■ Sri Lanka
Man starves in war zone
An odd-job man has starved to death in the country's war-torn north, officials said yesterday, the first such death since state records began in 1991. But officials said the death of Muthiah Chandrapala, 50, was not linked with food shortages in the northern Jaffna peninsula due to renewed civil war. Chandrapala died on Wednesday near the town of Point Pedro in the army-held Jaffna peninsula. "This is the first time a person has died of starvation," said Nadarajah Thangarajah, acting judge at the district court of Point Pedro. "But please don't try to connect this death to the shortage of food in Jaffna," he added. "It is not relevant, because this person was almost like an orphan. He didn't have a permanent home, he was a daily wage earner doing odd jobs. He lived like a vagabond."
■ Nepal
Ten climbers missing
Rescuers were searching two mountains attempting to find French, Swedish, British and Nepalese climbers who have been reported missing during their climbs, officials said yesterday. Four French climbers were reported missing since last week, when they were trying to scale the 5,896m Mount Paldor. Separately, two Swedish climbers, a Briton and three Nepalese Sherpa guides have been missing since Tuesday, when they were trying to climb the 6,856m Mount Ama Dablam.
■ Cambodia
Eighty-year-old charged
An 80-year-old Thai man has been charged with human trafficking after police arrested him trying to take five young Cambodian women back to Thailand, officials said yesterday. The suspect, Sathean Dy Em, and the women aged between 14 and 23 years, were detained on Sunday as they tried to cross the border in northwest Cambodia, police said. He was going to put the women to work in his guesthouse, provincial court prosecutor Nhoung Thul said.
■ Malaysia
Analyst on model murder rap
A political analyst with close links to senior politicians was charged yesterday in connection with the murder of a Mongolian model. Abdul Razak Baginda, 46, who heads the Malaysian Strategic Research Center think tank, was charged with abetting the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, the official Bernama news agency said. The crime is punishable by death. Abdul Razak allegedly abetted two policemen to commit the murder, Bernama said. The two junior officers of the police tactical unit appeared in court on Wednesday charged with Altantuya's murder. If found guilty, they also face the death penalty. Police have said the model, 28, was Abdul Razak's lover and was kidnapped from outside his home.
■ Thailand
Toilets getting cleaner
Seventy percent of toilets in public places do not meet WHO standards for cleanliness, health officials said yesterday. But a campaign to provide the public with cleaner facilities appears to be working, Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said at the opening ceremony of the 2006 World Toilet Expo and Forum in Bangkok. Authorities launched a clean-up campaign after randomly checking public toilets across Thailand in March and finding that 90 percent did not pass the standards for cleanliness, he said. A second round of inspections this month found that the percentage of dirty toilets had dropped to 70 percent, and authorities are hoping to cut the number to 60 percent next year, Mongkol said.
■ Iraq
Shiite bakers killed
Gunmen killed seven Shiite bakers yesterday after storming their bakery in east Baghdad, a security source said. Two more employees were wounded in the attack which occurred in Baghdad's religiously mixed Zayuniyah neighborhood. Dozens of bakeries have been attacked in Baghdad in recent months during the Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence that has engulfed the Iraqi capital. A wave of violence has been unleashed across Baghdad in the past few days which has left hundreds dead.
■ Brazil
Model dies of anorexia
A 21-year-old model died of anorexia one day before she was scheduled to fly to Paris for a photo shoot, local media reported on Wednesday. Ana Carolina Reston was 1.74m tall and weighed 40kg when she died on Tuesday. Reston, who worked for l'Equipe modeling agency, was hospitalized three weeks ago because of a kidney malfunction. "She had no resistance and the medication had no effect because of her extreme weakness," her aunt Mirthes Reston told journalists. A model since the age of 13, Reston had worked in Japan, Mexico, China and Turkey.
■ Canada
Winds batter west coast
A storm packing heavy rain and high winds slammed into the country's already soggy Pacific coast on Wednesday, uprooting trees, disrupting travel and possibly causing a building to collapse. The steel frame of a four-story building under construction in Vancouver collapsed during the storm, but fire officials said all the construction workers escaped injury because they were on a coffee break at the time of the incident. The metal girders crushed cars in a parking lot next to the construction site and narrowly missed a truck driver. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known, but a fire department spokesman told local media that the weather was likely a factor.
■ United States
Drug substitution up
A crackdown on illegal use of prescription narcotics like the powerful painkiller OxyContin has caused some addicts to switch to heroin, a Justice Department report said on Wednesday. The report by the department's National Drug Intelligence Center identified the main drug threats in the US for the coming year. "In some areas, such substitutions among prescription drug abusers have been widespread, creating new challenges for local law enforcement and public health agencies compelled to address a widening local heroin user population," it said. The study also found rates of pharmaceutical drug abuse, including pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives, exceeded that of all other drugs, except marijuana.
■ Russia
Duma says don't kill Saddam
The lower house of parliament on Wednesday warned that the execution of Saddam Hussein could lead to a further escalation of violence in Iraq. The State Duma unanimously approved a statement saying that "carrying out the death sentence would not solve the existing problems of the long-suffering people of Iraq, but may create new ones and trigger a new wave of harsh confrontation, revenge and hostility." An Iraqi court earlier this month convicted Saddam for the killings of some 150 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. The Duma hoped that the court would reconsider its verdict for the sake of "a peaceful domestic dialogue in Iraq."
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
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