■ CAMBODIA
Cow taken into custody
A cow was taken into police custody for causing traffic accidents that resulted in the deaths of at least six people this year, a police official said yesterday. The cow's owner could also face a six-month prison term under a new traffic law that holds people responsible for accidents caused by their animals, said Pin Doman, a police chief on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The white, 1.5m-tall cow was standing in the middle of a main road on Monday night when a 66-year-old motorcyclist crashed into the animal and died.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Five militants killed
A NATO airstrike on militants planting a roadside bomb left five suspected insurgents dead, officials said yesterday. The strike happened as the group was spotted digging on the road and laying a roadside bomb in Bermel district, Paktika Province, late on Sunday, coalition spokesman Sergeant First Class Dean Welch said. Authorities retrieved the bodies, which were later handed over to village elders from Bermel, provincial police chief Nabi Jan Mullahkheil said. Militants frequently use roadside bombs to target Afghan and foreign troops.
■ INDIA
Couple lost at sea rescued
An Israeli woman and an Italian man survived on a life raft for eight days in the Arabian Sea after their yacht sank in a storm, the coast guard said yesterday. The couple, identified as Libi Belozerzki, 27, and Mori Pierpaolo, 35, set out from the Maldives on a yacht planning to sail to the Red Sea, but their boat overturned in a late monsoon storm, said Commandant Raj Putran of the coast guard. Putran said ships in the area were told to look out for the missing sailors after the Rome Maritime Rescue Coordination Center lost contact with them after Sept. 24.
■ INDIA
Villagers poison tigers
Angry villagers poisoned two rare tigers in the northeast after they preyed on cattle, forestry officials said yesterday. Officials who recovered the carcasses of a young male and female tiger on the outskirts of the Orang National Park believe the animals were killed last week, a local wildlife official said. "A tiger had killed a water buffalo, dragged the kill inside the National Park and had gone for a drink. Villagers who may have watched the event laced the carcass with poison," the official said. Last year, two other tigers were killed by angry villagers near Orang, home to an estimated 20 tigers.
■ MALAYSIA
Wife of diplomat arrested
Indonesia has condemned the arrest of the wife of one of its diplomats who was accused of being an illegal migrant. Muslianah Nurdin, wife of the Indonesian education and culture attache, was detained last Wednesday while shopping in Kuala Lumpur despite showing her identification, the Indonesian embassy said in a statement on Monday. The embassy did not say how long she was held in custody. She was detained by members of a 400,000-strong volunteer force deployed nationwide to hunt down illegal immigrants. Its officers have frequently been accused of using excessive force. About 2 million Indonesians work in Malaysia, both legally and illegally. Their presence is a major source of conflict in relations between the two countries.
■ ETHIOPIA
President slams incumbent
Outgoing President Girma Wolde-Giorgise accused Eritrea on Monday of disregarding attempts to peacefully resolve a border impasse and putting the Horn of Africa neighbors on the path to war. "Our government has persistently expressed its unwavering desire to engage in a relationship with Eritrea based on the principles of peace and non-interference," the president said in a speech to parliament. "However, the incumbent government of Eritrea does not appear to be ready for peace and good neighborliness."
■ FRANCE
Slack security blamed
Paris City Hall on Monday blamed slack security for an incident in which a drunken gang broke into the city's Musee d'Orsay and punched a hole in a painting by Claude Monet. "It appears a lapse in security, during the museum's closing hours, made this stupid act of vandalism possible," Christophe Girard, deputy mayor for culture, said in a statement. The incident occurred just before midnight Saturday as more than a million people thronged the streets of Paris for the annual "Nuit Blanche," or White Night festival, in which music and cultural events are staged.
■ INDIA
Animal hides destroyed
Wildlife authorities in Indian Kashmir have begun destroying thousands of animal hides and garments made from the skins of rare animals seized in a campaign to protect the region's wildlife, officials said on Monday. "We destroyed nearly 10,000 hides and garments by setting them on fire yesterday ... this will continue for more than a week," said Rashid Naqash, a wildlife warden. "By destroying these rare animal skins and garments we are sending a tough message to poachers and traders across the country. I am sure this will help wildlife." Despite poaching being illegal, rare animals are still killed. These include snow leopards, tigers, deers, jackals, foxes, wolves and jungle cats whose furs fetch lucrative prices.
■ IVORY COAST
War on tardiness declared
Poor punctuality is such a brake on the country's economic development that the West African country has come up with a novel way to combat tardiness: win a house if you demonstrate you can turn up on time. Backed by President Laurent Gbagbo and devised by a local public relations firm, "Punctuality Night" kicked off at eight o'clock sharp on Saturday night, rewarding business people and civil servants for exceptional timekeeping. Pitched with the slogan "`African time' is killing Africa, let's fight it," its organizers hope to heighten awareness of how missed appointments, meetings or even late buses cut productivity in a region where languid tardiness is the norm.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Teen stabbed over phone
A murder inquiry was under way on Monday after a teenage boy was stabbed to death in a London park in a row over a stolen mobile phone, police said. Rizwan Darbar, 17, was attacked by a gang of youths after they took the mobile from one of his friends in Forest Gate, east London, on Sunday. Darbar was taken to Newham General Hospital where he was pronounced dead less than two hours later. A post mortem is due to be held. No arrests have been made. Detective Chief Inspector Matt Horne appealed for witnesses to the attack in West Ham Park.
■ UNITED STATES
One dead in balloon crash
A hot air balloon crashed on Monday during a ballooning festival in New Mexico, killing one person, authorities said. It was not clear how many people were in the balloon or if others were injured, police spokeswoman Trish Hoffman said. It also was not known if the balloon that had crashed was taking part in the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, a nine-day celebration that started on Saturday. The name of the victim was not released.
■ UNITED STATES
Hotel serious about sleep
A New York City hotel is so determined to make sure its customers get a good night's rest that it's got its own sleep concierge. The Benjamin, which created the position several years ago, is serious about its mission. It offers customers a mattress specifically created for the hotel and a menu of over a dozen different pillows including one with a speaker built into it and a cord that plugs into an iPod. Guests also have the option of a before-bedtime massage and snacks believed to make you sleepy.
■ UNITED STATES
Foot insult sparks stabbing
A 22-year-old man was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of his roommate after an argument over the suspect's smelly feet, police in Texas said on Monday. William Antonio Serrano and his roommate were drinking on Saturday night when the roommate told Serrano his feet had a foul odor, Houston police said. That insult allegedly led to Serrano grabbing a knife and stabbing his roommate several times, police said. The victim, a 25 to 30-year-old man whose name has not been released, died at the scene. Serrano was charged with murder and was being held on Monday in jail.
■ UNITED STATES
Feminist activist passes on
Lorraine Rothman, a leader of the feminist health movement in the 1970s who suggested that women could undergo or perform gynecological procedures without any medical supervision, most controversially ending very early pregnancies with menstrual extraction, died of cancer on Sept. 25 at age 75 at her home in Fullerton, California. As the women's movement coalesced in the 1960s and early 1970s, Rothman joined a group that advocated self-help medical procedures, in part because of concerns about the availability of legal abortions in hospitals. Rothman developed what she called a menstrual extraction kit, which drew warnings from medical professionals. She went on to teach vaginal self-examination and other procedures that could be performed by women at home.
■ UNITED STATES
Kitten makes dog lactate
A stray kitten has found a new mother in a golden retriever, who began producing milk for the little feline. Honey, the golden retriever, had not given birth in 18 months, but after her owner, Jimmy Martin, of Stephens City, Virginia, brought home the kitten, she suddenly found herself playing the role of mother. "She started licking her and loving her. Within a couple of days, Honey started naturally lactating," said Kathy Martin, Jimmy's wife. Jimmy Martin noticed the kitten when she ran in front of his concrete truck. After following her and realizing there was no mother cat in sight, he took her home. The kitten refused to drink from a bottle and the family feared at first that it would die.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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