■ India
Bomb kills three in Assam
At least three people were killed and 20 injured in a powerful explosion at a crowded marketplace in the northeastern state of Assam, officials said yesterday. Suspected militants of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) triggered the blast on Friday at a busy vegetable market in the town of Dhekiajuli, about 140km north of Assam's main city of Guwahati, police said. "The market was crowded with evening shoppers when the powerful bomb went off," Assam police intelligence chief Khagen Sharma told AFP. "At least 12 of the injured are stated to be critical," the police official said. Two paramilitary troopers were among the injured.
■ Japan
Leader calls for nuke debate
The policy chief of the ruling party renewed his calls for a debate over whether the country should acquire nuclear weapons capability in the face of the nuclear threat now posed by North Korea. "The main goal is to stop North Korea's outrageous acts," Shoichi Nakagawa, the policy chief of the Liberal Democratic Party, told a press conference in Washington. "As a form of deterrence, one can argue for nuclear an option. We must discuss all options to ensure that Japan would not come under nuclear attacks," he said.
■ Vietnam
Drug trafficking ring busted
Fifty people went on a trial in northern Vietnam for alleged involvement in one of the country's largest drug trafficking rings, state media reported yesterday. The defendants, including 11 policemen and border guards, were accused of trading 70 guns and trafficking 814.5kg of opium and 3.5kg of heroin, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said. Court officials were not available for comment yesterday. The case was uncovered in December 2004 when two former border guards were caught with four guns in Hanoi, the newspaper said. They told police that they had bought the guns from a police officer who was in charge of a warehouse in Hanoi run by the Ministry of Public Security, it said.
■ Thailand
Unique show lodging offered
Cheap and quiet accommodation is available for visitors to an upcoming international horticultural show, but some may find it too quiet -- the lodgings are in the funeral hall of a Buddhist temple. Three million visitors are expected at this year's Royal Flora Ratchaphruek, which opens Wednesday in the northern city of Chiang Mai and lasts until Jan. 31, the Bangkok Post reported yesterday. The event, being held to honor the country's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, is expected to strain the capacity of the area's numerous hotels and guest houses, so 20 local temples are also throwing their gates open to visitors, the newspaper reported.
■ Philippines
Poor move into cemetary
In the crowded sprawl of Manila, the living must compete for space with the dead. Fortunately for Virginia Bernardino and hundreds of other slum dwellers who have moved into the largest cemetery in the Philippines, the deceased don't seem to mind. "So far we have not seen any ghosts here," the soft-spoken Bernardino, 59, said with a chuckle. "I think that only happens in the movies. As the saying goes, we should fear not the dead but the living." For years, Manila North Cemetery, a public graveyard in the center of the capital of 12 million people, has been a thriving community for those evicted from their homes.
■ United States
Clinton's office shut down
Former president Bill Clinton's Harlem office was shut down on Friday afternoon after a woman in the office opened a letter and a suspicious white powder spilled out, police said. The substance was later found to be nontoxic, but its disco-very led the authorities to evacuate two floors of the building and to decontaminate several workers in the office. Police said the letter included a "rambling diatribe." It was the third time since 2001 that a letter containing a mysterious but nontoxic substance had been sent to Clinton's office.
■ United States
Airborne laser aircraft rolls in
The Missile Defense Agency has rolled out an airborne laser aircraft (ABL), the latest development in a missile-defense system that was once ridiculed as a "Star Wars" fantasy. In a ceremony held on Friday at Boeing Co's Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, Kansas, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to destroy enemy missiles. The laser weapon's system is designed to detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles in their boost flight phase. "I believe we are building the forces of good to beat the forces of evil," said Henry "Trey" Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency
■ United States
Rove speaks on Iraq
Presidential advisor Karl Rove blasted Democrats for even suggesting the US withdraw from Iraq, saying the US can't leave one of the world's largest oil reserves in terrorist hands. Rove also said the military must be flexible in its tactics. "More sacrifice is going to be required," Rove told a ballroom full of Republicans at a fundraiser on Friday for Wisconsin candidates. "We will either create a world in which our children and our grand-children have a hope of an optimistic future or we will leave to them a world with a hateful empire centered in the Middle East."
■ Colombia
Uribe strikes deep
Famed for his tough approach, President Alvaro Uribe went one step further on Thursday when he ordered a local official suspected of corruption arrested as he sat in the audience listening to the presidential speech. Speaking in the port city of Buenaventura, Uribe accused the city mayor's secretary of trying to get a naval officer to hand over a captured stash of cocaine and ordered police to detain him. "You are unworthy to carry out your duties," Uribe said, wagging his finger as two plainclothes officers escorted the official out of the hall. "The government cannot do battle when someone in a position as important as yours lacks patriotism."
■ Canada
Sex offender not welcome
An American sex offender who was sentenced by a US judge to three years "exile" in Canada was arrested by Canadian border guards on Thursday and faces deportation, the government said. Federal ministers and legislators had expressed deep unhappiness after a New York state judge allowed former teacher Malcolm Watson -- convicted of having sex with a 15-year-old girl -- to live in Canada on probation rather than spending time in a US jail. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the government had officially requested that Watson be deemed inadmissible because of his conviction. Immigration officials will start examining the case at a hearing on Friday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
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