Province, went on strike to demand a reduction in monthly fees paid to their cab companies, Xinhua news agency said late on Saturday. Xinhua said dozens of drivers started parking their cabs on Friday in front of the city government building. Rioting started when some of the drivers smashed cabs and hit other drivers who did not join the strike, Xinhua said.



■CHINA

Another prison inmate dies

Another inmate has died at a detention center, state media reported yesterday amid growing public concern about conditions at the facilities, following a series of fatalities. Chen Hongqiang, a drug addict sentenced to 10 days in detention, was found comatose on Saturday in his cell in the southeast city of Fuzhou and died after hospitalization, Xinhua news agency said. Authorities have launched an investigation into the sudden death, according to the agency. The incident took place just three weeks after another detainee died in the same city after he “fell off his bed and hurt his head.”



■SINGAPORE

New mass-food poisoning

The city-state has been hit by the second outbreak of mass food-poisoning case in two weeks, as a dozen people fell ill after eating the same food, media reported on Sunday. The Health Ministry said it was notified on Saturday of 12 cases, all stemming from soup eaten at a restaurant the night before, Channel News Asia said. Authorities had closed a market where some food stalls were being investigated after two women died last week from eating the food and another lost her two-month-old fetus the previous week.



■AUSTRALIA

Brawl erupts at casino

Police deployed their riot squad early yesterday when a brawl involving bikers erupted at a Sydney casino, in the latest skirmish in a bitter war between rival gangs. Police said up to 20 people, both men and women, used chairs and glasses as weapons when the fight broke out in the casino at about 1:30am. The brawl spilled out onto the street and the riot squad was called in to bring the fracas under control, New South Wales police said. Police arrested 10 men and one woman, most of whom were allegedly linked to the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang, and charged three of them with affray.



■INDONESIA

Bombs found in Papua

Three improvised bombs were found yesterday near a police post in Papua Province where police and suspected separatists clashed last week, police said. The bombs, which did not explode, were left in a garbage bin near a police post in Abepura town where police shot a man dead during a clash on Thursday during elections. “An investigation is underway to reveal the motive,” Papua police spokesman Nurhabri said, adding that an anti-terror police squad was investigating the type of explosives used. A garbage collector found the bombs early yesterday, he said. Police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said earlier that the pro-independence Free Papua Movement was suspected of being behind attacks across the province.



■JAPAN

Koalas infected with virus

Nearly 90 percent of koalas in zoos are infected with a virus believed to cause leukemia in the marsupials, a report said yesterday. Researchers at the Institute for Virus Research Kyoto University and the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums tested the blood of 50 of the 62 koalas kept across the country, the Yomiuri Shuimbun said. The koala retrovirus — believed to cause leukemia and lymphoma — was detected in all 39 northeastern koalas, and in four of 11 southern koalas, the English version of the Yomiuri said. There are two main subspecies of wild koala — the northeast Australian koala and the south Australian koala.



■MALAYSIA

Police accused of abuse

Police faced fresh accusations of abusing detainees yesterday after a suspect was hospitalized in intensive care for allegedly drinking paint thinner in custody. Authorities claim Anwar Mansor, a 23-year-old man arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession, grabbed a bottle of thinner while being questioned on Wednesday and drank it before officers could stop him in a central Selangor state police station. Anwar’s family and opposition politicians demanded an independent investigation, insisting Anwar had unexplained bruises and that the police version of the incident seemed dubious.



■AFGHANISTAN

Dozens of insurgents killed

The police chief in Zabul Province claimed yesterday that local forces backed by US-led coalition air support killed 22 suspected insurgents in the country’s volatile southern region. The militants ambushed a convoy of local soldiers and international troops in Shinkay district on Saturday night, sparking a fierce battle that lasted for four hours, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said. Shortly after the battle erupted, local police forces and coalition aircraft joined the battle and killed 22 insurgents, Sarjang said. “The bodies of the militants are still on the battlefield and four of them have been identified to be Pakistani nationals,” he said.



■NETHERLANDS

Bar patron shoots four

A man pulled a gun in a crowded Rotterdam cafe after an argument on Saturday and shot a patron inside, then rushed outside where he shot three more people, one fatally, police said. Panic erupted in the cafe when the first shot rang out, but several people chased the gunman when he ran outside, overpowered and disarmed him, and wrestled him to the ground until police arrived, police spokesman Remco Spaninxs said. The man, a 44-year-old Rotterdam resident, had gotten into an argument in the bar earlier in the evening and was asked to leave, Spaninxs said. He returned later with a hand gun and began shooting.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Brown aide resigns

A senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown resigned on Saturday after reportedly circulating scurrilous rumors about political opponents. Special adviser Damien McBride stepped down after a newspaper published a summary of e-mails he allegedly sent to prominent political blogger Derek Draper, a supporter of Britain’s governing Labour Party. Draper said that the e-mails, sent in January, were intended to provide fodder for a gossip Web site called the Red Rag that would attack members of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party, but the Web site never got off the ground. “In truth these [rumors] were a bit juvenile and inappropriate and some were in bad taste, though I have to admit some were also brilliant and rather funny,” Draper wrote. The Telegraph and other media said the e-mails — complete with the purportedly lurid allegations in them — were due to be published yesterday.



■EGYPT

Gaza-bound driver shot

Police shot dead a Bedouin in the northern Sinai on Saturday, with the man found to be driving a truck loaded with munitions and heading for Gaza, a security official said. Both sides exchanged fire in the incident some 40km west of the city of Arish. In a separate development, security sources disclosed that security forces have arrested five people with about US$1 million that they were planning to smuggle to Gaza through tunnels in Rafah. The sources said the incident occurred two weeks ago. The came a few days after Egypt announced it had arrested 49-member group for planning attacks in Egypt.



■ISRAEL

Glitch sparks scramble

Ben Gurion Airport declared a state of emergency on Saturday afternoon and the air force scrambled fighter planes after an incoming flight lost contact with the control tower, sparking fears it had been hijacked. The incoming plane, a Delta Airlines flight from New York with 105 passengers on board, managed to let the fighters know that technical problems had prevented it from contacting the Ben Gurion control tower, Israeli media reported. The flight, escorted by two fighters, landed safely at a side runway and no injuries or damage were reported.



■TURKEY

Illegal spirits kill 11

Eleven people have died in the last three weeks after drinking illegally produced spirits, the Agriculture Ministry said on Saturday. In a statement the ministry added that it was stepping up measures to stop bootleg spirits entering the market. It said inspections had focused on Bursa Province, where most of the deaths had occurred, and the Mediteraranean resort of Antalya, where three German youths recently died after drinking bootleg spirits. Methanol has been blamed for the 11 deaths.



■UNITED STATES

Three killed in shooting

Gunmen in dark clothes kicked down an apartment door in a troubled New Orleans-area neighborhood and opened fire, killing two children and a woman, authorities said. A third child was in critical condition after the shooting around 4am, and investigators were searching for suspects, said Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s spokesman Colonel John Fortunato. Dominique Sterling, 19, was shot in the back; her 23-month-old son, Robert Claiborne and a six-year-old boy named Four Overstreet both were shot in the head, in bed. An 11-year-old girl, also found in a bedroom, had been shot more than once and was in stable condition on Saturday evening, Fortunato said. Her name wasn’t released. Investigators found marijuana and crack cocaine in the apartment, Fortunato said.



■CANADA

Avalanche kills snowmobiler

A 24-year-old snowmobiler was killed in an avalanche in the Rocky Mountains, police said on Saturday. The victim was snowmobiling with friends on Friday when he set off the avalanche by riding up a steep slope in the Monashee mountain range in Jasper National Park on the border between British Columbia and Alberta. “Other snowmobilers were eventually able to locate and dig out the victim and start CPR,” police said, but the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation attempt failed to revive the victim.



■UNITED STATES

Two killed in plane crash

Two people flying in a 1946 airplane died in a crash in Illinois, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The single-engine aircraft went down on Saturday in a corn field near the city of Sandwich, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said. The DeKalb County coroner’s office identified the dead as Randall Hougham, 53, who was flying the plane, and passenger Lauren Hamilton, 22. The coroner’s office said the crash happened just north of the Sandwich Airport. FAA records show the plane was a Ercoupe 415-C.



■UNITED STATES

Texan lawmaker apologizes

A Texan lawmaker who came under fire for saying that Asian-American voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans” has apologized for her remarks. State Representative Betty Brown, a Republican, issued an apology on Thursday for the comments made during a House Elections Committee hearing last Tuesday. Brown said the remark came during a conversation on the difficulty of translating names and that she was referring to transliteration issues when she asked a representative of the Organization of Chinese-Americans whether Asian-Americans could adopt names that “we could deal with more readily here.” Ramey Ko, the representative, had testified that people of Asian descent have problems voting because they sometimes list legal names that had been transliterated in addition to common English names on their driver’s licenses or other identification.



■UNITED STATES

Racy ad interrupts Mass

A Philadelphia cable television network’s early morning broadcast of a Good Friday service at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different — a racy 30-second Girls Gone Wild ad. Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander said the 2am Friday programming glitch was the result of a required test of the Emergency Alert System. Such tests are usually done late at night. The test tunes viewers to a preselected channel that would provide information in the event of an emergency.
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