■CHINA
Fireworks truck explodes
A truck carrying gunpowder to a fireworks factory exploded, killing four people, destroying three vehicles and tearing up chunks of the highway, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. At least 35 people were also injured in Saturday’s accident on the road near Xiaogan, Hubei Province, Xinhua said. “The blast cut the road up to 10 meters long and one meter deep. More than 700 square meters of road surface were blown up,” Zhang Liang, a highway administration official, was quoted as saying. The truck was carrying 5 tonnes of gunpowder from Liuyang in Hunan Province to a fireworks factory in Hebei Province, the report said. The truck’s three occupants, including the owner of the cargo, were detained by police.
■INDIA
Singh flies to Russia
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew to Russia yesterday on a visit to cement ties between the two allies and finalize a deal to expand cooperation on nuclear energy. Singh’s two-day trip, his sixth to Russia as prime minister since 2004, was also designed to firm up defense deals that have been hit by delays in delivery, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Singh will hold talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as part of an annual leadership meeting between the two countries that forged a strategic partnership deal in 2000, officials said. The prime minister, who visited Washington last month, said he hoped the Russia trip would focus on defense, civil nuclear energy and science issues.
■CHINA
Police reward for porn sites
Authorities have offered rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,465) to Internet users who report Web sites that feature pornography, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. However, the censors’ latest campaign against content that harms public morality appears to have encouraged Internet users to look for porn online. Within the first 24 hours, a hotline set up on Friday by Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center was flooded with more than 500 phone calls and 13,000 online tips, Xinhua said. The center is looking for Web sites and mobile phone-accessible sites that contain obscene material or advertise sex products, the report said. Rewards ranging from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan will go to the first person to report each Web site, the center said.
■JAPAN
Swine flu deaths reach 100
The number of deaths in the country from the A(H1N1) swine flu virus has hit 100, Kyodo news agency reported yesterday. The latest fatality was reported in Kyoto, where a 74-year-old man had died after infection, the news agency quoted the local city office as saying. The man had an underlying illness, it said. The flu strain had caused at least 7,826 deaths worldwide as of Nov. 27. Flu transmission is active in East Asia and it remains “stably elevated in Japan,” but may be decreasing slightly in cities there, the WHO said.
■INDONESIA
Police nab roo smuggler
Police said on Saturday they had arrested a man believed to have smuggled 10 rare kangaroos by boat from New Guinea. East Java maritime police officer Widarmanto said that the police had caught the man on Friday off the coast of Surabaya with the red kangaroos. “When we caught him, five of the red kangaroos were already dead. The police then safeguarded the other five,” Widarmanto said.
■IRAQ
Election law in limbo
Parliament met on Saturday to vote on a new electoral law for polls early next year, but no quorum was reached and the session was postponed until yesterday, speaker Iyad Samarrai said. “There are only 113 members present and therefore no quorum. A new session will take place tomorrow [Sunday] at 11am,” he told members of parliament. There are 275 seats in the legislature and at least 138 members must be present for a session to go ahead. President Jalal Talabani had called Saturday’s session to vote on a draft law to govern legislative elections, urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the law, without which the general election can not proceed.
■UNITED STATES
Waco mammoth on display
A site where dozens of prehistoric mammoths died in a landslide and flooding some 68,000 years ago has opened to the public in Waco, Texas. The fossils were discovered in 1978 by two men hunting for snakes. They took one of the bones to a Baylor University museum official who identified it, triggering an archeological dig. Baylor and the city preserved the remains for two decades and, following a community fundraising effort, a permanent pavilion was built over the site, which opened to the public for the first time on Saturday. Visitors can observe the mammoth remains from walkways above the dirt where the fossils remain encased. Legislation is pending to make the site a national monument and part of the National Park Service.
■UNITED STATES
Parachutist electrocuted
Authorities say a man died after parachuting from a cellphone tower at night and hitting high-voltage power lines. Pinal County sheriff’s Lieutenant Tamatha Villar said that 23-year-old Darrell Dunafon and two friends broke into a cell tower site about 48km south of Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday night and were parachuting off the approximately 122m-tall antenna. Dunafon’s parachute tangled in nearby 12,000-volt power lines and he was shocked with a live wire. Villar said the two friends called for help and rescue crews turned off the power and cut Dunafon down.
■HONDURAS
Truck overturns, 11 killed
A flat-bed truck overloaded with 26 people plunged off a mountain road and down a ravine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring everybody else on board, highway police said on Saturday. The accident occurred late on Friday in Meambar, Comayagua department, 130km north of the capital Tegucigalpa, police said. The small truck was so overloaded with riders that its driver lost control and swerved over the side of the road into a deep ravine, they said.
■BRAZIL
Suspected bombers nabbed
Sao Paulo police arrested seven members of a neo-Nazi group suspected in a June 14 bombing during a gay pride parade that injured 22 people, police said on Friday. The four men and three women arrested are members of the “Hooligan Impact” group suspected of setting off a homemade bomb inside a bar in the city’s gay district after a gay pride parade, the police’s Racial Crimes and Hate Crime unit said. Two of the suspects were arrested 10 days ago and five others were picked up on Friday, unit chief Margarette Barreto said. They will be charged with organized crime and with injuring 12 people, police said, adding that only 12 of the 22 injured people came forth to press charges after the bombing.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS