■ Australia
Women overrun store
Hundreds of women overran a department store yesterday to snap up Stella McCartney's new collection, tearing clothes off mannequins and each other in a chaotic stampede for style. Around 300 fashion-hungry shoppers, some of whom lined up for more than two-and-a-half hours before the doors opened, rushed a Target department store in Sydney where McCartney's limited edition special collection went on sale. "They took clothes off mannequins, they were just tearing clothes off other people -- it was just absurd," said one bemused customer after the frenzy left shelves bare of the British designer's fashion fare. "Someone just ripped a jacket out of my hands," shopper Lori Herbert told the Daily Telegraph.
■ Indonesia
Clashes leave nine dead
Nine people were killed and more than 150 hurt in the remote Papua province after a murder accusation triggered clashes between tribesmen armed with spears and arrows, police said yesterday. A woman accused of poisoning her husband to death encouraged members of her clan to attack members of a rival group which her accuser -- and her dead husband -- belonged to, said police spokesman Kartono Wangsadisastra. Nine people were killed in the ensuing clashes between the Kobagau and Sani tribes and 154 others were injured, including a policeman hit by an arrow, the spokesman said.
■ China
Chlorine fumes injure 59
Chlorine fumes injured 59 people, eight of them seriously, when a demolition worker broke a derelict tank at a construction site for Shanghai's 2010 World Expo, a doctor and reports said yesterday. The workers were dismantling an old solvent plant in the Pudong District of China's financial capital when the leak occurred, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. A doctor at nearby Shanghai Punan Hospital said 59 workers were brought in for treatment and eight were in a serious condition. Local police refused to comment on the accident. Xinhua and local reports said safety workers stopped the leak soon after it started.
■ Philippines
Rice facility funding agreed
The world's largest collection of rice varieties will receive US$600,000 a year in funding under an agreement announced yesterday to help preserve crucial crop diversity. The Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust signed the agreement to fund IRRI's Genetic Resources Center, the two groups said. The center's special earthquake and fireproof facility in the foothills of Mount Makiling, south of Manila, houses at least 80,000 rice varieties, the largest and most important collection in the world.
■ Australia
Labor lead in opinion polls
Character attacks by the conservative government have failed to dent support for the opposition, with a new poll yesterday showing Labor in a strong position to win elections due later this year. Labor's support under new leader Kevin Rudd surged to 61 percent compared to 39 percent for Prime Minister John Howard's conservatives, who have held power for 11 years and will push for a fifth election victory in the second half of the year. The AC Nielsen poll came after the government launched character attacks over Rudd's meetings with a disgraced lobbyist, and as Labor lost a senior member for writing a reference for a drug criminal.
■ Thailand
Swiss man pleads guilty
A Swiss man accused of insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej by spray-painting over several portraits of the king pleaded guilty yesterday and faces a maximum 75-year prison sentence. Oliver Rudolf Jufer, 57, was caught by surveillance cameras on Dec. 5 spray-painting black paint over several portraits of the king in Chiang Mai, police said. His lawyer said he was intoxicated during the act. The vandalism coincided with Bhumibol's 79th birthday, which was celebrated across the kingdom with fireworks and prayers. Jufer made no comment yesterday as he entered the courthouse with his legs chained, dressed in an orange prison uniform. The judge said a sentence was expected to be issued on March 29.
■ Morocco
Internet cafe blast probed
The government said yesterday it was investigating whether an overnight blast was a militant suicide attack after a man with explosives under his clothes was blown up and three wounded at a Casablanca Internet cafe. Security officials said the man had a dispute with the Internet cafe's owner and that the blast occurred as the two men were coming to blows. But they did not rule the possibility he was planning an attack at some stage. The Sunday night blast occurred in the Sidi Moumen slum, home to 13 suicide bombers who killed 32 people in Casablanca in 2003.
■ United States
Snatched newborn found
A newborn baby kidnapped from a Lubbock, Texas, hospital by a woman wearing hospital scrubs was found safe about 160km away and police had a suspect under arrest. Four-day-old Mychael Darthard-Dawodu was found on Sunday, a day after she was smuggled from the hospital in the woman's purse. She was later reunited with her parents. "It's a joyous time," Gwen Stafford, senior vice president of Covenant Health System, said at a news conference on Sunday. "This has been a roller coaster of emotions." Rayshaun Parson, 21, was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping.
■ United Kingdom
Rich divorcee gets robbed
A woman awarded £48 million (US$93 million) in a landmark divorce settlement last year was tied up and robbed of jewellery at her home in Kent, police and media reports said on Sunday. Beverley Chapman, 53, was alone on Saturday evening when a masked robber carrying a gun forced his way into her home. Police said several hundred thousand pounds of jewellery was stolen in the raid. "The police were alerted after the woman's son came home at 10pm and found her," a Kent Police spokeswoman said. "No violence was used and she was not injured in the incident."
■ Dubai
Incident closes airport
Dubai airport, a major international hub, was closed for at least eight hours yesterday after a Biman Bangladesh Airlines aircraft was involved in an accident while trying to take off, officials said. Fourteen people were slightly injured in the accident, airport officials said. The plane was carrying 236 passengers and crew. No details of what caused the 6:30am accident were immediately available but Dubai civil aviation authorities said they were investigating. Dubai airport is the busiest in the Middle East and a major hub for transfers between Europe and Asia.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees