■ China
Blast on bus kills eight
An explosion on a passenger bus killed at least eight people and seriously injured 19 others in Hunan Province, just days after a similar incident in another province, state media said yesterday. The explosion in Hunan's Guiyang County on Sunday evening killed eight people instantly and left seven in critical condition in local hospitals, the semi-official China News Service said. The cause of the explosion was still under investigation, the agency said.
■ Indonesia
Boy has bird flu
A 16-year-old Indonesian boy being treated for flu-like symptoms at a Jakarta hospital has tested positive for bird flu, a health official said yesterday. But the official said more tests were needed to confirm the results after preliminary findings showed that the boy had contracted the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus. Ningrum, an official at the health ministry's bird flu post center, said the boy was receiving treatment at Jakarta's Sulianti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital, which is designated to handle bird flu patients.
■ China
Olympics official upbeat
The 2008 Olympics in Beijing will not be shrouded in smog or choked by traffic jams, state media said yesterday, citing the city's top Games official. There are only two years to go before Beijing is to host the world's biggest sports event, but that will be enough time to solve the problems, according to Liu Qi (劉淇), who also heads Beijing's Communist Party. "The problems that exist in Beijing, such as traffic jams and environmental pollution, are things we have to solve, whether we are hosting the Olympics or not," said Liu, according to the China Daily newspaper.
■ Australia
Prize exhibit declared fake
A Vincent Van Gogh painting that for 65 years has drawn millions to a Melbourne art gallery has been declared a fake by British experts. National Gallery of Victoria director Gerard Vaughan said yesterday that Head of a Man would be worthless if the bulk of art historians concurred with the view of Michael Daley, director of Art Watch UK, that the gallery's prize exhibit had "all the hallmarks of a pre-existing picture tricked up to resemble a Van Gogh."
■ Hong Kong
Tsang sued over fish
A prankster is suing Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) over the death of a pet fish, a statement said yesterday. Matt Pearce, a British-born teacher who stages public spectacles to promote liberal political causes, filed a writ with the small claims tribunal alleging that Tsang failed to return a koi carp he lent him which later died. Pearce is claiming HK$50,000 (US$6,400) in compensation. He said the fish was named "Democracy" and that his action was a protest against the slow pace of democratization in the territory.
■ India
Bicycle bombers blow up
Separatist rebels tossed grenades at a paramilitary convoy in northeastern India, wounding eight troopers, while two suspected militants died when the explosives they were carrying blew up, police said yesterday. Elsewhere in the northeastern state Assam, a trader was shot by suspected rebels trying to extort money from him, police said, as violence in the region escalated ahead of India's Independence Day next Tuesday. The grenade attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force came on Sunday near the town of Bhojo, about 300km east of Gauhati, Assam's capital. Separately, two suspected militants were killed as the explosives they were carrying in a bicycle went off in the town of Tezpur.
■ South Korea
Roh explains release
President Roh Moo-hyun has sent a letter to his Vietnamese counterpart explaining a decision to release a Vietnamese dissident from prison here last month, officials said yesterday. The letter was sent last week to Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet after a South Korean court turned down his request for the dissident's extradition, a government official said. "In his letter, President Roh said he cannot but respect the court's decision," the official said. South Korean police arrested Nguyen Huu Chanh, 55, on April 5, acting on a extradition request from Vietnam. But the court rejected the petition for extradition on July 27, noting that Vietnam was not a signatory to the 1998 International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing.
■ Australia
Aid sought against rabbits
The government is hoping that visitors to Macquarie Island will chip in to help get rid of the rabbits that seal hunters shipped in 200 years ago in an attempt to put meat on their menu. The estimated 100,000 rabbits that have overrun Macquarie, 1,500km south of Tasmania, are wrecking the sub-Antarctic environment. They graze on the tussocks that are the breeding grounds for smaller birds like petrels and have laid bare hillsides. Parks and Wildlife Tasmania general manager Stuart Lennox told national broadcaster ABC that around 500 tourists visited Macquarie every year, and that contributions from them could help pay for a baiting program.
■ Germany
Drunk swimmers warned
Swimming under the influence of alcohol can lead to heart failure, say a group of experts. Consuming alcohol in the evening and then jumping into the water is even more dangerous, says Peter Sefrin, head of the Wuerzburg-based Federal Association of the Working Group of Emergency Room Doctors. "Consuming alcohol widens the blood vessels. Going in the water, even if it is 20 degrees Celsius or 22 degrees Celsius, can lead to shock from the cold," he says. Such a shock can momentarily stop the heart. Sometimes the heart will not start beating again and the swimmer drowns. A combination of heat, alcohol and swimming leads to deaths every year, says Sefrin.
■ Australia
Hungry want GMO: scientist
Starving people don't share the rich world's worries over genetically modified food, an African agronomist told a biotechnology conference in Australia. Jennifer Thomson of Kenya told the Melbourne gathering that the advantages of stronger, healthier crops far outweighed the risks. "When you live in a country where you haven't got enough food, it's all about the benefits," she said. "If we want to feed African and other developing countries, we're going to have to use new technologies." "If we can improve soil fertility, have less loss to weeds, insects, diseases and drought, farms can be secure and farmers can move from being subsistence farmers to commercial farmers," Thomson said.
■ Iraq
Former Baathists given jobs
About 10,000 workers in former president Saddam Hussein's regime have been re-employed as part of national reconciliation, reversing their purge after the 2003 US-led invasion, an official said. More than 8,000 of the reinstated employees worked for the key interior and defense ministries, Rashid Najeb Saleh, the chief of the Agency for Dissolved Entities, told a news conference on Sunday. The agency was set up by the government last year to help tens of thousands of workers made jobless in the purge after the 2003 invasion toppled Saddam.
■ Germany
Beware of black tongue
A black tongue might be harmless, but it looks awful. Worse, it's a real possibility for men who smoke. A black, hairy tongue, or lingua villosa nigra, occurs when the papilla on the tongue, normally only 1mm in length, grow up to 1.5cm in length and turn black or brown, says Joachim Dissemond of the University of Essen. It occurs most regularly among men who smoke. Smoking, especially when combined with poor oral hygiene, certain medicine and vitamin deficits can lead to the black hairy tongue. Sufferers should improve their oral hygiene and quit smoking.
■ Italy
Venice flood plan in doubt
A controversial plan to help protect Venice from flooding was in doubt on Sunday after it was revealed that the project has a budget shortfall of almost 3 billion euros (US$3.86 billion), with little likelihood of the extra money being found. According to a report compiled at the behest of the recently elected center-left government, the Moses flood barrier system will cost around 4.3 billion euros but only 1.46 billion euros is available, leaving a gaping hole in its future financing. The project was inaugurated in May 2003 by then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and was one of the jewels in the crown of his conservative government's infrastructure proposals.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country