■ South Korea
Web suicide pact uncovered
Three South Koreans who forged a suicide pact over the Internet have been found dead in a park, police said yesterday. The three, in their 20s and mid-30s, were found lying on benches in Seoul's Namsan Park on Sunday. An empty bottle of cyanide was found next to their bodies, along with a suicide note. Police have detained a 19-year-old female college student for allegedly assis-ting the suicide. She said she decided not to participate at the last minute after a phone call from her boyfriend.
■ India
Traders try to halt demolition
Thousands of shops in illegal buildings marked for demolition in New Delhi will be shuttered for three days through tomorrow as their owners protest the municipal authority's plans, a protest organizer said. The traders planned to demon-strate outside the New Delhi state legislature yesterday, and the federal government has filed a petition in the Supreme Court calling for the state government to halt the demolitions until a 15-year federal development plan for housing and businesses in the capital is approved.
■ Australia
Test-tube koalas born
Scientists unveiled three test-tube koala younglings yesterday as part of an artificial insemination program to preserve the vulnerable mammal. The scientists said the program would lead to the creation of the world's first koala sperm bank, which will enable researchers to screen out koala diseases. A total of 12 koala younglings were produced using test-tube insemination. The koalas were conceived using a new breeding technology that uses sperm mixed with a special solution to prolong the sperm's shelf-life.
■ Pakistan
British royals start tour
Britain's Prince Charles and wife Camilla met President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz yesterday as they began their first trip to the country. "The British government and its people are appreciative of the steps taken by Pakistan to counter extremism and terrorism," a British diplomat quoted the prince as telling Musharraf. Security arrangements are likely to limit the royal couple's contact with ordinary people during their first visit to a country where close to 750,000 British Muslims have family.
■ Malaysia
Mahathir's role debated
Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad could be dumped as an adviser to key government-linked companies and agencies if he continues to criticize the government, reports said yesterday. Senior members of the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) are expected to discuss Mahathir's roles as adviser to national oil company Petronas, car maker Proton and the Langkawi Development Authority on Thursday. "Let the UMNO Supreme Council discuss it first and then it is up to the prime minister to decide," Mohamed Khaled Nordin, a member of the council, was quoted as saying by the Malay-language Utusan Malaysia.
■ China
Online cafes may ban kids
Lawmakers are considering banning children under the age of 18 from Internet cafes because the centers have become hotbeds for online gaming and crime, state press reported yesterday. A draft law now before the National People's Congress (NPC) also sought to address the problem of children succumbing to online gaming addictions, the China Daily said. The chairman of the NPC's law committee, Yang Jingyu (楊景宇), told the NPC on Sunday that he believed Internet cafes played a "negative role" in youngsters' development. "If there were no Internet cafes, students would be able to concentrate on their studies better," the paper quoted him as saying.
■ Japan
Fertility ring alerts couples
Is it a phone call, a text message or simply time to make love? A new mobile phone available through NTT DoCoMo can ring to let would-be mothers know when they reach the most fertile part of their monthly reproductive cycles. By entering the details of her menstruation dates, a woman can program the handset to alert her three days before ovulation and again on the day. The firm warns that the calculations are based on average cycles. The phone was the idea of female designer Momoko Ikuta, who also provided its pastel paisley look. The handset provides several other functions such as a recipe database and a button that sets off a "camouflage melody," allowing the user to avoid unwanted attention by pretending to receive a call.
■ Japan
Abe backs education reform
The nation needs to reverse a moral decline and better motivate students to create "a nation with dignity," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday. "Education skills in the community and households are declining, and some point out that morality is deteriorating and the motivation to learn is deteriorating," he said. "Our aim for revision is to nurture people with ambitions and create a country with dignity." He is backing a bill to revise the 1947 education law that would also require teachers to foster "love of the nation and homeland."
■ Algeria
Two police stations bombed
Two people were killed and 17 wounded when Islamist rebels detonated truck bombs outside two police stations east of Algiers overnight, witnesses said yesterday. The simultaneous attacks in Reghaia, 30km east of Algiers and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the most elaborate in years by Islamist groups seeking to set up a purist Islamic state, they said. The explosion in Reghaia burned parts of the two-storey building, shatter-ing windows for several blocks and hurled parts of the truck more than 100m from the scene, they said.
■ Israel
President won't step down
President Moshe Katsav dismissed a call from the attorney general to step down while an indictment on rape and other serious charges is taking shape, instead hanging on to his ceremonial post. Though Attorney General Meni Mazuz's recommendation on Sunday cannot force Katsav from office, it adds an influential voice to the grow-ing chorus of officials who have called for the president to resign. Because the law governing the presidency does not give either Mazuz or the Supreme Court the authority to rule on any aspect of Katsav's activities, the attorney general's recommendation in a brief to the court amounted to the strongest official language Mazuz could use.
■ United States
University saga ends
Trustees of the nation's top university for the deaf reneged on Sunday on hiring a controversial president-elect, ending a month of divisive protests at Gallaudet University. Jane Fernandes had been named to take over on Jan. 1. However, students backed by faculty and alumni have objected to the appoint-ment since May, and students shut down the campus, in northeast Washington, for three days this month. Protesters said that Fer-nandes had been selected too hastily and was ill-suited to running the university, charging she lacked an ability to forge consensus. Fernandes has said she is the victim of discrimination because she did not learn American Sign Language as a child.
■ France
Government talks security
The government was to hold an emergency meeting on boosting transport security yesterday after an arson attack on a bus left a woman critically burned, the prime minister's office said. The attack by youths in Marseille was the worst incident in an upsurge of urban violence over the weekend coinciding with the first anniversary of the riots that shook the country last year. Bus drivers in the city refused to return to work on Sunday until security was reinforced, prompting Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to double the number of riot police in Marseille to more than 3,000.
■ Germany
Soldiers suspended
Senior officers are being questioned as part of an investigation into the dese-cration of human skulls by German soldiers in Afghanistan, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Sunday. Two soldiers were suspended for their involvement in the desecration, two days after the top-selling Bild news-paper published pictures of soldiers striking a variety of poses with human remains. On Saturday, Bild published new photographs, including one purporting to show a German soldier carrying out a mock execution of a skeleton assembled from various human remains.
■ United States
Storm leaves two dead
Thousands of homes and businesses had no electricity on Sunday from Maryland to Maine as a storm system blasted the region with winds gusting to more than 80kph, knocking over trees and a construction crane. The storm was blamed for at least two deaths. A falling tree killed a motorcyclist in Massachusetts, police said. In New Hampshire a man drowned when his kayak overturned on a rain-swollen river, state officials said.
■ United Kingdom
Poll says withdraw troops
A majority of Britons believe the country should withdraw its troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan within a year regardless of the local situation in either country, a poll published yesterday showed. Of the 1,722 people surveyed by polling firm YouGov for the Daily Telegraph, 56 percent said British soldiers should be withdrawn from Iraq in 12 months -- 19 percent indicating their support for an immediate withdrawal, with 37 percent favouring pulling out at some point within the next year. Meanwhile, 53 percent backed British troops being withdrawn from Afghanistan by this time next year, with 22 percent calling for soldiers to be brought back immediately and 31 percent supporting a withdrawal in the next 12 months.
■ United States
Teen bus driver nabbed
A 15-year-old boy stole a bus, drove it along a public transit route, picked up passengers and collected fares, authorities said on Sunday. Ritchie Calvin Davis was already on probation for taking a tour bus and driving passengers around, authorities said. In Saturday's incident, he took the bus from the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando, where it was parked awaiting sale at an auction, a Seminole County sheriff's report said. The bus belongs to the Central Florida Transportation Agency, which runs LYNX public transit services in the Orlando area. "I drove that bus better than most of the LYNX drivers could," the teen told a deputy after he was stopped and arrested. A passenger, suspicious of the youthful looks of the driver had called authorities.
■ United Kingdom
Staff to be evacuated
Most of the staff at the British consulate in the Iraqi city of Basra will be evacuated early this week due to safety concerns, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. The newspaper, citing British spokesmen, said that a private security assessment had recommended the measure after the consulate was hit by regular mortar attacks over the past two months. Some staff have already been evacuated and more are expected to go this week, the newspaper said. A small staff will continue to run the consulate's operations until it is deemed safe enough for more to return.
■ United States
Heaviest pumpkin on display
Commuters at Grand Central Station in New York gaped on Sunday at a 676kg pumpkin, the world's heaviest, according to organizers at the transit hub. The pumpkin was on display as part of a Halloween charity event, and smaller pumpkins were sold to the public for US$5 or US$10 each, with proceeds going to the Food Bank for New York City, which feeds the hungry, said Karen Weber, a spokeswoman for Grand Central Terminal. Grand Central bought the big pumpkin from a Rhode Island man for an amount Weber declined to share. The pumpkin was to be donated to the Ulster County Food Bank after the event, she said.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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