■ China
Man hacks five to death
A man wielding a machete hacked to death a woman and four children and seriously injured two other children in Yingxue Village, Guangxi Province, the Beijing News said yesterday. Friday's rampage by Liang Jiqian, 52, was so sudden that he was able to kill the woman, 38, and four children aged six to seven before being apprehended by police, the newspaper said. It gave no explanation for the attack but said Liang had recently lost his wife to illness and was furious because other children taunted his handicapped 10-year-old son.
■ China
Dress rules spark criticism
The Shanghai Normal University has banned "super-short" skirts on its teachers, citing the need to maintain a certain distance from the students, the Beijing Times said yesterday. Only days after the new rules were announced at the university, they have triggered a heated debate among its more than 200 female teachers, the paper said. Some of the teachers have complained that they, too, have a right to be fashionable and a number of students support them, according to the paper. "We like teachers with personality, and especially teachers who dare show their personality," one unidentified student said.
■ China
Miners killed in explosion
Twenty-seven miners were killed and five others were still missing yesterday after a gas explosion in a Shaanxi Province coal-mine on Saturday, state media said. The gas blast occurred at 4:20pm in Wayaobao Township Coal Mine in Yanan City, as 39 miners were working beneath the shaft, the Xinhua news agency reported. Only seven miners managed to escape.
■ Hong Kong
Children plead with Tsang
Nearly 600 schoolchildren have delivered a letter to Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) pleading with him to tackle the city's worsening air pollution, a news report said yesterday. Every pupil in Beacon Hill primary school wrote a letter to Tsang asking him to do something to halt the pollution. The letters were delivered to his office and handed to a policeman by a delegation of 15 pupils on Friday, the Sunday Morning Post newspaper reported. A spokesman for the chief executive's office told the newspaper Tsang was on leave and could not say if he would read the letters upon his return.
■ Japan
Half fear another war: survey
Almost half of Japanese fear the country could face war again, with North Korea's nuclear program and China's massive military build-up considered major threats to peace, according to a government survey published yesterday. The Cabinet Office survey, published in all major Japanese newspapers yesterday, said 45 percent of respondents believe Japan may become caught up in a war -- up 1.8 percentage points from a 2003 survey -- while only 16.5 percent disagreed. The survey said that 63.7 percent of respondents cited North Korea's nuclear threat as a possible cause of regional conflict, followed by terrorist attacks and the rapid modernization of China's military.
■ Indonesia
Search on for terror chief
Security forces fanned out across central Indonesia in search of Southeast Asia's terror chief yesterday, as investigators questioned two suspects arrested in a raid on his hideout. Malaysian fugitive Noordin Top, believed to be behind a string of suicide bombings in Indonesia, has eluded police for years and slipped through their fingers once again early on Saturday. Despite months of surveillance he was not in the safe house in Binangun, a village in Central Java province, when it was overrun by elite anti-terror police. "A team of forensic experts have searched the scene and hundreds of police personnel have been deployed," said deputy spokesman for the national police, Anton Bahrul Alam.
■ Thailand
Thaksin may run for premier
Thaksin Shinawatra, forced to step aside as prime minister in the wake of a months-long political crisis, could run for premier again if new elections are called, the acting prime minister said yesterday. Thaksin's party won controversial snap elections that he called earlier this month to end two months of mass street protests against his rule. But his victory was undermined by an opposition boycott and a strong protest vote. He announced two days later that he would not become prime minister in the new government.
■ North Korea
US accused of more spying
North Korea accused the US of stepping up aerial espionage activities over its territory during high-level inter-Korean talks in Pyongyang last month, state-run media reported. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Saturday that US spy planes, including U-2s, had flown an average of more than five missions a day over North Korean airspace last month, totaling 160 sorties for the month. "Tens of reconnaissance planes carried out their aerial espionage activities during the North-South Korean high-level talks from April 21-24," KCNA said in a report monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
■ Serbia
Mladic faces extradition
Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic could be handed over to the international tribunal in The Hague on May 10, the special coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, Ehrard Busek, said in a German newspaper at the weekend. "The latest information that I have received is that Belgrade now plans to hand him over on May 10," Busek told newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. The international community had given authorities until yesterday to hand over Mladic, who has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide, other war crimes and crimes against humanity during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
■ United Kingdom
Largest cruise liner docks
Britons had their first glimpse of the world's largest cruise liner on Saturday when Freedom of the Seas sailed into the southern port of Southampton. Equipped with an ice rink, boxing ring, climbing wall, surfing pool, golf course and six-story shopping center, the mammoth liner is three times the size of the Titanic and longer than the Eiffel Tower. The 160,000 tonne ship with its 15 passenger decks is in Southampton for a few days before setting sail for New York.
■ Egypt
One killed in gunfight
Security forces killed one person and captured four early yesterday in a gun battle in the center of Sinai while investigating bomb attacks in the resort of Dahab and north Sinai, security sources said. Two people involved in the gunfight escaped, the sources added. However, separate security sources said that one man was killed and no one was captured. Details of the shootout were not immediately available. Bomb attacks killed 18 people in Dahab last Monday, and on Wednesday two men died after blowing themselves up in attacks on a multinational peace force and a police station, both based in the north of Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
■ United States
Explosive promotion
A newspaper promotion for Tom Cruise's upcoming Mission: Impossible III got off to an explosive start when a county arson squad blew up a news rack in Santa Clarita, California, thinking it contained a bomb. The confusion: the Los Angeles Times rack was fitted with a digital musical device designed to play the Mission: Impossible theme song when the door was opened. But in some cases, the red plastic boxes with protruding wires were jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers. Sheriff's officials said they rendered the news rack in this suburb 56km north of downtown Los Angeles "safe."
■ France
Immigration bill protested
More than 5,000 people marched through Paris on Saturday to protest a tough immigration bill that critics say will favor only skilled immigrants. The country's top Roman Catholic official, who met with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, said the government may soften the bill when the parliamentary debate on it starts tomorrow. "There is a balance to be found between irresponsible laxism and a nearly xenophobic firmness," said Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard after a meeting with Villepin that was also attended by the head of the country's Protestants, Jean-Arnold de Clermont.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
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