■ 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."
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
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
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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