■ Malaysia
Circumcision goes awry
The tip of a 10-year-old boy's penis was accidentally cut off during a circumcision at a clinic in Mersing, a news report said yesterday. Doctors tried to reattach the severed portion in a five-hour operation, but it was not known if the surgery had succeeded, the New Sunday Times newspaper reported. Boys often undergo circumcision during the year-end school holidays. The newspaper said a doctor put the severed tip on ice, and an ambulance rushed the boy to the government-run Sultanah Aminah Hospital.
■ India
Bridge collapse toll hits 34
The death toll from the partial collapse of a 150-year-old bridge on top of an inter-city passenger train in Bhagalpar, Bihar rose to 34 yesterday, a spokesman of the state-run rail company said. Among the victims were an infant girl and seven women, a senior police official said. Rail officials were unsure how many passengers were in the coach when an arch of a partially dismantled old bridge fell on it, but said that at least 30 passengers emerged unscathed from one end of the car just after the incident.
■ Japan
Bigger troop role urged
The military must play a bigger role in international peacekeeping and retain their non-combat mandate, senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Toranosuke Katayama said yesterday on a talk show aired by public broadcaster NHK. A reform bill making overseas peacekeeping activities part of the military's regular duties was approved by the lower house of parliament last Thursday. The bill now must be approved by the upper house but its enactment is almost certain.
■ Malaysia
Thais attack border official
A border official was attacked and beaten by a group of Thai nationals after preventing one of them from entering the country on suspicion of diesel smuggling, according to a report yesterday. Aswadi Abdullah, 27, from the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry, was admitted into intensive care on Saturday after the beating by some 20 Thai men armed with metal rods and nail-studded bats, the Star newspaper reported. Before the incident, Aswadi and three colleagues had stopped a Thai man in a pickup truck at a border checkpoint in northern Kedah state, suspecting him of being involved in diesel smuggling.
■ Australia
22 pilot whales dead
Volunteers are keeping vigil over five whales, the only survivors of a pod of 27 that beached on a southern beach, officials said. The pod of long-finned pilot whales beached themselves on Friday night at Ocean Beach, on the west coast of the island state of Tasmania. Twenty-two have since died. The five surviving animals were moved to shallow protected waters nearby, where volunteers spent Saturday night helping them to stay upright and making sure their blow holes were clear. The whales will be released in deeper waters after they recover their strength.
■ Bhutan
Bomb shatters calm
A bomb exploded in the southwest, seriously wounding four people and shattering the calm of the isolated Himalayan kingdom, police said. The blast occurred on Saturday in a market in Phuntsholing, Superintendent of Police Lieutenant Colonel Dorji Wangchuk said. There is no known militant group operating against the government of Bhutan, a country of 700,000 that remains largely shut to the outside world. However, Bhutan borders India's restive northeast, where several militant groups are fighting for self rule.
■ Thailand
Policeman shot dead
Two gunmen strolled into a crowded coffee shop yesterday in the restive south and opened fire, killing a policeman and a pro-government villager, police said. As shocked customers looked on, the gunmen shot dead Police Sargeant Samart Waremeng and Yuzoe Jehzoe as they were eating breakfast in the town of Krongpinang, in Muslim-dominated Yala Province, said Police Major General Paithoon Choochaiya, chief of the provincial police. More than 1,800 people have died from violence in the three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces since an insurgency flared up in January 2004.
■ Japan
Fighting fat with a blog
Two top officials at the Health Ministry are to start a blog about their efforts to lose weight, including pictures of their bellies, as part of a campaign to encourage healthy lifestyles. Tubby vice ministers Keizo Takemi and Noritoshi Ishida, both 55, have vowed to lose 5kg and 6kg respectively, the English-language Daily Yomiuri said yesterday. Starting today, the blog will reveal their weight and waist measurement each week, as well as the number of paces they walk, the number of stairs they climb and the amount of alcohol they consume. Health officials say millions of Japanese are suffering from "metabolic syndrome." The condition is characterized by excess fat around the abdomen, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.
■ Madagascar
Madagascans go to polls
The nation voted yesterday in a presidential election widely expected to be won by President Marc Ravalomanana. Ravalomanana, who began his career selling yoghurts from the back of a bike, confirmed his frontrunner status on Friday when he pulled in more than 30,000 enthusiastic supporters to his last campaign rally. Final rallies by his opponents attracted less than a thousand people.
■ Ukraine
Mystery surrounds injuries
A missile exploded in an eastern city, injuring two people, a Ukrainian television station reported on Saturday. Emergency officials denied a missile exploded and said the pair were injured in a fire. Channel 5 reported the Thursday blast in Dnipropetrovsk took place when two employees of a local space research center tried to disassemble a missile. It was unclear how the rocket ended up at the center. "The explosion occurred and caused a fire and a leak of some poisonous elements," Leonid Zayats, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk Law Academy which is located near the center, said on Channel 5.
■ United Kingdom
Dance to aid health
Dance classes are to be provided by the National Health Service to counter declining fitness levels and prevent a national obesity epidemic, the Independent on Sunday reported. The newspaper said the Department of Health was to outline a campaign in the coming week to encourage Britons to take more exercise. Doctors' offices will hand out questionnaires to determine daily exercise levels and those patients deemed to be too sedentary will be prescribed a diet of activities including street-dancing, tango classes and trampolining. Britain's status as the fat man of Europe was confirmed by a government report in October that showed adult obesity rates were the highest in Europe -- at 24 percent -- and that children were rapidly catching up.
■ Serbia
Seselj supporters protest
Around 20,000 people demonstrated peacefully outside the US embassy in Belgrade on Saturday to support Vojislav Seselj, an ultra-nationalist Serbian leader being tried by the UN war crimes court in The Hague. The demonstration came a day after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said it had until further notice postponed hearings of Seselj who has started his fourth week of a hunger strike. The 52-year-old head of the Serbian Radical Party is standing trial on charges of persecution, torture and murder.
■ Italy
Parmesan thefts grate
Criminal gangs have found a lucrative new way of earning money -- hijacking trucks containing wheels of Parmesan cheese. Police say there has been a spate of cheese raids. Gangs lie in wait at service stations on the Milan-Bologna motorway to ambush drivers when they stop for coffee. In one instance, a driver was threatened by four armed men, tied up and gagged, and his van carrying 300 wheels of cheese was driven away. To counter the thefts, producers and the Italian farmers' union are experimenting with microchips hidden in the crusts of the cheese, which means they are more easily identifiable.
■ Saudi Arabia
Militant arrests climb
Authorities have arrested 136 militants over the past three months, accusing some of plotting to carry out suicide attacks inside the kingdom, the country's official news agency said on Saturday. An interior ministry official said that the suspects had been captured by security forces as part of an operation aimed at arresting militants of different nationalities in several cities including the capital, Riyadh, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The agency's report said some of those arrested were also allegedly plotting to rob banks and carry out kidnapping operations.
■ Chile
Pinochet suffers heart attack
Former dictator General Augusto Pinochet suffered an acute heart attack yesterday and doctors, using a catheter to clear his arteries, "virtually rescued him from death," his son said. Doctors called the 91-year-old's condition life threatening, and a Pinochet spokesman said he received last rites. Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara said the catheter procedure was successful, but that Pinochet remained in serious but stable condition some seven hours after being admitted to the Santiago Military hospital. Pinochet, who has been under house arrest, was rushed to the hospital after suffering "an acute" heart attack, the hospital said in a statement.
■ United States
FBI investigates police
The FBI has begun a civil rights investigation into the case of unarmed black man who was shot dead by police in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while driving a carjacked sport utility vehicle, authorities said. Troy Eddines, 21, was killed and Travis Jackson was wounded when the officers fired on the stolen vehicle they were riding in on Tuesday. Two officers had pulled over the sports utility vehicle, which reversed as they approached and hit one of them in the leg, authorities said. The officers fired fewer than eight shots, said Detective Kathy Collins, a Fort Lauderdale police spokeswoman.
■ Brazil
Collision was in `blind zone'
A collision between a Gol airline Boeing and an executive jet, which led to the country's worst air disaster, took place in a "blind zone" where control towers have no contact with airplanes, according to a report. Two air traffic controllers told Epoca magazine there are blind zones in the nation's air space, but aviation authorities deny their existence. "The blind zone exists. It is a very large area, bigger than several [Brazilian] states," one of the controllers was quoted as saying in the magazine. Both officials, who are from the military, spoke on condition of anonymity.
■ Guyana
US airlines threatened
US and Guyanese authorities said they were investigating on Saturday a threatened chemical attack against US airlines flying out of the tiny Caribbean country. An e-mail sent to newspapers, airlines and the US embassy threatened an attack from an "independent militant group" against US carriers, American Airlines and North American Airlines, as well as Trinidadian carrier BWIA. The threat involving flights to Britain, the Caribbean and Africa came as the country is making security a priority before next year's cricket world cup, when 30,000 visiting fans are expected. The FBI and the US Transportation Safety Authority have begun an investigation, US embassy spokesman Niles Cole said.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
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