■ 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."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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