■ China
Space mission planned
China will launch its second manned space mission next year, state television said yesterday. The Shenzhou 6 will be launched with two astronauts aboard some time in 2005 and will remain in orbit for between five and seven days, China Central Television said. No other details were provided. The official Xinhua News Agency has said that 14 astronauts are being trained for the next mission, including Yang Liwei, the astronaut who flew into space in October aboard Shenzhou 5 in China's first manned space mission.
■ Pakistan
Boat capsizes, 10 drown
A small boat packed with 17 members of the same family capsized in a river in eastern Pakistan, killing 10 people, including two women and three children, and leaving two missing, a police official said on Friday. Five people managed to make it ashore after the accident late on Thursday in the Ravi River near the town of Nankana in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, Babar Sarfraz, a police official, told The Associated Press. Divers recovered 10 bodies but two people were still missing. Authorities said overcrowding caused the accident. Boats in Pakistan are usually poorly maintained and rarely carry life jackets.
■ Cambodia
Fishing trip ends tragically
A remnant of the US's secret bombing campaign against Cambodia more than 30 years ago took the lives of a Cambodian father and son who intended to use the unexploded ordinance to kill fish, local media reported yesterday. Nhin Nhem, 43, a deputy village chief, found a small grenade-like bomb during a walk through the jungle. According to the Khmer-language daily, Koh Santepheap, Nhin Nhem and his 15-year-old son transported the bomb to a river near his home where the pair intended to detonate it in order to kill fish they would then gather. The bomb exploded as soon as they removed the pin, killing father and son instantly.
■ India
Students may wear jeans
The government of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh yesterday withdrew its proposal to ban women from wearing jeans and shirts on the campus of institutions of higher education. A formal proposal was to have been submitted to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati later this week. Bharati belongs to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party government. The suggestion evoked widespread criticism from students, teachers and opposition politicians. The government made a formal announcement that it would not be introducing any dress code for academic institutions.
■ Australia
Heatwave breaks records
Australians sweltered in a record-breaking heatwave yesterday that had families booking into air-conditioned hotel rooms to escape torrid temperatures and orchard owners warning of a ruined harvest. National Climate Centre meteorologist Blair Trewin said the country was reeling from "the most significant February heatwave in the past century." Queensland was expected to post a record high temperature for this time of year of 41?C. In the outback town of Birdsville the mercury hovered at 44?C. In Sydney, where sea breezes temper temperatures all year round, the forecast was for a top of 32?C. Meteorologists warned Australians that global warming meant they should get used to piping summer temperatures.
■ Kenya
Fire ravages Nairobi
Two children died and thousands of people were left homeless on Friday after fire destroyed hundreds of homes in a slum in Nairobi, officials said. Police were unable to put a specific figure on the number of homes destroyed but government officials said they were looking for temporary accommodation for several thousand people. Two children died and their mother was being treated for serious burns. The fire swept through the densely populated district of South B starting on Thursday night and burned through to Friday morning. Some of the residents told reporters they believe the fire was deliberately set in an attempt to drive them off the land.
■ Germany
Fischer soothes Italy
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, trying to salve bruised feelings in Italy, played down on Friday the importance of this week's European "Big Three" summit with France and Britain by saying nothing was decided. "I know that it awakened suspicions in Italy," he said in the Italian parliament in reference to Wednesday's meeting in Berlin. "But no decisions were taken," Fischer said. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, not disguising the irritation the EU's fourth-biggest country felt at being left out, had branded the meeting a "mistake" and said there was no question of a small group pre-empting decisions for others.
■ Serbia
Milosevic allies gaining
Conservative leader Vojislav Kostunica said on Friday he would form a Serbian minority government backed by allies of jailed ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic, a prospect that worries Western powers. Acting President Dragan Marsicanin asked the self-styled moderate nationalist and former Yugoslav president to head a cabinet eight weeks after December's inconclusive election. Kostunica, who helped to oust Milosevic in 2000 after a decade of wars that plunged Serbia into poverty, said he would build a coalition government with liberals and monarchists. He said it could expect the backing in parliament of Milosevic's once-mighty Socialist Party, which said it supported in principle the prospective government.
■ Lithuania
Murder trial for singer
Lithuanian investigators examining the death of the French film actor Marie Trintignant have concluded that she was deliberately killed by her rock singer lover, Bertrand Cantat, and have decided that he will be tried for murder. But in the latest twist to a case that has enthralled France, lawyers for Cantat, the lead singer of a group called Noir Desir, released his version of events as they prepared to defend him against the allegation that he hit Trintignant repeatedly with intent to kill her during a row. Trintignant, 41, the mother of four, died last year of a cerebral hemorrhage after a violent confrontation with Cantat in a hotel room.
■ Brazil
Toddler shoots sister
A 3-year-old girl playing with a handgun shot and killed her 23-year-old sister, media reports said Friday, citing police. The apparently accidental shooting took place on Thursday in Salvador, the provincial capital of Bahia. The girl was at an uncle's house, were she found a 6.35mm pistol. She was playing with the weapon when it fired, shooting the older sibling.
■ United States
Dust storm leaves two dead
A severe dust storm in western Texas caused a multi-car highway collision that killed two people and left 12 injured, local media reported on Friday. More than 30 cars were caught in the pileup on Thursday afternoon near Lubbock, Texas. The two people killed were occupants in a tractor-trailer rig, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported. Several smaller multi-car accidents were reported on nearby highways without fatalities, the paper said. Wind speeds reached more than 100km per hour, with visibility below 400m and at times reduces to practically zero. Power outages and disruptions of air travel were reported across western Texas and eastern New Mexico.
■ United Kingdom
Ritz sells leftover wine
The Ritz Hotel, the upmarket establishment on London's Piccadilly, sells the wine left over by customers in its private dining room to other guests in its main restaurant, British newspapers reported Saturday. The detail came to light in an employment tribunal looking into an alleged racist campaign against a Turkish manager. Edip Adanir, 49, who was sacked as deputy restaurant manager in April last year for allegedly conspiring to steal wine and food to the value of US$1,900, is claiming racial discrimination, unfair dismissal and breach of contract.
■ United States
Teacher's drug plan backfires
An assistant principal who was trying to get a student expelled admitted planting marijuana in the boy's locker, police said. Police say Pat Conroy told them this month that he placed the marijuana in the locker at South Haven High School in Michigan last year because he suspected the boy was a drug dealer and wanted him expelled. The plan failed because a police drug dog didn't find the contraband during a school search last year. Police searched Conroy's office on Feb. 9 and found a drawer filled with packets of suspected marijuana and assorted pills, the police said.
■ United States
Billions visit Mars Web site
Mars is an absolute hit with Earthling Internet users. The Mars Web site, where NASA is showing photos and other information about the progress of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, has received more than one click per person on Earth, NASA said. The number of hits at the Web site reached 6.5 billion on Thursday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. NASA says the amount of interest in the rovers, which landed on Mars in January, makes them the biggest attraction since the beginning of space flight. The rovers will continue their exploration of Mars for several more weeks.
■ United Kingdom
Hawking suffers relapse
The severely disabled British cosmologist Stephen Hawking is back in hospital two weeks after being discharged following treatment for pneumonia, the Times reported yesterday. "Professor Hawking is in hospital where he is being treated for a condition related to his earlier illness. His condition is stable," a Cambridge University spokesman said. The Times said the mathematician's readmission to hospital on Wednesday was delaying a police investigation into allegations he has been assaulted by his second wife, Elaine. A Cambridgeshire police spokesman said detectives still wished to speak to Hawking "alone and without his wife present." Hawking, 62, has released a statement denying being assaulted.
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
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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