■ India
South tip swallowed by sea
The southernmost tip of India, called Indira Point, has been swallowed by the sea after giant waves struck, the coastguard and police said yesterday. "A coastguard helicopter made a sortie to Indira Point and it has reported it is under the sea," said Milind Patil, coastguard commander of Car Nicobar island. Andamans police chief Sansher Deol added: "Yes, it is under water, the fire station, the wireless station and the main bazaar are all under water. "The lighthouse is in the middle of the sea." The officials said the fate of four international scientists and 16 lighthouse workers who were at Indira Point, named after later prime minister Indira Gandhi, was unclear. However local people on the islet of Campbell Bay which stretched down to the point said they had been swept away to their deaths.
■ Hong Kong
Rally turns into charity
A massive pro-democracy rally planned for Saturday in Hong Kong was cancelled Thursday. Thousands of protesters instead decided to use the opportunity to raise money for Asian tidal wave victims. Lee Wing-tat, a march ordganizer, said that activists would instead take the streets to raise money for victims of Sunday's tsunami. A program of fundraising events is being organized for Jan. 1, expected to include collections at railway stations and prayers for victims in Victoria Park.
■ Vietnam
Rally planners arrested
Vietnam has arrested seven ethnic minority people in the past week for attempts to organize unrest in the restive Central Highlands, state-run media said yesterday. The People's Army daily identified seven men and said they had been apprehended in the highland province of Gia Lai. "They planned a demonstration on Christmas night and would have then instigated people in 49 villages to come to Pleiku to slander the authorities about repressing religion," said newspaper said, referring to the provincial capital. Early Christmas morning, they threw stones and used a knife to oppose a police patrol, and they also cut the telephone line of a People's Committee office in a district, the newspaper said.
■ Japan
Royal engagement official
After years of disappointing speculation about suitors, the engagement of Princess Sayako to a Tokyo city bureaucrat, a commoner, became official yesterday with an announcement by Japan's Imperial Household Agency. Japan had eagerly awaited word of the engagement between Sayako, 35, the only daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, and Yoshiki Kuroda, 39. The wedding will probably occur late next year.
■ Vietnam
Bird flu strain reappears
A 16-year-old girl from southern Vietnam has become infected with the bird flu strain that killed 32 people earlier this year and devastated the poultry industry across Asia. The girl, from the southern Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, is in critical condition in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam's 29th person confirmed with the disease, the girl had slaughtered a chicken she brought with her from Dong Thap province to southern Tay Ninh province, where she was visiting her uncle. None of the eight family members have developed bird flu symptoms, and the house has been disinfected. Health officials earlier this month warned that the world's next pandemic was likely to be a potent mix of avian influenza and a human flu virus -- and that it was likely to emerge from Asia.
■ United Kingdom
Dead woman hid lotto win
After the unmarried Gail German recently died at age 53, relatives and friends were astonished to learn that she had won almost a million pounds (US$1.9 million) on the lottery three years before, but not told a soul. Then came another shock -- all the money was being donated to charity. German, who lived near Newport, in Wales, opted to keep it a secret when she scooped the prize on the national lottery in 2001, the Times reported yesterday. She had adjusted her will to decree that family members should be told of the windfall at her graveside, and then be informed that they would not be seeing any of the money.
■ United Kingdom
Round roads rile women
If men are from Mars, women are from a planet where they don't have roundabouts, according to new research into the way the different sexes bump their cars. Women drivers may not deserve most of the criticism that comes their way, almost invariably from men, but they do have problems when it comes to navigating the circular junction. Data from 125,000 road accidents in Britain last year shows that a disproportionate number of women come to grief while trying to enter or leave roundabouts. Hovering or finally going at the wrong moment because of an impatient tailgater is thought to account for much of the difference.
■ Egypt
Car bomb detonates
Militants detonated a car bomb near the Saudi Interior Ministry in downtown Riyadh on Wednesday and attempted to ram a car laden with explosives into a building housing special emergency forces, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Saudi Arabian police responded by raiding a village in northern Riyadh, killing seven militants, the Interior Ministry said. The statement said 12 people suffered minor injuries caused by broken glass at the building, which houses special emergency forces. Civilians who were close to the scene of the explosion were also injured and sent to hospital for treatment.
■ UAE
Snow stuns emirate
Snow has fallen over the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the first time ever, leaving a white blanket over the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah as the desert country experienced a cold spell and above-average rainfall. Dubai airport's meteorology department said yesterday that snow fell over the al-Jees mountain range in Ras al-Khaimah, which is the most northerly member of the UAE federation. The Gulf News reported that the mountain cluster, 1,737m above sea level, "had heavy night-time snowfall for the past two days as a result of temperatures dropping to as low as minus 5oC," stunning the emirate's residents.
■ Israel
Police indict forgers
The Israeli police filed criminal indictments on Wednesday against four antiquities collectors, accusing them of forging biblical artifacts, many so skillfully that they fooled experts. Some were even celebrated briefly as being among the most significant Christian and Jewish relics ever unearthed. The police and the Israel Antiquities Authority said their investigation focused on several major forgeries, including a limestone burial box, or ossuary, bearing an inscription that suggested that it held the remains of Jesus' brother James. The Antiquities Authority declared it a forgery last year.
■ United States
Laser beam `tracks' airliner
Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 2,591 meters. The beam appeared Monday when the plane was 24.1km from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the FBI said. "It was in there for several seconds like [the plane] was being tracked," FBI agent Robert Hawk said. The pilot was able to land the plane, and air traffic controllers used radar to determine the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights. Hawk said the laser had to have been fairly sophisticated to track a plane traveling at that altitude. Authorities had no other leads. There have been several reports of lasers directed at commercial flights in the past year, the FBI said. The beams can distract or temporarily blind a pilot.
■ United States
Agencies still fighting
More than three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, infighting between federal agencies has so slowed efforts to unify the government's various fingerprint identification systems that most visitors to the US are still not fully screened, Justice Department investigators said in a report issued on Wednesday. Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, warned in the 110-page report, his fourth report on the problem, that the bureaucratic disagreement "creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected." In addition, criminal aliens -- people who committed violent crimes in other countries -- are often not identified before they enter the US, the report said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
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