■ India
Blast rips through train car
Six people died and at least 60 were injured yesterday in a blast that rocked a passenger train in the east Indian state of West Bengal, a spokesman for the Indian Railways said. The train was on its way from Haldibari to New Jalpaiguri in the state when the explosion hit one of its carriages at Belakoba station, 500km from the state capital Kolkata, said Prasad Ranjan Roy, West Bengal's home secretary. "Six people were killed and 60 wounded in the blast," a spokesman for Northeastern Frontier Railway said from Guwahati city in neighboring Assam state. "The toll may go up as 25 people are in a critical state," he said. It was not immediately known what caused the explosion.
■ Thailand
Bomb in south kills two
A bomb hidden in a motorcycle killed a soldier and a civilian and wounded 16 others yesterday in a restive southern town popular with Malaysian tourists, police said. Police and witnesses said the bomb, which exploded near a hotel and train station in Sungai Kolok, was detonated by a signal from a mobile telephone -- a favored tactic of local Muslim militants. "I saw a large pool of blood next to the damaged motorcycle where the bomb was hidden, and a circuit of a mobile phone," a reporter said. Witnesses said the blast killed a Buddhist soldier and a Muslim laborer in the town, popular with Malaysian men for sex tourism. Other soldiers and passers-by were wounded.
■ Cambodia
Officers arrested for theft
Three army officers have been arrested for stealing large sums of money meant for war widows, military officials said yesterday. The men were detained on Friday as they tried to flee to Thailand with currency worth US$800,000, national military police commander Sao Sokha said. "We arrested them, but we are suspicious that there are more people involved in this matter ... we are investigating who has conspired with them," he said, adding that only around US$575,000 had been recovered. The men will likely be charged with stealing state funds that were meant for war widows in the nation's northwest.
■ Afghanistan
Rain death toll rises to 80
Heavy rain again battered remote villages in Badghis Province that were already devastated by flooding, as the death toll in the western region rose to 80, officials said yesterday. Aid workers were delivering several tonnes of food and aid to people yesterday, said Habibullah Murghabi, the head of a disaster committee. It had taken more than two days of travel by donkey and horse to reach flood-affected villages in the mountainous region. Murghabi said the death toll in the Balamurghab and Ghormach districts had risen to 62, while 92 people were reported missing.
■ Japan
Governor garners support
Officials pledged yesterday to work with Okinawa's governor-elect, a day after the candidate backed by the nation's ruling coalition won an election that highlighted disparate visions of the future of US forces on the island. Hirokazu Nakaima, 67, won Sunday's gubernatorial election in Okinawa with support from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc. Thousands of US troops are based on the island. "We hope to carry out sincere discussions ... on the issue of reducing Okinawa's burden regarding the [US] military bases," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.
■ Germany
Six questioned in terror plot
Six people are under investigation over an alleged terrorist plot to blow up a commercial aircraft, prosecutors said yesterday. The six, as well as other people who have not yet been identified, are believed to have begun preparations for an attack on behalf of "so far unknown" terrorist backers, federal prosecutors said in a statement. Several of the accused approached a person with security clearance at an unidentified airport last summer who agreed to smuggle a case or bag containing explosives onto a plane in an exchange for an unspecified payment, the statement said. The six were detained on Friday, but five of them were released on Saturday after questioning. The sixth was kept in custody over an unrelated matter.
■ Iran
Chat leads to murder
A university student talking with his wife at a bus stop was murdered by another student upset over a public conversation between the sexes, the ISNA student news agency reported on Sunday. Towhid Ghafarzadeh Nadi was killed in Sabzevar, ISNA said. "The murderer questioned the couple over their relationship, which led to a violent scuffle, and the murderer stabbed his victim with a knife," said the Office for the Consolidation of Unity, a reformist student group. The man later told police he "had acted because his religious sensibilities were injured by seeing a young man and a young woman talking in public," the statement added.
■ Somalia
Crocs kill five after floods
Crocodiles have killed five people forced to wade through floodwaters, officials said on Sunday, as the interim government appealed for international help. Floods have killed scores, driven tens of thousands from their homes, submerged villages, and washed away bridges and roads in south-central regions. Residents in Bulo Burde town in the worst-hit central Hiraan region climbed trees to escape both the floodwaters and hungry crocodiles. "People do not have anywhere to go, they are on the hills and trees. The crocodiles killed five people and five people are missing," a local politician said.
■ United Kingdom
Spy's informer in hiding
An Italian academic who was the last contact of a poisoned former Russian spy went into hiding a week ago, Britain's Press Association reported on Sunday. Mario Scaramella met with Alexander Litvinenko in London, just before the former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service fell ill. Litvinenko is now fighting for his life. Citing an unnamed Italian political source and close friend of Scaramella, who reportedly gave Litvinenko information on the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the association reported that the Italian visited the British Embassy in Rome after he realized he was the last person to have seen Litvinenko.
■ United States
Please come in peace
Two peace activists have planned a massive anti-war demonstration for the first day of winter. The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm on Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace. "The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said on Sunday. "Mass meditations have been shown to make a change."
■ United Kingdom
Brits too reserved to call 999
The British "stiff upper lip" may explain why 40 percent of people would not dial 999 immediately if they thought they had suffered a heart attack, a survey released yesterday said. The YouGov poll also revealed 64 percent of people experiencing heart attack symptoms would ring their partner, friend, relative, doctor or the National Health Service's telephone network rather than call an ambulance. "These statistics portray a very worrying, and perhaps very British, reluctance to call 999 even in the most serious of emergencies," said Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation which commissioned the poll. "Maybe it is our natural reserve and stoicism, but it is costing lives."
■ Costa Rica
Cocaine submarine seized
US Coast Guards have seized a submarine carrying 3.5 tonnes of cocaine in the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica and arrested three Colombians on board, the Costa Rican Coast Guard said on Sunday. The submarine appeared to be a makeshift vessel unlike military submarines or those used by oceanographers. It could only submerge 2m under water, Costa Rican Coast Guard spokesman Jose Antonio Fallas said. The 14m long vessel was found last Wednesday near the remote Coco Island, southwest of the Central American mainland.
■ United Kingdom
Goldsmith favors limits
The attorney general said yesterday that he was not convinced of the need to hold terrorist suspects for up to 90 days without charge -- a key goal of his close ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair. Lord Goldsmith was asked by reporters at a briefing whether there was evidence to support increasing the limit to 90 days. "Well, I haven't seen it yet," he said. "The recent investigations demonstrate that it was right to extend the period to 28 days, but on extending it any further we need evidence to demonstrate that that is needed."
■ United Kingdom
Kissinger down on Iraq war
Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in an interview on the BBC's Sunday AM program. Kissinger said that the US government must enter dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors, including Iran, if any progress is to be made in the region. "If you mean, by `military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," Kissinger said. But he warned that a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.
■ Germany
Gunman wounds eight
A masked man stormed a high school in the northwest yesterday and opened fire with a handgun, injuring eight people. Police said the incident ended with the death of the assailant. It was not immediately clear how the man died, but police spokesman Klaus Laackmann said the school had been cleared and the students taken to safety. N-tv television reported the assailant was an 18-year-old former student of the Geschwister Scholl school in Emsdetten. Police spokesman Josef Brinker said the man entered the school at about 9:30am and fired several shots. Several students, a female teacher and the head caretaker were injured, he said.
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