■ 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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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