■India
Heatwave kills over 1,000
A red alert was sounded yesterday in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as the weather office warned that heat wave conditions which have already killed 1,065 people would worsen. Government officials said state authorities were considering keeping schools closed for at least a week until annual monsoon rains arrive. Andhra Pradesh's state capital Hyderabad had recorded a temperature of 44?C even before mid-day yesterday. While Andhra Pradesh has borne the brunt of the heat wave, elsewhere in India 30 people have died from heat-related ailments since rising temperatures engulfed India's Gangetic plains mid-May. In neighboring Bangladesh, reports yesterday said 11 more people have died in a heatwave that has been searing that country for the past week, bringing the death toll to 62.
■ Vietnam
Gang boss found guilty
The reputed "godfather" of Vietnam's criminal underworld was found guilty of seven crimes yesterday, including ordering a hit on a rival gang member, in a case that has entangled officials from the ruling Communist Party. Truong Van Cam, better known as Nam Cam, was convicted of murder, assault, gambling, running gambling dens, sheltering criminals, bribery and helping others to flee the country. His trial, along with those of 154 other defendants, is viewed as a test of how serious the Communist nation is taking its vow to wipe out widespread corruption.
■ China
Girl fatally desired
A primary school beauty killed herself and four of her friends and admirers drank poison in torment over their tangled relationships, a news report said yesterday. The 13-year-old girl, known as Miao Miao, killed herself by drinking poison on May 19 because so many boys in the school loved her, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily newspaper. She left a letter saying she had been wrong to let so many boys fall in love with her. Three of her admirers and one female school friend then took poison themselves in the days following Miao Miao's death but were rushed to hospital and saved.
■ Indonesia
Jakarta asserts sovereignty
The Indonesian government wants to relocate 300,000 families to dozens of uninhabited islands close to its borders to prevent neighboring countries from claiming them, a local newspaper reported yesterday. Stung by a December court decision that handed ownership of two islands to Malaysia, the government says it plans spend the next five years populating 88 islands.
■ New Zealand
Sexual predator charged
A 35-year-old schoolteacher has admitted a sexual relationship with a boy aged 10, telling police she loved him like a son, news reports said yesterday. The woman, Faryn Ripine Matthews, told police they had intercourse 10 to 20 times over a period of about eight months, the High Court in Rotorua heard, when she pleaded guilty to three representative charges of sexual violation of a minor. The boy lived next door to the woman at the time, and she taught him briefly in 2001 when the offences took place but resigned her job in September and confessed to police, the New Zealand Herald reported. She could be jailed for up to 20 years when sentenced on June 20, and the judge told her a prison term was inevitable.
■Canada
More cattle to be tested
Another 650 cattle in Canada will be slaughtered and tested for mad cow disease after DNA testing failed to confirm the origin of the lone cow infected so far, an investigator said Tuesday. The animals from five Alberta farms will be transported, killed and have samples of their brains checked in laboratories. The official had said Monday the investigation of any possible spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, could conclude by the end of the week. Adding 650 more animals for testing was expected to add at least a few more days. That is bad news for the Canadian beef industry, which wants the US and other countries to lift bans on Canadian beef imports as soon as possible.
■ United Kingdom
Geldof condemns G-8
Rock star turned Africa campaigner Bob Geldof arrived back in London from famine-hit Ethiopia on Tuesday and attacked G-8 leaders for failing to deliver on their promises to developing countries. The former singer said the Group of 8 summit of industrialized nations, in Evian, France, had been more concerned about "recriminations over Iraq" than the problems of "AIDS, trade, food and debt that were destroying Africa". He said the summit had been "hijacked" by the rift between the US and Europe over the war in Iraq, rather than directing its attention to the principal problems affecting the Third World.
■ United States
Rudolph pleads innocent
Eric Rudolph, the Olympic bombing suspect who told jailers he survived five years on the run eating wild game, acorns and lizards, pleaded innocent Tuesday in a deadly bombing at a Birmingham, Alabama abortion clinic. Rudolph pleaded innocent before federal Magistrate Judge Michael Putnam for the bombing of New Woman All Women Health Care, where an off-duty police officer was killed and a nurse critically injured on Jan. 29, 1998. He could face the death penalty, but Assistant US Attorney Michael Whisonant gave no indication whether the government will seek such a sentence.
■ United States
Smuggler pleads guilty
A former Fox News technician who stole a dozen paintings from an Iraqi presidential palace and took them to the US pleaded guilty to smuggling Tuesday. Benjamin James Johnson, 27, of Alexandria, could be sentenced to up to five years in federal prison for the single count, but his attorney, Christopher Amolsch, said prosecutors have indicated they will not seek jail time. The paintings were taken from the palace of Uday Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's sons. Most of the paintings depicted Uday and Saddam.
■ Denmark
Unbeliever suspended
A Danish Lutheran pastor who openly declared he doesn't believe in God and other basic tenets of Christianity was suspended Tuesday from preaching in his parish church until further notice. Pastor Thorkild Grosboell shocked Denmark's state-supported Lutheran church establishment when he made it known that he believed in neither the existence of God, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ nor life after death. Grosboell's immediate superior, Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel, Grosboell said, "There is much room for flexibility in the state church, but it is not so flexible as to deny God's existence."
■United Kingdom
Thai madams jailed
Two Thai sisters who controlled a prostitution racket that brought hundreds of women from Thailand to work in the British sex industry were jailed on Tuesday. Bupha Savada, 45, and Monporn Hughes, 40, were part of a vice ring that ran about 15 brothels in London and southern England, prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court. The gang arranged for women, some illegal immigrants, to travel from Thailand and promised them work as cleaners or maids. But prosecutor Brendan Kelly said instead they were put to work as prostitutes and had to raise thousands of pounds to buy their freedom from the gang.
■ Morocco
Bombings suspect arrested
Moroccan authorities arrested a French national suspected of involvement in the May 16 suicide bombings in Casablanca that killed 43 people, the official MAP news agency said. Quoting sources close to the investigation, the agency said Robert Richard Antoine-Pierre, who used the aliases Lhaj and Abu Abderrahmane suggesting that he converted to the Islamic faith, was arrested in the northern city of Tangiers. Thirty-one people were killed in the attacks along with 12 suicide bombers who almost simultaneously targeted five sites in the city, including a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel and a Jewish community center.
■ Finland
HIV rapist jailed
A Finnish man who had unprotected sex with 23 victims over seven years in the full knowledge that he had HIV has been jailed for 10-and-a-half years. According to the daily Helsingin Sanomat, one woman contracted HIV after having sex with him and the court in Espoo ordered him to pay her 87,000 euros in damages. His total bill for damages came to 265,000 euros. The case scandalized Finland when it came to light last year after a 16-year-old girl he had raped came forward. None of his victims knew about his condition and some had slept with him willingly. When they saw his face on TV and heard what he had done many called the police and had Aids tests.
■ United States
Arab immigrants guilty
Two Arab immigrants accused of gathering intelligence on potential targets from Disneyland to an air base in Turkey were convicted of conspiring to support Islamic terrorists, the first guilty verdicts involving a "sleeper cell" uncovered after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A third man was found guilty only on a fraud charge, and a fourth was acquitted of all counts. The case began on Sept. 17, 2001, with a raid on a Detroit apartment that turned up videotape and sketches of what investigators said were potential terrorist targets, including Las Vegas and Disneyland.
■ Spain
Train crash kills five
At least five people have been killed and some 40 injured in a train collision in eastern Spain, Transport Minister Francisco Alvarez-Cascos told journalists yesterday at the scene. He said another 21 people remained unaccounted for after the crash late Tuesday involving a main-line passenger train from Madrid to Cartagena and a freight train in the Albacete region. Authorities feared the people could be trapped in the mangled wreckage. The dead were the two drivers of the freight train and the driver, mechanic and ticket inspector on the passenger train, Alvarez-Cascos said.
Agencies
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
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