■ India
Moon mission mulled
The government on Thursday held out the possibility of sending astronauts to the moon by 2020 and called for a national debate on whether it should enter a space race with richer nations. The Indian Space Research Organization says it could have a manned spaceship ready in eight years to orbit the Earth and put astronauts on the lunar surface in 14 years. To date India has shied away from putting humans into space as the costs have been considered prohibitive.
■ Afghanistan
Six police killed in ambush
Suspected militants ambushed a police patrol killing six policemen and wounding three others, an official said. The police car was sprayed with bullets in the Adraskan district of Herat Province late on Thursday, said Nasar Ahmad Paykar, the provincial deputy police chief. Adraskan's district police chief was among those killed, he said. Paykar blamed Taliban militants for the ambush. Three wounded policemen were brought to Herat hospital for treatment.
■ China
Students felled by poisoning
Twenty-one young students fell ill and were hospitalized after eating in a school's cafeteria, state media reported yesterday, in the latest in a series of such food poisoning cases. The students at the private school in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region complained of headaches, abdominal pain and vomiting after lunch on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency quoted a local health official as saying. Nineteen of the students, ages 6 to 14, were discharged from hospital the same day after treatment, while the others were still hospitalized but not in critical condition, the official was quoted as saying.
■ United Kingdom
Man jailed for killing child
A man who killed his daughter with chloroform to punish his wife for being unfaithful was jailed for 15 years on Thursday. Gavin Hall, 33, a hospital radiographer, murdered Amelia, 3, as her mother and sister slept in their Northamptonshire home. The jury at Northampton Crown Court heard that he gave his daughter sleeping pills before he smothered her with a rag soaked with chloroform, media reports said. Hall, who admitted manslaughter but denied murder, tried to commit suicide after the killing. Hall suffered an emotional breakdown after discovering his wife was having an affair with a judge she met on the Internet, media reports said.
■ Norway
Halloween prank backfires
A police bomb squad raced across the country by helicopter on Thursday to investigate a mysterious, wired package that turned out to be a discarded Halloween prop left behind by a young man who had dressed up as a suicide bomber. The package, with wires sticking out of it, was found on a car said Asbjoern Andersen of Bergen police. The car's owner had no idea what the package was, so police evacuated the surrounding area. Then they summoned bomb experts from Oslo, who flew 300km by helicopter to assess the threat. "We really had no choice," Andersen said about bringing in experts from the capital.
■ United Kingdom
Migration trend continues
An estimated 380,000 people migrated from Britain last year, with Australia the most popular destination followed by Spain and France, according to data published on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics. The level of migration has grown steadily from 264,000 in 1996. Nearly 200,000 of those who left last year intending to live abroad for more than 12 months were British citizens, with the rest foreign nationals returning home. The data also shows that the number of people coming into the country for longer than 12 months last year stood at 565,000, slightly down on the previous year.
■ Germany
Euros contaminated
Officials are trying to figure out how some 1,500 euro banknotes were contaminated with acid, sometimes causing the brittle bills to disintegrate. The notes, most of them in denominations of less than 100 euros (US$128), started surfacing in June, according to Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. So far, the disappearing cash has been found in 17 cities. The bills "apparently were contaminated with an acid and may disintegrate," Interior Ministry spokesman Stefan Kaller told reporters on Thursday. He said that there were "no clear information yet as to how acid got onto the notes."
■ United Kingdom
Titanic baby ashes scattered
The ashes of a 92-year-old British woman conceived onboard the Titanic, whose parents are thought to have inspired the hit film, have been scattered at sea, a coastguard official said on Thursday. Ellen Walker was born nine months after her mother, 19-year-old sweet shop assistant Kate Phillips and father Henry Morley, 40, eloped on the vessel, which sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg in 1912. The couple, who traveled under the name Mr and Mrs Marshall, are believed to have inspired the characters of Jack and Rose, played by Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet in the Oscar-winning 1997 film.
■ United States
Former inmate sparks scare
Jail officials in White Plains, New York, feared an escapee was on the loose on Halloween night when a former inmate was spotted trick-or-treating in his orange prison jumpsuit, authorities said. A corrections officer spotted the former inmate, Oscar Aponte, 32, going house to house with his son in his hometown of Peekskill, north of New York City. The officer alerted the Westchester County Jail and the prison was locked down while all inmates were accounted for, said Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to the county executive. Authorities believed the former inmate smuggled the orange jumpsuit out of the jail when he was released in September.
■ United States
Abstinence hasn't worked
US efforts to promote abstinence as a cornerstone of sexual education have not lowered levels of sexually transmitted diseases, two former US surgeon generals said on Thursday. Joycelyn Elders and David Satcher told a news conference in San Francisco that a broad effort was needed to promote the "sexual literacy" of Americans to counter unacceptable levels of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies, especially among teens and young adults. "The vows of abstinence break far more easily than latex condoms," said Elders, who was fired by President Bill Clinton after she suggested that schools teach children about masturbation.
■ Canada
Child abuser arrested
A 34-year-old man was arrested hours after he sent live images of himself sexually abusing a pre-school girl this week to a shocked undercover officer, police said on Thursday. "The officer was in conversations with the accused at the time," Detective Constable Paul Krawczyk, a Toronto police officer who witnessed the violent abuse, told reporters. "I can't get into details of what exactly happened but certain things in the images and in the chat with the person, it was obvious that it was happening live ... We saw live abuse happening." Krawczyk said the Toronto child exploitation unit had struck up an online conversation with the suspect, when he sent the undercover officer images of himself sexually assaulting a girl "in the moments following the assault."
■ Colombia
Bungled bombing kills two
A jeep carrying explosives went up in flames just south of the capital of Bogota, killing two passengers and injuring five, authorities said. The apparent accident late on Thursday, which authorities believe may have pre-empted a planned terrorist attack by leftist rebels, comes a day after 17 police officers and two civilians were killed during a guerrilla raid on a remote hamlet in the country's northwest. Two other car-bombings, one of them deadly, have occurred in the past two weeks.
■ Panama
Police investigator poisoned
An official who died just after opening an investigation into possible ties between traffickers and the nation's anti-narcotics forces was poisoned in a contract killing, the government said on Thursday. Franklin Brewster, a high-ranking police investigator, became ill and died in July, days after launching the probe into suspected infiltration of drug-fighting forces by traffickers. A spokesman for the public prosecutor's office said that the killers were paid US$500,000 to murder Brewster, and that three people who worked with the victim were under investigation for murder.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
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