■ Hong Kong
Boy survives six-story fall
A four-year-old boy survived a six-floor fall yesterday after being left at home alone by his mother in their high-rise apartment. The boy climbed out of a window while his mother took his older sister to school. The mother said the boy had been asleep when she left him. She found him lying outside the apartment block when she returned, a police spokesman said. The boy's condition was described as stable and he did not appear to have suffered any serious injuries.
■ Pakistan
Quake toll rises to 24
The death toll from an earthquake that hit northern Pakistan over the weekend has risen to 24 as authorities struggled to clear blocked roads to carry out relief efforts, state media reported yesterday. Tents, food and medicines were rushed to the disaster area, but snow-fall and landslides have blocked the roads, an official said. The quake, measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale, was followed by an aftershock measuring 5.5. The epicenter was 200km northeast of Peshawar, seismologists said. Residents spent the night under open skies in extremely cold weather as the quake damaged hun-dreds of buildings, witnesses said.
■ Japan
Cult's offices raided
Some 200 police yesterday launched raids nationwide on offices of the Aum Shinrikyo sect responsible for the 1995 Sarin gas subway attack, ahead of the verdict in its founder Shoko Asahara's marathon trial. The Public Security Inves-tigation Agency raided 11 offices and exercise halls
run by the cult, now called Aleph. It was the largest raid on the cult since it was relaunched "as a new religious group" in 2000. Asahara has been on trial for more than seven years as
the alleged mastermind of Aum attacks, which resulted in the deaths of 27 people. He is accused of master-minding crimes including the Tokyo subway attack which killed 12 people and injured thousands and the murder of the entire family of an anti-Aum lawyer in 1989.
■ New Zealand
PM slams opposition
Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday that the main opposition leader would divide the country "down the middle" with his bid to abolish policies that he says favor the indigenous Maori. Last month, National Party leader Don Brash said if he came to power he would eliminate preferential treatment for the Maori by abolishing the seven parliamentary seats set aside for them and removing race-based laws set down to protect Maori. Brash's policies "will pit rich against poor and white against brown if it ever got traction," Clark said. She said some of his claims were "absolute fiction," while others "are outright lies and some are outright hypocrisy."
■ Bangladesh
Strike shuts down country
A third general strike in less than a week shut businesses and schools yesterday as the Awami League, the main opposition party, turned up the pressure on Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia's government to step down. Authorities deployed hundreds of extra police and paramilitary troops in the capital Dhaka and in the port city of Chittagong to try to avert violence. Witnesses said police detained about 40 protesters during raids in and around the league's main party office. Business leaders say each day of production lost to strikes costs the country at least US$60 million.
■ Germany
Police create SMS dragnet
German do-gooders seeking to help crack crimes will henceforth be able to communicate with police via mobile telephone text messages, Interior Minister Otto Schily announced Sunday. "The SMS can be of invaluable assistance in hunting down missing persons, in particular children," Schily said in a statement. Civilian informants could now also help police track down fugitive prisoners or criminals, the statement said, adding that the service was the first of its kind in the world. Police SMS messages requesting help will be sent to civilians who have volunteered for the program and are registered in an official directory. Professionals who have contact with the public, like taxi drivers and public transport workers, for instance, would be particularly helpful, the ministry said.
■ United States
Students plan readathon
A college drama group with a soft spot for William Shakespeare began a marathon session on Sunday evening to read all the legendary playwright's works in 24 hours. Unabridged. The Wellesley College Shakespeare Society is hoping their efforts will land them in the Guinness Book of Records as the first to read the works in such a short time. The reading was to include 39 plays, 154 sonnets and at least five poems from sunset on Sunday to sunset yesterday.
■ Serbia
Political deadlock ends
A six-week political deadlock in Serbia appeared to end on Sunday with two parties agreeing to join a minority coalition despite probable support from a group led by jailed ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic. Monarchists and liberals agreed separately at the weekend to join a three-party coalition led by the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) of former Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist seen as a likely new prime minister.
■ Russia
More survivors `unlikely'
Emergency workers digging through the wreckage of a collapsed Moscow swimming pool gave up hope of finding more survivors early yesterday, with at least 25 people confirmed dead and up to 13 bodies believed to be still in the ruins. The ministry for emergencies said that workers had stopped looking for survivors from the Transvaal Park watersports center, where the massive roof collapsed onto bathers on Saturday evening. Interfax news agency quoted the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzkhov, as saying that between nine and 13 bodies were believed to be still under the wreckage. The emergencies ministry earlier said that 24 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage since the collapse, and one person taken out alive had since died in hospital.
■ Israel
Settlers hold protest march
Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip staged a show of defiance Sunday against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to uproot them, staging a march to Jerusalem and standing by plans to build three new settlements. Meanwhile in Gaza City, more than 150 Palestinian journalists observed a one-day strike to protest recent physical attacks to which they have fallen prey. The settlers plan to converge on Sharon's official Jerusalem residence late tomorrow, where they hope to be joined by hundreds of right-wing supporters.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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