■ Vietnam
Girl found after 18 years
A woman has been returned to her home in the Central Highlands 18 years after she went missing as an eight-year old girl tending cows near the border to Cambodia, her father told a newspaper on Thursday. Policeman Ksor Lu long believed that his daughter had been eaten by a wild animal until last Saturday, when he was told that loggers had found a "forestman" at a village in Cambodia's Ratanakiri Province. Lu arrived and immediately recognized his daughter.
■ China
Three arrested for murder
Police have arrested three suspects in the beating death of a journalist at a coal mine in the country's north, state media reported yesterday. The arrests follow a manhunt ordered on Wednesday to track down 20 people suspected of taking part in the beating of reporter Lan Chengzhang (蘭成長) on Jan. 9. The official Xinhua news agency said police were still seeking four others in the case. Prior to the beating, Lan had been conducting interviews outside a mine in northern province of Shanxi.
■ China
Yellow River fish wiped out
Dams, pollution and overfishing have wiped out a third of the fish species in the Yellow River, state media reported on Thursday. The news heightens fears that the country's big rivers are losing their ability to support life as rapid and poorly regulated economic growth takes an increasingly heavy toll on the environment. "The Yellow River used to be host to more than 150 species of fish, but a third of them are now extinct, including some precious ones," the People's Daily newspaper quoted an agriculture ministry official as saying. Fishing catches had fallen by 40 percent in recent years.
■ Japan
Gas leak kills at least two
A natural gas leak killed at least two people yesterday, and local officials have urged residents to evacuate their neighborhood. Around 178 people in the northern Hokkaido Prefecture city of Kitami were urged to evacuate to a nearby elementary school after the leak in residential gas lines occurred at around 1:30pm, city official Osamu Oe said. At least four people were injured and taken to the hospital for treatment, but their conditions were not immediately known, said local fire department official Takao Yokoyama. There have been no reports of any fires or explosions due to the leak, said city official Chikara Kiyono. The fire department responded after local utility company Hokkaido Gas Co. notified it that local residents were complaining of the smell of gas in their neighborhood, Yokoyama said.
■ Russia
UK envoy harassed
Russia has ordered a pro-Kremlin youth group to tone down its five-month campaign of harassment and intimidation against Britain's ambassador in Moscow. Following numerous complaints from British officials, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a mild rebuke to Nashi, a fanatical nationalist youth movement that has been stalking British Ambassador Anthony Brenton. The group took exception to a conference of opposition parties that Brenton attended last summer and has been harassing him since September. After a meeting on Tuesday with Nashi's leader, Lavrov said the group had agreed to abide by the Vienna convention, which protects diplomats from harassment. But on Thursday, Nashi said it would continue its campaign until Brenton "apologized."
■ Germany
Conservative leader quits
Edmund Stoiber, the conservative premier of Bavaria, succumbed to calls for his departure on Thursday, bringing his political career to an abrupt end after an aide snooped into a political rival's private life. Stoiber, 65, who has been at the helm of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) for almost 14 years, said he would step down as local governor and CSU chairman in September. Given a deep rift between Stoiber and Chancellor Angela Merkel, his departure was seen as a blessing in disguise for the German leader.
■ Turkey
Controversial journalist shot
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was killed by a gunman yesterday at the entrance to his newspaper's office, CNN-Turk television and other news agencies reported. Dink, a 53-year-old Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, had gone on trial numerous times in Turkey for speaking out about the mass killings of Armenians by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. He had received threats from nationalists, who viewed him as a traitor. Dink was a public figure in Turkey, and was the chief editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. In an earlier interview with AP, Dink had cried as he talked about some of his fellow countrymen's hatred for him, saying he could not stay in a country where he was unwanted.
■ United Kingdom
Sanitation tops list
Sanitation was voted the most important medical milestone in the past century and a half on Thursday in a poll conducted by a leading medical journal. Improved sewage disposal and clean water supply systems, which have reduced diseases such as cholera, was the overwhelming favorite of 11,341 people worldwide who voted in the survey conducted by the British Medical Journal. It surpassed antibiotics, the discovery of DNA and anaesthesia, which were among the top five milestones in the poll. Participants were asked what they thought was the biggest medical development since the journal was established in 1840.
■ Mozambique
Rains destroy homes
Torrential rains have destroyed over 1,000 houses, leaving more than 6,000 people homeless in northern Mozambique, officials said on Thursday. A statement by the government's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute, said 13 classrooms had also been swept away by the rain, and a further 150 houses are at risk of collapse.
■ United States
Killer son hid mom's body
A man strangled his mother during an argument and hid her rotting corpse for nearly three months, authorities said. Troy Kowalsky, 44, was charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday, a day after authorities found the remains of Linda Kowalsky in the trunk of her car outside a storage garage in Marion, Iowa. Court documents say Kowalsky admitted he got angry at his 62-year-old mother and choked her at their home on Oct. 21. An autopsy showed she died of strangulation. A preliminary hearing was set for Jan. 29.
■ United States
Helicopter helps deer
The pilot of a TV news helicopter used wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up. A small crowd had gathered to watch the deer struggling, its hooves repeatedly slipping, near the shore of Lake Thunderbird on Wednesday afternoon near Norman, Oklahoma. With the helicopter's camera rolling, KWTV pilot Mason Dunn used the wind from the rotor to push the deer, initially sending it into a break in the ice where the animal managed to hold onto the ice with its front legs. Dunn then lowered the helicopter and the wind sent the deer sliding on its belly across the ice until it reached shore and scampered into a nearby wooded area.
■ Brazil
Three more bodies found
Rescue crews recovered three bodies from a minibus entombed under tonnes of earth and rubble, bringing to six the number of dead retrieved from the collapse of a subway station construction site in Sao Paulo. Near midnight, rescuers removed the body of another man from inside the vehicle, said a fire department spokesman. Last Friday, a 40m-wide circular hole lined with concrete gave way without warning, swallowing pedestrians, dump trucks and a minibus driving by the site. Several nearby homes were damaged and must now be torn down.
■ Brazil
A hair-raising experience
In a new twist in Rio de Janeiro's crime annals, scissor-wielding thieves clipped off the long, flowing locks of a 22-year-old Brazilian woman as she rode in a city bus. The thieves also stole her handbag and her mobile phone before escaping, she told reporters on Wednesday after the incident the previous night. Sales assistant Mirna Marchetti's hair was dark, straight and reached down to her waist. She said she had not cut it for four years. Police suspect the thieves hope to sell the hair to a hairdresser. Beauty salons in Rio can charge more than 500 reais (US$250) for top-quality hair extensions, salon owner Rosangela Castro said.
■ Colombia
Nestle plant destroyed
A pickup truck carrying 300kg of explosives destroyed most of a dairy plant owned by Swiss food giant Nestle in southern Colombia, in an attack that police attributed to leftist rebels. No one was killed and only one person was injured in the attack that occurred on Wednesday evening in Doncello, 350km south of Bogota, said police commander Colonel William Urrego in Caqueta, where the blast took place. "Given the way the attack was carried out, there's no doubt it was done by the FARC," said Urrego, referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
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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