■ Australia
Cop-killer found dead
A motorist who shot dead an Australian policeman with the officer's gun and escaped in a police car early yesterday was himself later found dead some 20km away, police said. Senior Constable Tony Clarke was alone in his car at Launching Place, east of the city of Melbourne, when he was shot dead. Police believe he became involved in an argument with a motorist he tried to give a breath-test. The driver grabbed the officer's service revolver and shot him dead before escaping in the police car. The body of the suspected killer was found 20km away at Mount Evelyn with the abandoned car and gun. Clarke, 37, who was married with a two-year-old son, is the third police officer to be murdered in Victoria state in seven years.
■ Afghanistan
Woman stoned to death
A woman has been stoned to death for adultery, police said yesterday, the first such incident in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power. Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court's decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said. "She has been stoned to death," provincial police chief, General Shah Jahan Noori, confirmed to Reuters, adding a team has been sent to the area to investigate the incident further. Adultery is forbidden in the Muslim country and under Islamic sharia law the penalty can range from flogging to stoning.
■ China
Flood traps 60 coal miners
A coal mine flood in northeastern China early yesterday trapped more than 60 miners, the government said. The flooded mine is in Jiaohe, a city in Jilin Province, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief dispatch. There was no word on the cause. Rescue work was under way, said a city worker who gave only her surname, Wang. Accidents in China's coal mines kill thousands each year. The government has repeatedly vowed to do more to crack down on safety violations, but explosions, floods, gas leaks, cave-ins and other disasters are reported every week.
■ India
American `buys' PM's house
The intelligence department is investigating reports that a fraudster sold an American businessman the prime minister's residence in the heart of New Delhi recently, a leading daily reported yesterday. The businessman forked out 35 million rupees (US$802,600) for the house that was up for sale on a Web site as a "huge sprawling mansion in the heart of Lutyen's Delhi with 24-7 running water and electricity," the Hindustan Times said. He soon received the title deed for the house and arrived in the Indian capital late in March to take possession of the house for an office he planned to set up only to discover he had been cheated.
■ Philippines
Senior diplomat murdered
A senior diplomat was murdered yesterday by three men who broke into her home in Manila in an apparent botched burglary, police said. Alicia Ramos, 64, was strangled to death while her sister, Leticia, suffered lacerations on her arms before escaping, Jovito Gutierrez, chief of police in the capital's Makati district, told reporters. Ramos, a former ambassador to Singapore and New Zealand, was an assistant secretary for Asia Pacific affairs at the foreign ministry. Her sister, Leticia, also worked at the foreign ministry. An initial investigation suggested the motive was robbery, Gutierrez said.
■ France
Anti-nuclear marches held
Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators marched Saturday to commemorate the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and demand an end to government plans to build a nuclear plant in western France. The protesters, braving rainy conditions, lined up to form the French words for ``Nuclear kills the future, let's abandon it'' -- visible from the sky -- as part of the demonstration in western Nantes. Police and organizers from activist group Sortir du Nucleaire estimated that about 6,000 people took part in the rally, which centered on remembrance of the April 26, 1986, explosion in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Many marches were planned across France this week to mark the anniversary. The marchers also protested government plans to build a pressurized-water nuclear reactor in the northwestern region of Normandy in 2007.
■ France
Tons of chemicals stolen
Police suspect Basque separatists were behind the theft of several tonnes of chemicals that could be used to make bombs from a factory in western France, officials said. Armed men wearing masks stole some 4 tonnes of sodium chlorate from a fertilizer plant in the western town of Saint-Benoit on Friday. Investigators suspected the armed Basque separatist group ETA was involved, the officials said, adding that a factory guard told investigators that at least one suspect spoke with a regional accent from southwest France. Authorities believed the factory's alarm system had been deactivated, and that the four suspects had used at least two vehicles -- expediting the theft, the officials said.
■ United States
Skydiver hits plane, dies
A skydiver lost both his legs when he struck the wing of a plane as he came down and later died from his injuries. Cinematographer Albert "Gus" Wing III had already opened his parachute when he hit the plane that he had jumped from over an airport in DeLand, Florida. His legs were severed at the knees. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
■ Colombia
Fight with FARC breaks out
A pair of Colombian military helicopter gunships struck at guerrilla positions in the mountains above this rebel-held town Saturday as the government tried to wrest control of the mountainous region away from the Marxist fighters. The engagement came amid a rebel offensive along at least a 22.5km-front that indicates the insurgents feel confident enough -- for the first time in more than five years -- to stand their ground and confront government forces, instead of carrying out hit-and-run attacks. An escalation of rebel violence has long been expected in an attempt to influence Colombia's 2006 presidential elections.
■ United Kingdom
Sir John Mills dies at 97
Actor Sir John Mills, who played the quintessential British officer in scores of films, has died at his home in Denham after an Oscar-winning career spanning more than 50 years. Mills was hospitalized last month with a chest infection, from which he did not recover. Mills' roles ranged from Pip in David Lean's Great Expectations to the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter. Historian Jeffrey Richards called him "truly an English Everyman." Prime Minister Tony Blair said Mills "made us proud to be British."
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
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