■ INDIA
Poison gas kills sailors
Five navy sailors died after inhaling poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas while carrying out maintenance aboard a ship in the south, a navy spokesman said yesterday. Another three sailors were hospitalized after Friday's accident on the INS Jalashva, an amphibious transport vessel, during a military exercise, Commander Neeraj Kumar Sinha said. The condition of one of the sailors was serious, he said. "The accident was the result of inadvertent inhalation of hydrogen sulfide gas by the repair party carrying out maintenance in one of the ship's compartments, and not due to fire or any other causes," Sinha said.
■ VIETNAM
Vatican calls end to vigils
The Vatican has asked Vietnamese Catholics to end mass prayer vigils for the return of seized church land, with Hanoi signaling it would return the property, a priest said on Friday. Catholic followers have held daily vigils since the middle of December demanding back the property that was the Vatican's embassy until the 1950s near Hanoi's St Joseph's Cathedral, with thousands taking part in a rally last week.
■ SINGAPORE
Lee pans population plan
Singapore's drive to increase its population should not leave the city-state as crowded as Hong Kong, former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) was quoted as saying in local media yesterday. Singapore said last year it wants to add another 2 million people to its 4.7 million over the next 40 to 50 years to drive economic growth in the city-state. "I have not quite been sold on the idea that we should have 6.5 million," Lee was quoted as saying in the Straits Times.
■ INDONESIA
Police and soldiers clash
At least one policeman died and three were seriously injured in a clash with soldiers in Indonesia, a police spokesman said yesterday. Rumors a soldier had been kidnapped by police provoked an attack on their headquarters in eastern Maluku Province, national police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto said. The incident reportedly took place on Friday. Violence between soldiers and police is not uncommon in Indonesia.
■ MALAYSIA
Monkey business shelved
Kuala Lumpur has dropped plans to capture macaque monkeys in urban areas and export them for food and scientific research, after discovering most of the animals are riddled with diseases, a Cabinet minister said yesterday. The government last year lifted a decades-old ban on the export of the long-tailed monkeys, saying it would help curb their booming population in cities where they attack people and raid food supplies. Wildlife officials have found that 80 percent of urban macaques carried diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and the HIV/AIDS virus, Environment Minister Azmi Khalid said.
■ MYANMAR
New Rambo movie banned
Police in Myanmar have given DVD hawkers strict orders not to stock the new Rambo movie, which features the Vietnam War veteran taking on the ruling military junta, a Yangon resident said on Friday. Despite the prohibition, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on the streets of the former capital, where it is fast becoming a talking point among a population eager to shake off 45 years of military rule. "People are going crazy with the quote `Live for nothing, die for something,'" one resident said, referring to the tagline of the fourth Rambo instalment, which opened in the US this week.
■ HONG KONG
Four arrested over photos
Hong Kong police arrested four more people in connection to a series of racy photos circulated on the Internet that appear to show several partially nude local celebrities. Police arrested three men and one woman late on Friday and early yesterday on suspicion of violating obscene material laws, police spokeswoman Josephine Cheng said. She said the suspects, aged 29 to 31, have not been charged and were being detained for further investigation. The pictures -- which some stars have said were doctored -- appear to show actor Edison Chen (陳冠希), singer Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) -- a member of the popular female duo Twins -- and actress Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) partially nude or in sexually suggestive poses. Earlier this week, police arrested and charged a 29-year-old unemployed man with publishing obscene material related to the case.
■ KAZAKHSTAN
Deal with US snubs Russia
The US promised Kazakhstan on Friday to help it bring its armed forces up to NATO standards in a new military cooperation pact certain to irritate Russia, Kazakhstan's former Soviet overlord. Kazakhstan's ties with Moscow have cooled over the past year as the energy-rich Central Asian state -- the biggest economy in the region and home to some of the world's largest oil fields -- seeks to pursue a more independent diplomacy. On a visit to Kazakhstan, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mitchell Shivers signed a new five-year cooperation plan with Kazakhstan envisaging fresh US assistance in matters ranging from military reform and equipment to education.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
MPs employ relatives
More than 70 Conservative members of parliament (MPs) employ relatives in their personal staff, party leader David Cameron said on Friday. The disclosure came after Conservative MP Derek Conway was suspended from the Commons for 10 days for paying his son nearly ?50,000 (US$98,000) in taxpayers' money for work he apparently never did. Conway, who said he would quit politics at the next election, has been expelled from the parliamentary Conservative party and could face a police inquiry. MPs are allowed to employ relatives out of public funds and some pay their wives or husbands to work as secretaries, saying it can help marriages survive long hours or living apart.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Fans to use potato tent pegs
Music fans attending this year's Glastonbury festival will be told to use biodegradable tent pegs in an effort to protect grazing cattle. The pegs are made from biodegradable potato starch, which is strong and already used in the turf industry. Organizer Michael Eavis said the measure was an attempt to prevent grazing dairy cows at his farm becoming injured by metal tent pegs left behind after the weekend summer festival. Up to 175,000 people attend the annual bash in fields at Worthy Farm, Somerset, many of whom bring their own tents. The metal pegs are "a real problem for the cows," Eavis told BBC News.
■ GERMANY
Mouth-to-muzzle lifesaving
A German medical student got some unexpected practical experience at the zoo when she gave the kiss of life to a baby tiger choking on a piece of meat, the zoo director said on Friday. The student was passing the enclosure with her toddler son on a visit several weeks ago when she noticed the 4-month-old tiger choking on a piece of meat and offered her assistance to the helpless keeper, said Andreas Jacob, director of the zoo in the eastern German city of Halle. "We got the piece out but he wasn't breathing so I tried mouth-to-mouth and heart massage," the student, Janine Bauer, said. "After three to five minutes he came to, thank God."
■ TANZANIA
New species discovered
A new type of shrew-like creature with a snout similar to an elephant's trunk has been found in the mountains of Tanzania, the first new species of the mammal found since the 19th century, scientists said. The creature, a type of elephant shrew to be named the grey-faced sengi, was found in the Udzungwa mountains of south-central Tanzania by scientists from Italy's Trento Museum of Natural Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences. It has a distinctive gray face and a black lower rump and weighs about 700g, or 25 percent more than any of the other known 15 species of sengi. Elephant shrews use the snout to help probe for insects, their main food.
■ NORWAY
First female vice admiral
A female naval officer was appointed vice admiral on Friday, the highest military rank a woman has held in the Scandinavian country. "I hope I can help show women that the military is a good place to work, and that it is entirely possibly to rise through the ranks," Louise Bastviken, 43, said in a statement. The highest rank previously held by women, including Bastviken, was that of brigadier in the army or flag commander, also called rear admiral, in the navy. Vice admiral is two ranks higher.
■ UNITED STATES
Doors door up for sale
The latest in a series of doors from a house where Doors singer Jim Morrison once lived has been painted with a Love Her Madly theme, one of the band's big hits, and was to be auctioned on eBay yesterday. "The Jim Morrison Home Legacy Series" enlists artists to use doors collected from a Clearwater, Florida, home that belonged to Morrison's grandparents as their canvases. The doors are then donated to various causes. Proceeds from the latest piece, taken from the master bathroom, was to benefit New York state's Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and an anti-gang initiative. Painted by Florida artist Doug Wright, the door quotes from Love Her Madly and pictures a thoughtful Morrison, who died in 1971, beneath an image of seven horses.
■ UNITED STATES
Truck nears million miles
Frank Oresnik is on the verge of making history driving his old standby -- the pickup truck he says is about to pass the 1 million-mile (1.6 million-kilometer) mark. Oresnik took the 1991 Chevrolet Silverado to the Oil Ex-Change Quick Lube in Medford, Wisconsin, on Thursday for what he expects will be its last oil change and tuneup before hitting the magic number. He said the truck is 1,200 miles (1,930km) from a million, and once he hits the mark he will retire the vehicle. He credits proper maintenance and a good measure of luck for allowing the truck to rack up so many miles.
■ UNITED STATES
Girls cited for `hurling' fries
Three 13-year-old girls accused of throwing french fries during lunchtime at their school were cited for "hurling missiles," an adult infraction covered by city ordinances. The principal of Laramie Junior High in Wyoming and a police officer had warned students during an assembly the day before the french fries' launch that if they threw food, they had to suffer the consequences, police chief Bob Deutsch said. The warning came after school officials heard rumors of an impending food fight. Some observers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said police and school officials had overreacted. The girls were also suspended for three days.
■ BRAZIL
Rio police protest low pay
Disgruntled police protesting pay and work conditions planted 586 symbolic black crosses on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, as the city prepared to kick off its famous Carnival. Some locals deposited flowers in support. The crosses represented the number of officers killed in the line of duty over the past four years. "It's a symbolic act to denounce the bad working conditions and low pay for police," said Colonel Dilson Ferreira de Anaide, head of the military police officers' association of Rio. He said their demands would not affect security at carnival festivities, which run through Tuesday.
■ UNITED STATES
Nun gets jail for abuse
A 79-year-old nun will spend a year in jail for sexually abusing two boys in the 1960s, Milwaukee County court officials said on Friday. Norma Giannani pleaded no contest to the charges of engaging in dozens of sexual encounters with the two boys some four decades ago. The boys were 12 and 13 and she was a school principal at the time, local media reported. At the sentencing hearing on Friday, one of the victims explained how Giannani's actions tortured him for much of his life and destroyed his faith, the Chicago Tribune said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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