■ China
Police told to leave stations
Beijing has ordered its national police to leave their desks and get out among ordinary people in a bid to help crime-threatened communities so far left to their own devices, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. A "massive" redeployment of the 490,000-strong force will see police set up stations in remote rural areas where no law enforcers have been present before now, Xinhua said. The campaign will also ensure a greater, more visible police presence in urban communities, the agency said. The drive will not entail any recruitment of new officers but will mean the reassignment of desk-bound officers to new posts where they can be more easily reached by citizens.
■ China
Robot cook launched
A company in Shenzhen has developed the nation's first cooking robot, equipping it with the skills to cook thousands of traditional dishes, state media said yesterday. The robot, developed by Fanxing Science and Technology Co, knows how to "fry, bake, boil and steam, and can perform other special Chinese cooking actions," Xinhua reported. The robot will hit the market next year, targeting mainly restaurants, while a family-friendly version will go on sale later.
■ India
Zoos told to stop breeding
The Supreme Court has ordered zoos to stop breeding animals after activists said the facilities were overcrowded. The court issued the order late on Monday in response to a petition by the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which said most zoos were ill-equipped to handle the number of animals they housed.
■ Australia
Man gets BA at 91
A 91-year-old man has received a law degree from an Australian university, finishing the six-year course more than a year ahead of schedule because he said "time is of the essence." Allan Stewart was granted a Bachelor of Laws from the University of New England in eastern Australia on Saturday. The course normally runs for six years, but Stewart finished in just 4.5 "I think if I had let it run too much longer I might not have finished it," he said, adding that learning how to use the Internet was the biggest challenge in completing the degree.
■ India
Bull crashes market
The bull may have missed the china shop but it did swing by New Delhi's city center, two markets, a movie theater, a Sikh temple and the YWCA during a seven-hour rampage that left six people lightly wounded on Sunday. The ordeal started when overeager security personnel tried to shoo the bull from a route to be used for VIP traffic, angering the animal. The bull ran down roads, charging groups of people and scattering crowds in a frenzy that took it through some of the city's busiest streets, markets and the entrance area to the Regal Cinema.
■ Germany
Al-Qaeda broadcaster held
German police arrested an Iraqi man yesterday who they suspect aided al-Qaeda by posting messages from Osama bin Laden and other leaders of militant Islamist groups on the Internet, the prosecutor's office said. Authorities believe the 36-year-old suspect, identified only as Ibrahim R., broadcast numerous audio and video messages on the Web from al-Qaeda chief bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The man was arrested at his home near the northwestern town of Osnabrueck. This was the latest in a series of arrests of suspected al-Qaeda members and supporters in Germany.
■ Colombia
New bird spurs conservation
A colorful bird new to science has been discovered in a remote Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups have announced. The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered and which committed mass suicide instead of submitting to Spanish colonial rule. The discovery, published in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, comes at a crucial time for conservationists. Thanks in part to the discovery, the government has decided to set aside 200 hectares of the pristine cloud forest where it lives to create a national park.
■ Spain
Lice invasion
It has survived storms, famines and droughts over the past 12 centuries but now the Road to Santiago, one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in Europe, is buckling under the weight of a new threat -- the common louse. Convents and hostels along the route to Santiago de Compostela are closing their doors as the tiny beasts bury themselves deep inside mattresses, sheets and pillows. Carried by the sweating and not always well-washed pilgrims, the lice have found a perfect environment in which to live and reproduce. Pilgrims complain that some hostels along the route will now only give a bed to those who can prove their clothes are clean and louse-free.
■ Guatemala
Bus plunges down cliff
At least 42 people were killed and five injured on Monday when a speeding bus hurled over a cliff in the northeast, rescue officials said. Survivors said the driver had been drinking and was speeding when the bus plunged over a more than 100m high cliff in the early morning hours near the Mexican border, some 226km from Guatemala City. At least six children were among the dead. Officials earlier said 34 people had died in the accident. Two other bus accidents elsewhere in Latin America left 18 people dead, including at least 11 children.
■ Italy
Politicians caught out
Sixteen Italian politicians tested positive for cocaine or cannabis use in a trick drugs test carried out by a television satire show, the country's media reported on Monday. The show tested 50 parliamentarians by applying what appeared to be make-up to their faces, telling them they were to appear in a debate on the country's budget, the ANSA news agency reported in a story soon taken up by other media. The make-up actually consisted of chemicals that could detect the presence of drugs in sweat on the participants' skin. It detected cocaine in four of the politicians and cannabis in 12. Both the drugs are banned.
■ United States
Evangelist disses Islam
The Reverend Franklin Graham, a Christian evangelist whose criticism of Islam has frequently outraged Muslims, said Islam teaches its followers to "persecute" others until they convert, with the aim being "total domination." Graham's comments, reported in the News & Observer on Monday, came as the evangelist said he plans to rebuild hundreds of churches that have been destroyed by the Sudanese government in a conflict "in which religion becomes a language to express political grievances," Moosa said. "It's an abuse of religion," he said. "As a minister," said Graham, "I love the Muslim people. I see what's done in the name of Islam and think it's my responsibility to speak out," he said.
■ Norway
Plane catches fire
Rescuers pulled 13 people from a plane that caught fire and skidded off the runway at a western Norway airport yesterday, but three passengers were missing, rescue officials said. Einar Knutsen, of the Rescue Coordination Center for Southern Norway, said 13 of those aboard had been rescued alive, but their condition was not immediately known. Rescuers were searching for the three others. Police spokesman Reidar Faerstrand told Norway's TV2 the fire had been extinguished, but gave no other details. The plane was operated by Atlantic Airways of the Faeroe Islands. It had taken off from the southwestern Norway Sola Airport, near Stavanger, and caught fire upon landing at the Stord Airport.
■ United Kingdom
Prisoners paid to go home
A government plan to pay foreign prisoners nearly US$5,000 to leave the country in order to alleviate overcrowding was derided as bribery by opposition lawmakers and the press yesterday. Home Secretary John Reid on Monday announced a 12-month pilot scheme where foreign prisoners from outside the 28-member European Economic Area would be offered money for training and accommodation in to return home. Opposition Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said the plan was basically a "bribe."
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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