■ India
Police protect tourist spots
Police deployed yesterday around top attractions in Indian Kashmir after an attack on a popular hotel left four people dead and raised fears for the tourist industry, which had rebounded amid a peace process. Police armed with automatic rifles patrolled the shores of Lake Dal in the summer capital, Srinagar, to protect tourists staying in houseboats set under the Himalayas. "The deployment was made overnight at all the favorite tourist spots," said Salim Beigh, the head of Kashmir's tourism department. Islamic rebels on Saturday hurled a grenade that exploded in the dining hall of the Purnima Hotel in Pahalgam, killing four Indian tourists and wounding 28 other people, according to police.
■ India
History re-examined
India's new left-leaning government said yesterday it has appointed a panel of experts to examine history textbooks which the previous administration was accused of distorting to vilify religious minorities. Three "top-level academics" will study the textbooks, said Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh, who oversees education policy. "We hope they will give us their report in 15 days," Singh said. Singh's predecessor, Murli Manohar Joshi, a hardliner in the Hindu nationalist government which lost April-May elections, began a program of rewriting history textbooks in 2001. Joshi said the revisions were needed to instil national pride and portray "equality" among religions.
■ China
Whistleblower's trip nixed
A Chinese military surgeon who petitioned the government to admit it made mistakes in crushing the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 has been refused permission to leave the country to visit his daughter, a human rights group said. Dr. Jiang Yanyong and his wife Hua Zhongwei have been forced to cancel their yearly visit to their daughter in the US, the US-based group Human Rights in China said in a statement dated Friday. The couple disappeared earlier this month, in the days leading up the 15th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and their children suspect they have been unlawfully detained, the group said.
■ China
Mine owners arrested
Chinese police have arrested two mine owners on charges of covering up a deadly accident by sending bodies for secret cremations and paying victims' families to keep quiet, the government said yesterday. The accident on June 3 in northern China's Hebei province killed at least 12 coal miners, but the mine's owners only reported one death, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The owners, Ma Xuelin and Ma Dengfeng, have been arrested on charges of being responsible for the accident, in which miners died from a build-up of poisonous gas, the agency said.
■ Australia
'Roo goes swimming
A small kangaroo jumped more than 2m over a backyard fence in suburban Sydney and landed in a swimming pool, a newspaper reported Sunday. David Punton discovered the wallaroo -- a short, stocky variety of kangaroo found in the wild across Australia -- in his pool after his two barking dogs woke him at dawn, The Sunday Telegraph said. The report didn't mention the size of the animal, but an adult wallaroo can grow up to 2m long from head to tail. The wallaroo was rescued, the newspaper reported.
■ United Kingdom
Servant says charges false
A former servant to Britain's royal family who said he witnessed heir to the throne Prince Charles engaged in a sexual act with another male staff member has admitted he made the allegation up, a report said late Saturday. George Smith, a former valet whose lurid allegations last year threatened to severely damage the British monarchy, told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that the story was a complete fabrication. He sold his story to another British newspaper last November, but a court injunction banned the British media from printing details of the allegation. This left Charles' household in the curious position of issuing a formal statement denying the incident took place, yet not being able to say what exactly was being denied.
■ Canada
Poll bad news for Liberals
The ruling Liberals, facing the prospect of defeat in the June 28 election, received more bad news on Saturday with a poll showing they would be crushed in the important French-speaking province of Quebec. At the start of the year, the Liberals of Prime Minister Paul Martin predicted they would pick up most of the 75 parliamentary seats in Quebec, Canada's second-most populous province, but the party's fortunes were hurt by a patronage scandal that erupted in February. The CROP poll for La Presse and Le Soleil newspapers showed the Liberals at 32 percent in Quebec, compared with 44 percent for the separatist Bloc Quebecois. CROP said that meant the Bloc could pick up 54 seats in Quebec. "There is a profound [voter] unhappiness which is deepening. The Liberals are really in free fall," CROP vice president Claude Gauthier told Le Soleil.
■ United Kingdom
Cancer progress predicted
By the year 2025 the first signs you have cancer may be picked up by a tiny chip implanted under the skin that will send a warning signal to your local hospital when it detects changes to your DNA. A report out today looking at cancer treatment in the next two decades predicts there will be millions more living with cancer into older age, because of better diagnosis and therapy. But the report, compiled by more than 50 specialists, predicts that, although we will enjoy a far better chance of survival, there will be enormous funding implications. It calls for more creative thinking to deal with the inequalities between rich and poor. The Expert Review of Anticancer Therapy spells out that fear of cancer will decline because so many people will live with it into old age.
■ Germany
Libya talks progressing
Negotiators in talks between Germany and Libya over a compensation deal for victims of a 1986 Berlin nightclub bombing have so far failed to reach an accord but made some progress, one of the lawyers involved in the case said. An agreement in the talks which resumed Friday would be viewed as crucial to Tripoli's full return to the diplomatic fold. A press conference originally scheduled for yesterday has been canceled as no final decision has been made, said Stephan Maigne, one of the lawyers of the 164 casualties who were not US nationals. A German court in 2001 sentenced four people to up to 14 years in prison and ruled that the Libyan state was partially responsible for the attack on the La Belle nightclub, which killed two US servicemen and a Turkish woman and left more than 250 other people injured.
■ United States
Poll favors Edwards for VP
Senator John Edwards, the smooth-talking populist who emerged from the nominating campaign as John Kerry's chief rival, is favored among registered voters to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate, according to an AP poll. But his name on the ticket does not automatically boost Democratic prospects. A Kerry-Edwards pairing ties with the Republican tandem of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, which is no better than Kerry's current showing in head-to-head matchups against Bush, according to the AP poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
■ United States
Tourist leaps from helicopter
A passenger nearly caused the wreck of a sightseeing helicopter over the Grand Canyon when he leapt from the aircraft at an altitude of 1,200m in an apparent suicide, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The passenger was on an aerial tour on Thursday over the canyon in a private helicopter with several other tourists on board when without warning he unbuckled his safety harness, lunged toward a door, unlocked it and jumped. The pilot tried to stop him from opening the door, but she was unable to react in time, the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff reported.
■ Germany
Voting results scrutinized
German voters began going to the polls Sunday for a total of eight elections at the community, state and European level in results which will be closely watched as a litmus test of the popularity of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats. Nationwide, Germans were called to the polls in the voting for a new European parliament, an event which failed to generate much interest and even less controversy in the past several weeks. In addition, the eastern German state of Thuringia is holding elections for a new state parliament, while six other German states are holding votes at the local government level.
■ United States
Probe approaches Phoebe
The Cassini-Huygens international space probe has neared the largest moon of Saturn, the planet it is to orbit on June 30, NASA said on Saturday. The probe passed within 2,068km of the moon Phoebe on Friday, according to data received by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The probe's final course correction is scheduled for June 16, before it becomes the first man-made object to orbit Saturn. The US$3 billion international mission is to carry out a four-year study of Saturn, its rings and larger moons. During the probe's four-year mission, it will orbit Saturn 76 times and execute 52 close encounters with seven of the planet's 31 known moons, NASA said.
■ Lithuania
Early elections held
Polling opened in Lithuania yesterday for an early presidential election, sparked when the Baltic state became the first European country to impeach its head of state, Rolandas Paksas, two months ago. Voters could also cast ballots in the EU newcomer's first elections to the European Parliament. Ballot boxes opened at 7am at the country's 2,039 voting stations on a cloudy day, and were due to close at 8pm. Lithuania's 2.6 million voters have five candidates to choose from to lead them for the next five years. Seventy-seven year-old former president Valdas Adamkus, who led Lithuania from 1998 until last year before being ousted by Paksas in the 2002 elections, is the favorite to win, according to opinion polls.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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