■ India
Impotent patient kills doctor
An angry patient gunned down his doctor for failing to treat him for sexual impotency, police said yesterday. The "sexologist," Rajesh Abbot, died at the scene in New Delhi on Sunday after the patient, Javed Ali, 21, pumped 13 bullets into his body, police said. Officers believe that Abbot, who was treating Ali for the last two years, was a quack who administered fake medicines. "Ali was enraged that the fake drugs had made him lose his remaining sexual prowess and ruined his life," said SS Yadav of the Mandir Marg police station. Police arrested Ali soon after the shooting.
■ Philippines
Gunmen kill top communist
Three gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead a communist leader facing rebellion charges for his role in an alleged plot to oust President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, officials said on Monday. Sotero Llamas, 55, was attacked in the central town of Tabaco, 550km southeast of Manila, and was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital, a senior regional police official said. State prosecutors filed rebellion charges this month against Llamas and 40 other leaders of the communist movement for an alleged conspiracy to oust Arroyo in February. Llamas was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
■ India
Vegetarians in food fight
More than 50 passengers refused to disembark from an Air India plane at the New Delhi airport on Sunday in a row over food, a newspaper reported yesterday. At least 55 vegetarian passengers on the flight from Kuala Lumpur stayed in their seats at Indira Gandhi International Airport for an hour after the aircraft landed, angry at being forced to go hungry because the cabin crew offered only non-vegetarian meals on the four-and-a-half-hour flight, the Times of India reported. The airline blamed a travel agency for not marking their food preference while booking their tickets.
■ China
Toxic dumplings for sale
China yesterday warned consumers to be wary of eating dumplings served during the Dragon Boat Festival, saying they may be poisonous. The glutinous rice dumplings, or zongzi, are wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves and shaped like pyramids, but some unscrupulous manufacturers are using copper-based chemicals to keep the leaves green, the China Daily said. "The leaves dyed by copper sulphate or copper chloride contain metal elements which will penetrate into the zongzi and cause great damage to the health," a food expert was quoted as saying.
■ Nepal
Naked sherpa stirs uproar
The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government on Saturday to take action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped on top of Mount Everest. The Himalayan Times had reported on Friday that the Nepali climbing guide, whose name it gave as Lakpa Tharke, stood naked for three minutes in freezing conditions on the summit of the world's highest peak. If confirmed, he would be the first person known to have stripped atop Everest. Ang Tshering Sherpa, head of Nepal's top mountaineering body, said he could not confirm that the incident had happened. "But if he did it, it is very shocking because Sagarmatha is the goddess mother," he said, using the mountain's Nepali name and referring to a belief that the mountain is sacred.
■ Iran
Fusion research starts
The government said yesterday it had conducted research into nuclear fusion, a process that carries the promise of clean, inexhaustible supplies of energy but one that triggers the destructive power of the hydrogen bomb. It gave no details on the fusion research program and it was not clear why the government had decided to announce the research now. But it appeared to be part of the country's policy of defying world calls for it to cease uranium enrichment as a guarantee that it was not trying to build a nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is designed only for energy production.
■ South Africa
Mother makes fatal mistake
A woman and her child died while trying to escape a fire in an apartment block in Johannesburg's crowded innercity suburb of Hillbrow on Sunday night, news reports said yesterday. The woman, her husband and their four-year-old child leapt from the sixth floor of the building, mistakenly thinking their apartment was alight, emergency services workers told the Sapa news agency. The man reportedly sustained serious injuries. The fire was believed to have been caused by candles. Similar fires have forced people to jump from apartments, including one recently in which a woman flung her eight-month old baby from a burning inner-city building. A passerby became a hero when he caught the child.
■ Tunisia
Group fights crackdown
A human rights league (LTDH) vowed on Sunday to hold its national congress a day after scuffles broke out as police blockaded its headquarters to prevent the meeting from going ahead. The LTDH announced "its perseverance and its determination to hold its sixth national congress, as soon as possible and completely independently" after police cracked down on the meeting on Saturday.
■ United Kingdom
Earth is in hands of `idiots'
Humanity has reached a "defining moment" in our dominion over the planet and our ability to destroy it, according to the head of the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution. "The 21st century is the first in the Earth's history where one species has our planet's future in its hands and could jeopardize life's immense potential," Lord Rees told an audience at the Hay festival on Sunday. The physicist said scientific advances had made it much easier for individuals to commit devastating acts of terror on a much greater scale than 9/11, using for example biological weapons. "In a global village there will be global village idiots. And with this power, just one could be too many," he said.
■ Egypt
Activist's life in danger
An Egyptian political activist who said that he was tortured and sexually assaulted last week had a forensic medical exam on Sunday but has not been treated for his injuries, his lawyer said. Mohammed el-Sharkawi, 24, said he was beaten and sodomized with a rolled up piece of cardboard on Thursday at a Cairo police station after being arrested following a peaceful protest. "He has severe pain in his ribs and bleeds when he urinates. It's no exaggeration when we say his life is in danger," el-Sharkawi's lawyer, Gamal Eid, said.
■ Bolivia
Chavez warns government
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told Bolivian forces to be on guard against conspirators, alleging US President George W. Bush is plotting against the left-leaning government. Chavez delivered his weekly radio and television program Hello President on Sunday from the ruins of Tiawanacu, an ancient city located roughly 56km west of La Paz. "When the US president said a few days ago that he was worried because democracy is eroding in Bolivia it's because, you can be sure, he has a plan against Bolivia," Chavez said without elaborating. He urged his "brothers, the Bolivian soldiers," not to be caught off guard. The comments were Chavez's latest response to Bush's remarks last week that he was "concerned about the erosion of democracy" in Bolivia and Venezuela.
■ Mexico
Former rebel joins march
Former Zapatista rebel Subcomandante Marcos joined thousands of marchers in the capital on Sunday demanding the release of 49 persons jailed after a police eviction of street flower vendors. The former leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which sprang up in 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas, joined the crowd, which also demanded respect for the human rights of the detainees, jailed three weeks ago. The protesters chanted "freedom for political prisoners" and "we are all Atenco," referring to the continued custody of 49 persons after a police crackdown in the town of San Salvador Atenco on May 4.
■ Nicaragua
Strange political bedfellows
The leftist Sandinista Party, which fought a bloody war against Contra rebels in the 1980s, chose a former Contra leader as running mate on Sunday for perennial presidential candidate Daniel Ortega. Jaime Morales Carazo, 70, a former banker and political leader of the conservative US-backed Contras, will run for the vice presidency on Ortega's ticket, a Sandinista Party meeting announced. While politics does make strange bedfellows, Morales Carazo's enthusiasm for running mate Ortega -- who led the Sandinista regime from 1979 to 1990 -- seemed muted.
■ United States
Rock the `right' way
It may only be rock 'n' roll, the music born of anti-establishment rebels, but conservatives can like it too. Sure, Neil Young just released Let's Impeach the President and Green Day scored a huge hit with its 2004 American Idiot album, one track featuring the anti-Bush lyric Zieg Heil to the President Gasman. "But some rock songs really are conservative -- and there are more of them than you might think," political reporter John Miller wrote on the Web site of the US conservative magazine National Review. Starting with The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, deemed the number one right-leaning rock anthem, Miller's list of "The 50 greatest conservative rock songs" will be published in the magazine's June 5 issue.
■ United States
Ex-cop assaults boy
A former sheriff's deputy and police sergeant was arrested for allegedly posing as a police officer and abducting and sexually assaulting a teenage boy in Las Vegas, Corona police said on Sunday. Shawn Shelton, 39, was arrested on Friday evening by officers acting on a tip from Las Vegas police, a spokesman said. Police said Shelton flashed his old police badge at a 14-year-old boy at a Las Vegas bus stop last Sunday and ordered the victim into his black Hummer SUV.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
RSS