■ Hong Kong
Chinese tourists stay away
Mainland Chinese tourists are shunning the territory because they are fed up with overcharging and intense spending pressures, according to news reports yesterday. The number of Chinese visitors during May's week-long Labor Day holiday fell to 285,000, more than 11,000 less than last year, official figures showed. Tour groups from the mainland dropped by almost 20 percent compared to last year, according to the Inland Travel Association, quoted by the South China Morning Post.
■ India
Five more perish in heat
Sunstroke killed five people overnight yesterday in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the temperature in the city of Jhansi hit 46oC on Friday, the Press Trust of India said. At least nine heat-related deaths were confirmed on Friday in the eastern state of Orissa but the health department said the actual death toll could be as high as 38 since the onset of the hot weather in the middle of last month.
■ Bangladesh
Troops distribute water
Soldiers handed bucketfuls of drinking water yesterday to quench the thirst of thousands of Bangladeshis staging a noisy protest over a shortage of electricity and water. Witnesses said troops with water tankers moved into the crowded Demra area on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka where angry protesters barricaded a highway on Friday, clashed with police and damaged dozens of vehicles. More than 100 people were injured, including 10 policemen, in the clashes after law enforcers tried to disperse the protesters using batons and teargas. They were protesting against little or no clean water supplies in the area, along with months of daily power failures local residents said.
■ India
Mini marathon runner tested
The country's human rights watchdog agency has ordered a state government to investigate whether a four-year-old boy who ran a 65km marathon had been exploited by his sports coach and other officials. Police and state welfare authorities in eastern Orissa took Budhia Singh for medical tests on Friday, but the results were not immediately available, Press Trust of India reported. Budhia was discovered two years ago by sports coach Biranchi Das, who has often been accused of exploiting the boy's athletic talent by forcing him to run long distances for publicity. After receiving complaints from civic groups this week, India's National Human Rights Commission ordered the Orissa government to conduct a health check on the boy and investigate those who organized the run.
■ Australia
Downer voices concern
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer expressed concern yesterday at the make up of the new Solomon Islands government after a politician jailed over recent riots was appointed the nation's new police minister. The Solomon Islands parliament elected Manasseh Sogavare prime minister to replace Snyder Rini on Thursday after Rini's election on April 18 sparked violent riots and looting in the capital Honiara that led to his resignation. Politicians Charles Dausebea and Nelson Ne have been charged over the riots and both remain in police custody, but that did not stop Sogavare appointing them to his new Cabinet, with Dausebea made the country's new police minister. "For these two people to be appointed to the cabinet and for Mr Dausebea to be more than that, appointed responsible for the police, is a matter of deep concern to us," Downer said yesterday.
■ Vatican City
Pope honors Swiss Guards
Pope Benedict XVI thanked the Swiss Guards yesterday for their 500 years of service protecting popes, praising their dedication and saying they were examples for all young people who want to serve the Church. Benedict recalled the colorful history of the elite papal corps during a special Mass in St. Peter's Basilica in honor of the 500th anniversary of the corps' foundation. Guards in their distinctive gold-and-blue striped uniforms sat in the front rows of the basilica and served as the readers during the service -- a rare change for the young men who normally stand silently at attention during papal Masses. Pope Julius II summoned the first group of 150 Swiss mercenaries in 1506 to protect him and the Vatican.
■ Serbia
Mladic manhunt continues
Police made fresh arrests and raided apartments on Friday in the hunt for genocide suspect Ratko Mladic as pressure mounted on Belgrade to bring one of the most wanted men in Europe to justice. The police actions came two days after the EU punished Serbia for failing to hand Mladic over to the UN war crimes tribunal by the end of last month by suspending key rapprochement talks with the country. Since Wednesday, the police have arrested a total of five people -- among them four civilians and a retired Bosnian Serb army general, Marko Lugonja -- in their bid to strangle Mladic's support network.
■ United States
Tongan relics to be returned
The centuries-old remains of Princess Fatafehi will be returned to Tonga on Friday after being kept in a museum collection in Hawaii for 85 years. Fatafehi was the part of a royal dynasty that ruled Tonga more than 600 years ago. A delegation of Tongan officials will escort her remains and the remains of about 20 other individuals back home. Fatafehi likely lived in the 1300s or 1400s, and her remains may be the oldest of all Tongan royalty. The remains were found during a 1920-1921 Bishop Museum expedition to Tonga. The museum studied and cataloged the remains but didn't display them.
■ Uganda
Dogs sniff out preacher
Police dogs on the trail of a thief sniffed out an unlikely suspect -- a born-again preacher -- who was arrested for robbing a remote village shop, a state-owned newspaper reported yesterday. Detectives released the dogs following a break-in at Igwaya village. Shocked residents watched as the dogs raced to a nearby shop owned by Pastor Livingstone Isanga, head of the Redeemed Christian Church. Hidden behind the counter were the stolen goods -- mostly bags of sugar and bicycle spokes.
■ United Kingdom
Greedy seal terminated
Marksmen in southwest Scotland have shot dead a seal that was suspected of threatening salmon stocks with its appetite for the fish, it emerged on Friday. Sammy, as the seal had been nicknamed by residents along the River Annan, was stalked and killed on April 28 on instructions from fishery managers. "We tried catching and relocating it, pushing it out with boats -- but it kept coming back," one manager said.
■ United States
Rice not running
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she expects to see a president of the US from an ethnic minority during her lifetime, but it will not be her. Rice has been asked repeatedly whether she plans to run for the open Republican candidacy in 2008. On Friday, a young man from Texas attending an annual Washington conference of Latino and Latin-American students asked Rice whether she thought it possible that "a Latino or Latina person or an African-American person or a person from any other minority" might become president of the US. "Yes," she said, prompting the first knowing laughter, and then applause. "I think it will happen, and I think it will happen in my lifetime" -- more laughter -- "but it won't be me," she said.
■ Canada
Trudeau's ex-wife was ill
Margaret Trudeau, once wife of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, revealed in a news conference in Ottawa on Friday that she secretly suffered from bipolar depression for many years, hiding her illness from the public in a life she called a "long tunnel of darkness." The one-time hippie flower child captivated Canadians when, at age 22, she married Trudeau, a man 30 years her senior. Now 57, Trudeau described how her fairy-tale romance with a dashing prime minister turned hellish when she fell into post-partum depression after the birth of their second son. Trudeau said she refused to recognize her condition or seek help until her youngest son, Michel, died in 1998 in an avalanche, followed by Pierre Trudeau's death two years later.
■ United Kingdom
Fire out on cruise liner
Crew members managed to put out a fire in the engine room of a cruise liner with 708 people aboard off the coast of southeast England early yesterday, a British coastguard official said. "They smothered the engine room ... and they have managed to extinguish the fire," said the official in the seaport of Dover, where the coastguard is coordinating the rescue. He said a call from the ship came in at 4am, and fire and rescue services scrambled to reach the vessel. He said the ship, the Calypso, was operated by Louis Cruise Lines.
■ France
Slavery course slammed
A group of lawmakers from President Jacques Chirac's conservative party urged him on Friday to scrap a 2001 law requiring French schools to teach about the ills of slavery. The call comes amid a simmering debate about the nation's colonial past and preparations to observe on Wednesday the first national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery. The national observance, ordered by Chirac, is timed for the anniversary of the May 10, 2001 passage of a law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity and requiring schools to include lessons about slavery as a vital part of class curriculums.
■ Israel
Air strike kills five militants
An Israeli air strike killed five Palestinian militants on Friday at a training camp used by militants in the Gaza Strip, further dampening peace prospects in the region. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a camp used by the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella group of militants that often fires makeshift rockets into Israel. "There was an aerial attack on a training compound ... while terrorists were training there," an Israeli military spokeswoman said. Israel has recently stepped up air strikes against militants.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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