■ China
Tainted milk recalled
Authorities in southern China ordered an emergency recall of a company's milk powder after it sickened more than 150 school-children, state media reported. Children at three kindergartens in Guizhou province suffered vomiting, diarrhea and fever earlier this month after drinking milk made from the powder, which contained staphy-lococcus bacteria, the reports Monday said. China has been cracking down on low-quality milk powder after at least a dozen infants died from malnutrition blamed on counterfeit baby formula. In Guizhou, health authorities urged buyers to immediately stop drinking Shanhua-brand milk.
■ Singapore
Gory graphics for smokers
Every time smokers in Singapore reach for a cigarette, they will see graphic color images of a cancerous lung, a dying baby, a brain oozing blood or a patient on his deathbed in the latest drive to cut smoking, a newspaper said yesterday. Starting in August, the six images, to be printed on cigarette packages, will also include diseased gums and a family suffering secondhand smoke in silence, the Straits Times reported. Tobacco com-panies were given a year to implement the new rules after they were passed in parliament in August. Below the images will be written health warnings such as "Smoking can cause a slow, painful death" and "Smoking harms your family."
■ Australia
Appeal fails in alcohol suit
A woman who went to a club for a champagne breakfast but ended up staying the whole day and getting drunk lost an appeal to hold the club responsible for an accident that befell her on the way home. Rosellie Cole, 45, failed in her appeal that said the South Tweed Heads Rugby League Football Club was not responsible for what happened once she left the club. Cole, whose blood-alcohol count would have put her five times over the legal limit for driving, was hit by a car while walking home from the club and seriously injured. She had claimed compensation, saying the club should have refused to serve her after it was obvious she was drunk.
■ Thailand
Sex tycoon acquitted
A court yesterday acquitted Thailand's best-known sex tycoon on charges of employing underage girls as prostitutes in his massage parlors, handing him a legal victory ahead of his election bid for Bangkok mayor. The Bangkok Criminal Court ruled there was insufficient evidence to convict Chuwit Kamolvisit, who shot to prominence last year by going public with claims he had plied the police for years with expensive gifts and free services as payoffs to stop them from harassing him. Chuwit hoped to turn his popularity -- stemming from the embarrassment that the largely disliked police were put through -- by starting a political party and later announcing he would run for mayor in August elections.
■ India
Sikkim has highest ATM
An Indian bank, which operates what it bills as the world's highest ATM in Sikkim, is hoping the cash dispenser will ring in business once a trade route to China is reopened. The automatic teller machine, set up at an altitude of 4,023m along the route that links the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to Sikkim's capital, Gangtok, runs on a generator when its fuel is not frozen. In its six months of operation, only soldiers deployed on the border have used the ATM.
■ United States
Japanese astronauts ready
Three Japanese were among NASA's newest crop of astronauts, the first class selected in four years. On Monday, the Japanese and 11 Americans were sworn in at the Johnson Space Center. Basic flight instruction, which will be taught at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, is the first portion of their training program. The Japanese astronauts said they want to contribute to an international project to build a space station. "We, as Japanese, want to make a contribution,'' Naoko Yamazaki. 33, told Kyodo News by telephone after attending the ceremony.
■ United States
Ringleader pleads guilty
The ringleader in the nation's deadliest immigrant-smuggling scheme pleaded guilty in connection with the deaths of 19 people abandoned in a sweltering truck trailer. Karla Patricia Chavez, 26, could get up to life in prison without parole at sentencing Sept. 13. The Honduran woman pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to harbor and transport illegal immigrants in a manner that led to their deaths. Prosecutors said they will recommend a lighter sentence for Chavez if she cooperates against others in the case, including the truck driver, Tyrone Williams, who could get the death penalty.
■ France
Murderer gets 30 years
A 54 year-old Spanish drifter was given 30 years in jail by a French court Monday for the rape and murder of British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson in a Brittany youth hostel eight years ago. Francisco Arce Montes, who was described in court as a serial offender with a string of convictions and arrests across Europe dating back to the early 1980s, was told he will not be eligible for parole for at least 20 years. The prosecution had asked for life. The verdict by the nine-member jury brought to a close one of France's most notorious murder cases.
■ Canada
Publishing magnate dies
Jack McClelland, who headed one of Canada's most influential publishing houses, died at age 81. Under his leadership, McClelland and Stewart became the biggest name in Canadian publishing. The company and its head became a strong voice for Canadian culture and a national identity. The list of authors who rose to fame under McClelland's influence reads like a Who's Who of Canadian literature: Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Leonard Cohen and Peter C. Newman, to name a few.
■ United States
Fruit may protect vision
Eating fruit regularly earlier in life may help ward off macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in older adults, a study said on Monday. But the report said there appeared to be no strong protective effect from vegetables, vitamins or carotenoids -- the compounds that make some fruits and vegetables red, orange or yellow -- as some earlier research had suggested. The study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston looked at data from 77,562 women and 40,866 men who were followed for from 12 to 18 years as part of long-term studies tracking them for a variety of health issues. It found that both men and women who consumed three or more servings of unspecified fruit a day had a 36 percent decreased risk of developing macular degeneration.
■ Dr Congo
UN unable to verify reports
Authorities arrested eight more security-force members in connection with a failed coup attempt last week, while UN officials complained they could not reach an area near the Rwanda border to investigate new reports of violence. Local correspondents for UN-funded radio in Congo reported skirmishes Monday between pro-government Mayi Mayi militia fighters and renegade ex-rebels 40km north of the city of Bukavu, on Congo's far eastern border with Rwanda. But members of the UN's 10,800-strong peacekeeping force couldn't confirm the latest clashes because mines and armed groups were blocking UN officials from reaching the area, UN spokesman Sebastien Lapierre told the reporters in Bukava.
■ Iraq
More Lebanese captured
Two more Lebanese men employed by companies working in Iraq have been kidnapped there by groups seeking ransom payments for their release, the Lebanese daily newspaper As-Safir reported yesterday, quoting diplomatic sources in Beirut and Baghdad. The paper said the men -- named by security sources as Georges Fernando and Jamil Dib -- were abducted on Monday. It also confirmed that a third man, shown earlier in a video screened by an Arabic-language TV station had been held for the past month.
■ United States
God stays in pledge
Millions of American children will continue to start their school day by pledging allegiance to "one nation, under God" after the US Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a challenge to the oath from the father of a 10-year-old girl. Michael Newdow, a Californian atheist, had sued Congress, US President George W. Bush and others to remove the words from the pledge. He argued that the phrase contradicted the first amendment of the US constitution, which guarantees that government will not "establish" religion. But in its decision the Supreme Court dodged the issue of the separation of church and state, and instead chose to dismiss the case on the grounds that the father, who is in a custody case with the girl's mother, had not established the right to speak for the child.
■ European Union
Prodi successor sought
Germany and France said on Monday they were working very closely on finding a successor to Romano Prodi as head of the EU Commission and expected a candidate to be named soon. "I expect the Irish presidency will make a proposal that can be agreed on," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a news conference following a meeting in the western German town of Aachen with French President Jacques Chirac.
■ United States
Writer, neighbor slain
Los Angeles police on Monday arrested a man suspected of decapitating an elderly Hollywood screenwriter before taking his head as a grisly trophy and slaughtering his neighbor. The killer murdered the 91-year-old scriptwriter Richard Lees in his home on Sunday before leaping a garden fence with the severed head and slaying his next victim, retired doctor Morley Engelson, 67. Police said they had brought Kevin Graff, 27, into custody in connection with the grisly double murder just minutes after making a public appeal for information. Lees had written scripts for the US comedy show Abbott and Costello and for the western series Rawhide and a number of B-movies.
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
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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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