PAKISTAN
Bus crash kills 12 children
At least 12 children were killed and two wounded when the bus taking them to school plunged into a canal in Kashmir yesterday, police said. The accident took place near Mirpur town, 230km south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. “So far we have found the bodies of 12 children from the canal,” senior local police official Chaudhry Munir Hussain said. He said the bus driver had been speeding when he lost control of the vehicle, which had a total of 18 people on board.
INDIA
Land mine kills 10 police
Police say Maoist rebels have triggered a land mine explosion in the east, killing 10 policemen. A police official, Vivekanand, who uses one name, said yesterday that 10 officers were killed in the attack in Chhattisgarh state. Three others were injured in the attack, which took place close to midnight on Thursday. According to police, rebels shot and killed five officers in the state earlier on Thursday.
CHINA
Landslides kill 34
Torrential rain in two drought-stricken central provinces triggered landslides and brought down houses, killing at least 34 people and leaving 30 missing, state media said yesterday. More than 60,000 people were evacuated after downpours hit Xianning city in Hubei Province late on Thursday, the China News Service said. Nineteen people were killed and five were missing as water levels in the city rose to 2m. In Yueyang, in nearby Hunan Province, 15 people were killed and 25 were missing, Xinhua news agency said. The two provinces were among the worst hit by a severe drought in recent months that hit millions of hectares of farmland in central and southern parts of the country along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Guangdong and Fujian provinces are forecast to be hit by a tropical storm over the weekend with heavy rain and strong winds, Xinhua added.
CHINA
Save a cow, eat a dress
The dress worn by Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan (高圓圓) looked good enough to eat. It was made of lettuce leaves, part of an effort by animal rights group PETA to encourage consumers to go vegetarian as meat consumption in the nation keeps on rising. Draped in the dark green, form-hugging leaves, Gao also sported a necklace made of gleaming red chili peppers. “After going vegetarian, I feel so much lighter,” Gao told a media event. “When I first started the vegetarian diet, I was not used to it and so I ate starchy foods in big amounts, and gained a little bit of weight. Still, I felt much more energetic.” Chinese, historically, had a vegetable-heavy diet, but as incomes and living standards have rising among the nation’s growing middle-class, people are eating more meat. On average, each person consumes 55kg a year.
NEPAL
Body of climber found
Rescuers have removed the body of a Japanese woman who was swept away by an avalanche while trying to scale a mountain. The body of 63-year-old Masue Yoshida was flown by helicopter to Kathmandu yesterday and taken to a hospital, where relatives and representatives from the Japanese embassy received it. The avalanche struck Yoshida and her Nepali trekking guide on Saturday while they were trying to scale the 5,844m Naya Kanga peak in Rashuwa district. Rescuers have not yet found the body of the guide.
CROATIA
EU Cabinet to give approval
EU Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding said yesterday the EU Commission will give the green light for the Republic of Croatia to join the union, with membership likely to start by 2013. Reding said the negotiations with the Balkan nation could be wrapped as talks on reforming the judiciary have been successful. Zagreb started membership talks around half a dozen years ago and would become the second former Yugoslav nation to join following Slovenia.
NIGERIA
Clintons admire Jonathan
Former US president Bill Clinton and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton both admire President Goodluck Jonathan — but for different reasons. At a UN AIDS meeting on Thursday, the former US president shared the stage with the Nigerian leader, who was dressed in the traditional caftan and black bowler hat of his Niger Delta home, congratulating Jonathan on his recent election. “We wish you well,” Bill Clinton said. “I can tell you the secretary of state tells me your hats are always cool.” The attendees at the meeting burst into laughter and then applauded loudly. “And I envy your name,” Bill Clinton went on to more laughter. “If I’d had a name like Goodluck, I might still be in office.”
NETHERLANDS
Resistance worker confesses
A former resistance worker confessed to murdering a suspected collaborator 65 years ago, only to find out years later her victim was saving Jews from Nazi persecution, authorities said on Thursday. “At the beginning of the year I received a letter. It was written by a 96-year-old lady, almost 97, who admitted to murdering Felix Gulje in 1946,” Leiden Mayor Henri Lenferink said in a press release published on the town’s Web site. Atie Ridder-Visser confessed to shooting Gulje, an engineer, on March 1, 1946, in the university town about 40km southwest of Amsterdam. Ridder-Visser, who later received a medal for her work in the resistance, at the time suspected Gulje of having collaborated with the Nazis. It was later proved that Gulje helped Jews escape Nazi persecution, he said. “The murdered Mr Gulje sheltered Jewish refugees under his roof in World War II. He also financially assisted other families helping refugees,” Lenferink said. “She [Ridder-Visser] said to me: ‘If I had known, I certainly would not have done it. We did it based on the information we had at the time,’” Lenferink told public television NOS. Lenferink said Ridder-Visser could not be prosecuted as the case was closed according to the law in March 1964, 18 years after it was committed.
UNITED KINGDOM
Girl’s ‘Bucket List’ is net hit
A cancer-stricken teenage girl said on Thursday she had been overwhelmed by messages of support from around the world after writing an online “Bucket List” of things she wanted to do before dying. Alice Pyne, 15, created an Internet blog in which she described her fight against Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells. On her list, she has included making everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor, swimming with sharks, meeting boy band Take That and getting a purple iPad. Messages of support and offers of help quickly flooded her Web page and it became one of the most talked about subjects on microblogging site Twitter. “Oh dear and I thought that I was just doing a little blog for a few friends!” she wrote after her site attracted huge attention. Pyne revealed the management of Take That had arranged for her to see the band after reading her blog.
CUBA
Corruption probe nets 11
A court has convicted 11 more people in a wide--ranging corruption case that already ensnared a Chilean businessman, who is a longtime friend of former president Fidel Castro, the businessman’s brother and a government minister. An official statement read on Thursday on state-run television said the court sentenced members of the new group — a mix of company executives and government functionaries — to between three and five years in jail. Since taking over the presidency from his brother in 2008, Raul Castro has led an anti-corruption drive that has seen many top government ministers ousted.
UNITED STATES
FDA expands warning label
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the warning label on a group of prostate drugs on Thursday, saying they may increase the risk of a more serious form of prostate cancer. The FDA is updating the warning information on a group of drugs including GlaxoSmithKline’s Avodart and Merck & Co’s Proscar, which are used to shrink the prostate. While the drugs have been shown to reduce the risk of prostate cancer overall, the FDA said the drugs were linked to an increased risk of more serious cancers. The agency is basing its conclusions on a review of two studies in which about 27,000 men aged 50 and older used the drugs for several years. The FDA said the risk of high-grade prostate cancers is small, but doctors should be aware of it.
PERU
Alberto Fujimori hospitalized
Former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year jail term for corruption and rights abuses, was hospitalized on Thursday due to a relapse in his tongue cancer, his doctor said. “He will be hospitalized for three days to undergo a series of evaluations because his tongue is bleeding in an area where the lesion is cancerous,” family doctor Alejandro Aguinaga told reporters. The former president had been bleeding for three weeks, but “refused to go to hospital,” the doctor said. “But we have seen his health fail. He was showing discomfort in the affected area and has lost weight, so we brought him to the hospital.”
UNITED STATES
Girl says she drowned baby
Police say a five-year-old girl told social workers that she drowned an 18-month-old boy in the bathtub to get him to stop crying. Police said on Thursday that the toddler’s death last week is being investigated as a possible homicide, with the five-year-old considered a possible suspect. The toddler died on Friday last week while a teenager was watching several children. An adult had left the home to pick up the father of the boy to take him back to his St Louis, Missouri, home. Police say the five-year-old got upset when the toddler wouldn’t stop crying so she took him into the bathroom and drowned him. The girl has not been arrested.
UNITED STATES
Romney shuns Iowa poll
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will not participate in a key test of strength in the early voting state of Iowa in August, his campaign said on Thursday. The strategic decision means Romney can avoid spending time and money trying to gather support in the Aug. 13 straw poll in Iowa and instead concentrate on a national organization and focus on New Hampshire, where he stands a far better chance. In the 2008 election cycle, Romney spent US$10 million competing in Iowa only to finish second.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in