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■PHILIPPINES

Landslides, floods kill 17

Seventeen people were dead or missing after two tropical depressions caused landslides and floods in the north and center of the country, the Office of Civil Defense said yesterday. Seven people drowned in floods and swollen rivers, while eight victims were buried in landslides after days of heavy rains. Two people were also missing and feared dead after being swept away by strong river currents, the office said. Nearly 400,000 people were affected by the tropical depressions.



■THAILAND

Five die in southern violence

Suspected Islamist militants killed five people in the south, including a teenager who had his throat slit and his body set on fire, police said yesterday. The 19-year-old Muslim was attacked on Saturday at the rubber plantation in Yala Province where he worked. On the same day in Narathiwat Province, a group of up to eight gunmen in a pick-up truck opened fire on a family, killing a 51-year-old man was killed and injuring three of his relatives, police said. Separately, a Muslim man aged 56 was shot dead at a teashop in Narathiwat on Saturday night by attackers on motorcycles, while a 10-year-old boy and another man were wounded in the shooting, police said.



■AUSTRALIA

Asylum seekers stopped

The navy has intercepted a suspected people-smuggling boat carrying 65 asylum seekers, officials said, the second such vessel stopped in 24 hours off the country’s northwest coast. The HMAS Maitland intercepted the boat on Saturday night near Ashmore Island, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said. Earlier Saturday, the same navy boat stopped another vessel with 83 asylum seekers further away from the uninhabited Indian Ocean island.

■INDIA

Train derails, no injuries

A coach of the Delhi Metro derailed in New Delhi yesterday but there were no injuries, a news report said. Two wheels of the front coach of the metro train went off the tracks near eastern Yamuna bank station early yesterday, leading to temporary disruption of services on the route, IANS news agency reported. “Fourteen passengers were traveling in the train at that time and no one was injured,” an official of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation told IANS. “The number of commuters was low as this was the first train service of the day on the route.”



■HONG KONG

Workers killed at skyscraper

At least three workers were killed yesterday when a lift in the territory’s tallest skyscraper plunged 22 floors, emergency workers said. The elevator in the 118-story International Commerce Center, which is still under construction, fell from the 30th floor to the eighth floor. Workers inside the lift shaft were struck as the lift plunged, and several were pulled unconscious and rushed to hospital, government-run radio station RTHK said. Preliminary reports said at least three people were killed. The 484m tower is to open next year. It will be Hong Kong’s tallest building and will have the third-­highest roof in the world after Burj Dubai and the Shanghai World Financial Center.



■HONG KONG

Maid jailed over bleach

An Indonesian maid began an eight-month jail term on Saturday after putting bleach in a baby girl’s milk as revenge for being sacked. Muhari Lismiwati, 30, admitted putting a drop of bleach into the milk she was preparing for the nine-month-old girl in March, one day before she was due to leave her job. The infant’s mother fed a small amount to the infant who vomited and resisted attempts to feed her more. She then opened the bottle and smelled a strong smell of bleach. The mother called police and Lismiwati was arrested. The baby was admitted to hospital with a reddish throat and discharged the following day, the court heard on Friday.



■HONG KONG

Boy slides out to play

A 12-year-old boy told by his mother he could not go out to play climbed down 19 stories of drainpipe from his family’s high-rise apartment, a news report said on Saturday. A crowd watched in horror as the boy climbed out of his bedroom window and slid down the drainpipe, stopping only once to rest, the South China Morning Post reported. “He took a rest outside the 11th or 12th floor, then gripped the drainpipe and slid down,” one woman passer-by told the newspaper. “He was very fast and only took about a minute.” Police and firemen were called to the scene at Siu Sai Wan estate on Friday afternoon and social workers were following up the case, the newspaper said. The boy was unhurt.



■NEW ZEALAND

Lab mixes up tests

Chris Price, a sixty-three-year-old woman, was told she had a problem with her prostate — a gland that only men have — after a routine blood test to check her diabetes, a newspaper reported yesterday. “I didn’t realize I’d changed sex overnight,” she told the Herald, who published her story under the headline, “Labtests latest balls up.” The mix-up was one of a series of problems experienced in Auckland, the country’s largest city, after the local health board switched all blood tests in the region to the Australian company Labtests last month. Health Minister Tony Ryall has ordered an inquiry after receiving a string of complaints.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Product placement allowed

The government is to lift strict rules on product placement on TV shows in an attempt to boost the advertising revenues of struggling broadcasters, reports said yesterday. Independent broadcasters will be allowed to take payments for displaying commercial products during shows, but the BBC will still be banned, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper said. The ban will also remain for children’s programs across all networks. A senior government source told the paper: “The climate has changed and we are now ready to allow product placement in certain circumstances.”



■KAZAKHSTAN

Dozens die in blaze

Thirty-eight people were killed yesterday when fire ripped through a drugs treatment facility in a city outside Almaty, emergency officials said. There was no information on what caused the fire, which began at about 5:30am in Taldykorgan city, or why dozens of people had apparently been unable to escape. “According to tentative data, 38 people were killed in the burning inferno,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. Rescuers were able to save 40 patients and medical staff, it said, but firefighters were still trying to contain the blaze several hours after it broke out. Prime Minister Karim Masimov immediately called for the creation of a commission to investigate the cause of the fire.



■LIBYA

Al-Megrahi is unwell

The health of the terminally ill man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has deteriorated markedly in the past day, his brother and doctors said on Saturday. Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland last month on the grounds that he has prostate cancer and does not have long to live. “He is at a special ward at Tripoli Medical Center. His condition has deteriorated rapidly since yesterday. He is unable to speak to anyone,” his brother Abdenasser Megrahi said from the Center. “His situation is worrying. His temperature is at 39.5˚C,” he said.



■DR CONGO

Hippopotamus kills soldier

A hippopotamus killed a member of government forces at Virunga National Park while he was fishing illegally, a local environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) said on Saturday. Bantu Lukamba of the IDPE NGO said that Private Sebagendi was killed on Thursday when he was fishing along with five other people on Lake Edward in spite of a fishing ban. “As he could not swim he was devoured by the hippo which had earlier overturned their boat,” he said, adding that the incident was the first of its kind in the park which covers an area of 790,000 hectares. Usually, “they [the military] shoot at the animals,” he said.



■YEMEN

Child-bride dies giving birth

A 12-year-old child-bride died after struggling for three days in labor to give birth, a local human rights organization said. Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding on Friday while giving birth to a stillborn in the al-Zahra district hospital of Hodeida Province, 223km west of the capital San’a. Child marriages are widespread in the country, the Arab world’s poorest country, where tribal customs dominate society. More than a quarter of the country’s females marry before age 15, a recent report by the Social Affairs Ministry showed. Youssef was 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, Ahmed al-Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights organization, said on Saturday.



■BRAZIL

McDonald’s loses case

Fast food group McDonald’s has been ordered to pay US$800 in compensation to a former worker who was given only in-house burgers and fries to eat for his staff meals, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported on Saturday. A court in Riberao Preto awarded the money to Rafael Luiz, 22, who said he should have been given a grocery allowance or coupons to buy his own food for the two years he worked for the firm. The verdict overturned a lower court’s dismissal of Luiz’s case after his lawyer used the 2004 US documentary film Super Size Me, which showed the ill-effects on one’s health of eating only McDonald’s products for a month. McDonald’s said it may appeal.



■CUBA

Revolutionary leader dies

Vice President Juan Almeida Bosque, a revolutionary commander who fought alongside former president Fidel Castro to bring down a pro-US dictatorship, has died. He was 82. An official communique issued through state media said Almeida, the No. 3 official in the country, died late on Friday from cardiac arrest. Almeida was one of just three top leaders to hold the title of revolutionary commander. As a black man in racially diverse Cuba, Almeida was an important symbol of a break with past discrimination. Almeida took part in the 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks, which historians cite as the starting point of the Cuban Revolution.



■UNITED STATES

Elderly man robs bank

Authorities say a well-dressed elderly man carrying an oxygen tank robbed a bank in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla. San Diego police said the suspect on Saturday presented a note demanding money to a teller at the San Diego National Bank. He fled with an unknown amount of cash. It was unclear whether the suspect had a weapon. The robber was described as a tall man in his 70s with white hair, a gray mustache and glasses. He was wearing a white beret, argyle sweater and brown sport jacket. The oxygen tank was in a black bag and connected to the man’s nose with plastic tubing.



■UNITED STATES

Tina Fey wins ‘Palin’ Emmy

Tina Fey received an Emmy Award for her impersonation of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). Accepting her trophy for best guest actress in a comedy, Fey thanked SNL producer Lorne Michaels and her parents, “who are lifelong Republicans, for their patience.” She was honored at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmys, which recognize technical and other achievements for the year and preceded next weekend’s main ceremony.



■VENEZUELA

Earthquake injures 14

An earthquake shook Caracas and nearby states on Saturday, injuring 14 people and causing damage to a few buildings. The US Geological Survey reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 for the quake, saying the epicenter was off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast 110km west of Caracas. The head of Venezuela’s seismological agency, Francisco Garces, put the quake at magnitude of 6.2, followed by an aftershock registering 4.0. Two young people, ages nine and 26, suffered serious leg injuries. Another 12 people had minor injuries, Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said. El Aissami said western Falcon state reported the most structural problems, with seven houses and two other buildings damaged.


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