■ China
Fugitive leaves cave
A man wanted by police on gun charges has given himself up after hiding in a cave constructed at the back of his house for eight years, the Xinhua news agency said. The 35-year-old man from Fuzhou had tunneled the cave out of a hill behind the bedroom of his house and had put a wardrobe in front of the entrance as a disguise, Xinhua said in a report on Thursday. The man, named as Liu Yong, left the cave during the day to read, wash and watch TV in the house, but went back into it at night, it said. He told his wife he was hiding from debt collectors, it said. Xinhua said Liu was accused of attacking people with guns.
■ India
Elephants to get microchips
Elephants in Mumbai are to be microchipped to make sure unlicensed pachyderms don't give authorities a jumbo-sized headache. "A microchip is like a voter identity card: If an elephant doesn't have one, we'll know it's in the city illegally," said Sarfaraz Khan, deputy conservator of forests for Mumbai's Thane district and the driving force behind the initiative. Khan said there are just five licensed elephants in the city, but with owners not reporting their animals to avoid paying fees, animal activists estimate there could be 15 in the capital.
■ China
Mine blast kills 13
A gas explosion at a coal mine killed 13 people yesterday, Xinhua news agency said, adding to a grim set of statistics from the world's deadliest mining industry. Thirteen people had been confirmed dead and seven were injured at the mine in Sichuan Province, the agency said. Last year, 3,300 coal mine blasts, floods and other accidents killed nearly 6,000 people, according to official figures.
■ Cambodia
Court hearing postponed
An appeals court hearing that could free two men many say were wrongly convicted of killing labor leader Chea Vichea was postponed indefinitely on Friday. Judge Saly Theara halted the proceedings after one of the two other judges on the appeals panel failed to show up in court due to an illness. The announcement stunned a courtroom packed with relatives of the two alleged killers, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, who begged Prime Minister Hun Sen and former king Norodom Sihanouk for help as they were led back to prison. Both are serving 20-year sentences for gunning down the head of the Free Trade Union of the Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia in January 2004.
■ Japan
Naval support extended
The Cabinet agreed yesterday to extend for one year a law allowing the navy to provide logistical support in the Indian Ocean to US-led troops in Afghanistan, the government spokesman said. The bill was approved by the Cabinet of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who supports a more active military role for his nation, which has been officially pacifist since its World War II defeat. The bill is expected to be approved by parliament, where Abe's Liberal Democratic Party holds a majority. The law was first passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which triggered the US military operation that toppled Afghanistan's extremist Taliban regime.
■ Afghanistan
Suicide bomber kills cop
A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of the police headquarters of the eastern town of Khost yesterday, killing himself and a policeman, the provincial police chief said. The Taliban, fighting an intensified insurgency in the east and south, claimed responsibility for the latest in a bloody wave of suicide attacks. "Police wanted to search him when he blew himself up," provincial police chief Mohammad Ayub said. Three policemen were wounded, he said. Suicide blasts used to be unheard of in Afghanistan, but there have been scores of such attacks since last year when militants began copying tactics used in Iraq.
■ Singapore
Mom jailed for spiking milk
A woman was sentenced to 18 months in prison for spiking her children's milk with potentially lethal doses of sleeping pills, a newspaper reported yesterday. The judge said the 32-year-old housewife -- who was not named to protect the identities of her three sons -- was still a threat to the children, according to the Straits Times. It said the woman had drugged the children after an argument with her husband. The woman, who suffers from borderline personality disorder, was under the influence of Dormicum sleeping tablets at the time of her offenses on July 21, the newspaper said.
■ Australia
`Reverse driver' charged
Shocked police have slapped an driver with reckless driving charges after he tried to reverse more than 500km across the country's outback. Police were astounded by the man's ambitious attempt to drive backwards all the way from the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia, to its capital city Perth, the Australian Broadcasting Corp said yesterday. When police pulled the 23-year-old motorist over just 50km into his journey, he told them his transmission had failed, ABC radio said.
■ United Kingdom
Drivers think about sex
Over a million motorists think about sex rather than the road ahead and millions more who don't indulge in intimate thoughts are worrying about work or thinking about their families, a survey said on Thursday. The survey, conducted by car insurer More Than found one in five drivers admit to concentrating behind the wheel less than 75 percent of the time, with 1.2 million thinking mostly about sex. And sex wasn't the only non-traffic thoughts motorists have. For 3.2 million drivers work was the main focus and for 2 million more it was family issues that dominated. The study also revealed drivers' pet hates.
■ Germany
Have you seen these?
A plastic surgeon cheated out of payment by women has handed pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them. "The women registered under fake names," Michael Koenig, a surgeon in Cologne, told Bild newspaper. "After the operations, which lasted about an hour, they just ran away." "Tanja" went out for "fresh air" after her 8,000-euro (US$10,000) surgery to enlarge her breasts. "She never came back and never paid," Koenig said. He now plans to demand payment in advance. Bild published a five-column picture of Tanja's naked breasts.
■ United States
Politicians put on no-fly list
A no-fly list meant to keep terrorists off airplanes contains the names of Bolivian President Evo Morales and Nabih Berri, Lebanon's parliamentary speaker, according to a report by a television news show. The story by CBS' 60 Minutes builds on previous reports that detailed how young children and well-known Americans like Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy have been stopped at airports because their names match those on lists. Critics say the government does not provide enough information about the people on the lists, so innocent passengers can be caught up in the security sweep.
■ Germany
Train strike hits south
Strikes by railway workers in southern Germany yesterday disrupted train services in Bavaria and beyond, unions and the country's rail operator said. The Transnet and GDBA unions said more than 150 employees walked off the job in the early morning in Nuremberg and Munich, two major hubs. The walkouts, part of a dispute over plans to privatize the rail network, followed similar warning strikes over the past week in Berlin and in western Germany. Rail operator Deutsche Bahn said delays to regional and long-distance trains continued after the strikes ended at 7:30am.
■ Burundi
Injustice protest dispersed
Police dispersed a group of lawyers protesting yesterday outside the main courts with burning candles and flashlights to symbolize what they said was a lack of justice in the country, witnesses said. The peaceful demonstrations marked the end of a one-week lawyers' strike called to protest delays and perceived bias in judgements. The strike paralyzed Burundi's court operations. "We have demonstrated with candles and flashlights ... because we are looking for justice with these special lights. It is difficult for us to see justice in Burundi with our eyes," Marc Birihanyuma, a top lawyer told reporters. Witnesses said police did not use force because the lawyers dispersed peacefully.
■ United States
Baby sitter bungle
A baby sitter in Long Beach, California, bungled her first day on the job by picking up the wrong five-year-old boy from his elementary school, police said. Angel Guerrero was taken by mistake on Monday when the woman arrived at the school and took him without knowing what the child she was to care for looked like, said Sergeant David Cannan. The mix-up caused alarm when Angel's grandmother came to the school and was told someone had already picked him up. Police issued a missing child alert, and his name and picture were broadcast on several TV stations. Meanwhile, the baby sitter had no idea she picked up the wrong child until her employers returned home.
■ United States
Man charged over `souvenir'
A tourist who told airport inspectors that dynamite in his bags was a souvenir from South America has been charged with breaking two security laws and could face up to 10 years in prison and steep fines. A grand jury in Houston, Texas, returned a two-count indictment charging Howard MacFarland Fish, 21, with carrying an explosive on an aircraft and entering an airport in violation of security requirements, US Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a news release on Wednesday. Fish, a student at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, was stopped at Houston Intercontinental Airport on Aug. 25 on his way home from Argentina. Customs inspectors found a small stick of dynamite, a fuse and a blasting cap in his bags.
■ United States
`Re-gifting' on the increase
Wrapping up that unwanted picture frame from last Christmas and giving it to someone else as a gift might not be as taboo as it once was, according to a study released on Wednesday. The survey of 1,505 adults, conducted by market research firm Harris Interactive, found that over half of the respondents admitted to "re-gifting" with passing on gifts becoming a far more common and acceptable phenomenon. In fact 78 percent of consumers who were polled felt that it was acceptable to re-gift some or most of the time. Nancy Wong, a spokeswoman for Harris Interactive, said 52 percent have re-gifted at some point.
■ United States
Thrill ride malfunctions
A bungee cord on a thrill ride broke, leaving an Oklahoma man dangling 7.5m off the ground for a half-hour until he was rescued by firefighters. Steve Alan Stone, 48, was not seriously hurt in the incident on Monday at the Tulsa State Fair. A ride worker was also helped down by rescuers. The ride, called the Ejection Seat, consists of a two-seat chair that is suspended from two towers by bungee cords. Passengers are propelled as much as 60m high at speeds of about 96kph. Shortly after Stone was launched, one of the cords broke, leaving the seat dangling sideways.
■ United States
`E. coli' death confirmed
Idaho health officials confirmed on Thursday a toddler who died last month from kidney failure had been infected by the E. coli strain responsible for a nationwide wave of food poisoning linked to tainted spinach. The 2-year-old boy, Kyle Allgood, from Chubbuck, Idaho, who died on Sept. 20, was the second confirmed fatality of the E. coli bacteria outbreak that has sickened 192 people nationwide and one person in Canada, said Ross Mason, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. An elderly woman in Wisconsin who died on Sept. 7 was the first confirmed death from the outbreak.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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