■CHINA
Farmers attack police
Hundreds of angry tea farmers attacked a police station in Guangdong Province after rumors spread that a man had been killed in custody for fighting for farmers’ rights, state media said yesterday. The attackers damaged the station with stones and bricks and set police vehicles on fire in Saturday’s incident, the China Daily said of the latest in a string of attacks on police stations. The riot lasted more than four hours before being brought under control, it said, giving no other information on damage or injuries. Tea farmers in the city of Yingde have complained for years that authorities have not provided them with required medical insurance, social pensions and unemployment compensation, the paper said.
■CHINA
Three officials jailed
A court in Sichuan Province sentenced three village officials to jail terms of seven years each for taking bribes to distribute earthquake relief funds, state media said yesterday. The officials had organized a lottery for victims of last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake in which the winners would get government funds intended to help quake-hit families get back on their feet, the Beijing News said. The officials in Jinya village near the city of Mianyang then accepted bribes from households to influence the results, it said. The three sentenced were the village’s Communist Party secretary Zuo Duyuan, the director of its governing committee An Xinwu and village comptroller Yi Deyin, the report said.
■AUSTRALIA
Fake doctor arrested
For 30 years Paul Dean appeared to live a saintly life tending to orphans and helping heal lepers in impoverished villages in India. Dean, who has been arrested on child sex charges, was in fact a failed businessman who fled Australia in 1976 on a forged passport owing creditors hundreds of thousands of dollars, news reports said on Monday. Dean wandered the subcontinent for 30 years, passing himself as a university professor, medical practitioner, Catholic brother and priest. He amputated limbs and performed eye operations and said Mass for Mother Teresa’s missionaries, national broadcaster ABC said.
■NEW ZEALAND
One in three teens had sex
At least one-in-three 16-year-olds questioned in a survey of 500 youngsters have had sexual intercourse, a newspaper reported yesterday. Half of the teens surveyed by the New Zealand Council of Educational Research said they had been in love. The Family Planning Association said the results showed a need for better sex education. “This shows how important it is for parents to talk to their children around sexual health and sexuality,” Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond told the Press newspaper.
■AFGHANISTAN
Flooding, landslides kill 94
Heavy flooding and landslides have killed 94 people and left thousands of families homeless in the north since last Wednesday, the UN said on Monday. Some 8,000 houses in 207 villages have been totally or partially destroyed after heavy rain across five provinces, affecting 13,689 families, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement. The flooding damaged more than 100 bridges and about 600km of roads. About 30 people were also killed by flooding in northern areas of the country earlier this month. The mud homes that house most Afghans in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
RSS