■ New Zealand
Man shoots cash machine
An angry customer shot up a bank automatic teller machine (ATM) in the Christchurch suburb of Fendalton yesterday. "In essence somebody had an interaction with our ATM which they didn't much enjoy and came back with a gun," Westpac Bank manager Paul Gregory told Television New Zealand. "We understand that there is some frustration involved from time to time in dealings with ATMs for whatever reason but it does seem quite an extreme reaction," he added. Police said they were looking at security camera footage and guarding the machine until it was repaired.
■ China
AIDS activist detained
Chinese police have detained a noted AIDS activist, Chinese and overseas sources said yesterday, apparently over a planned trip to Tiananmen Square to commemorate democracy protesters who died in the 1989 crackdown. Hu Jia, a crusader for AIDS awareness and other causes, was detained on Saturday as he was trying to organize a small group of people to head to the square on Tomb Sweeping Day, which fell on Sunday, a Chinese source said. "We went to the police station to try to rescue him, but police told us they did not have him," said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The US-based AIDS Policy Project said Beijing police took Hu into custody outside his home on Saturday morning.
■ China
Conjoined twins separated
Chinese doctors in southwestern Sichuan province have successfully separated a pair of five-month-old conjoined twin girls after a six hour operation, state media reported yesterday. The two sisters, born last October, were in good condition after the Saturday operation at a hospital attached to the Luzhou Medical College, in Luzhou city, Xinhua news agency said. Sisters Lianzi and Lianxin were joined at the chest and abdomen. Their livers were fused together, but the twins did not share any single organ, the report said.
■ Vietnam
Old bomb kills two
Two men were killed as they were trying to recycle a 30kg warhead left over from the Vietnam war. Nguyen Dinh Dong, 30, and Le Van Phu, 37, had found the device on Saturday near the 17th parallel, the line which divided north and south during the war known in Vietnam as the American war, said Vo Ta Minh, the head of the commune where the men were killed. Dong and Phu decided to salvage the explosives and scrap metal from the warhead which would fetch around US$2 per kilogram, said Minh from Quang Tri province, 580km south of Hanoi. The 10kg device exploded, killing the two men instantly, Minh said.
■ Nepal
Rebels attack police
Hundreds of Maoist rebels attacked a police station overnight in southern Nepal, killing at least nine policemen and injuring six. Twenty police officers were still missing and possibly taken hostage after about 400 rebels raided the post around midnight in Yadukuna village, about 300km southeast of the capital, Katmandu, police said. A gunbattle raged for three hours, said police official Tokendra Hamal. Telephone lines in the village were knocked down, cutting communication links between police forces. District police chief Rewatiraj Kafle said that security forces recovered the bodies of nine policemen and discovered six wounded officers, who were airlifted to hospitals.
■ France
Terror cells raided
The French intelligence service DST yesterday morning launched large-scale raids against suspected Islamic terrorists in two Paris suburbs. According to reports, the raids were in connection with the terror attacks in Morocco which killed 45 people in Casablanca in May of last year, including three French citizens. Fifteen people were arrested in the raids. Of the nine men in custody, six to eight were suspected of having connections with the Moroccan terror group GICM, the French interior ministry said. The DST, which is responsible for counter-intelligence, suspects there are numerous terrorist sleeper cells in the Paris area which could carry out future attacks.
■ Iraq
US shuts down highways
The US-led coalition has shut down the highways from Baghdad to Jordan due to ongoing military activities in the area that is home to the rebel towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, the coalition yesterday. "The highways from Baghdad to Jordan will be closed indefinitely due to military activities," the US consulate said. Residents in Fallujah said several people were killed or wounded early yesterday when US troops fought insurgents in the town, 50 km west of Baghdad. A journalist said US forces sealed all the roads leading to Fallujah, barricading residents inside the restive town.
■ Algeria
Voting set for Thursday
Algerians vote Thursday in a presidential election dominated by an intense rivalry between Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his former right-hand man, Ali Benflis. The four other candidates are Trotskyite Louisa Hanoune, the first woman to run for president in Algeria or anywhere else in the Arab world; radical Islamist Abdallah Djaballah; Said Sadi, a secularist with strong backing from Algeria's Berber minority and Ali Fawzi Rebaine, a nationalist. Bouteflika ran alone for president in 1999 after all six other contenders pulled out, charging fraud. Afterwards he launched a reconciliation program intended to end the country's civil war. Thousands of Islamic fighters have laid down their arms but the insurgency has not been contained completely.
■ Russia
Annan arrives for talks
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Russia on Sunday for a three-day visit focusing on the war in Iraq and unrest in Kosovo, amid efforts by Moscow to raise the UN's profile in resolving both conflicts. Annan was due yesterday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and newly-appointed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The talks would focus on ways of strengthening the legal framework for peacekeeping operations carried out under a UN mandate, foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said.
■ Serbia
Eleven children feared dead
Eleven children were feared dead after a bus taking a party of Bulgarians home from a school trip to Dubrovnik plunged into a swollen river in a ravine in Serbia, police said yesterday. Fast-flowing waters in the 50m-deep gorge of the River Lim, in the mountains between Serbia and Montenegro, were hampering rescue efforts. The bus from the Bulgarian town of Slistoft had 48 children and teachers aboard, with two drivers.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
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