■ THAILAND
Five killed by lightning
Two Australians and three Thais were struck by lightening and killed during a school trip to a waterfall in the northeast, police said yesterday. The victims were part of a group of Australian and Thai secondary school students and teachers who were visiting the waterfall Saturday as part of a cultural exchange program, police Captain Boonsri Dejchai said. A lightening storm started after the group reached the waterfall in Mukdahan Province, 530km northeast of Bangkok, and they sought refuge in a covered area under a large tree, Boonsri said. A bolt of lightening struck near the base of the tree instantly killing a 41-year-old Australian teacher and two Thai students.
■ THAILAND
Flooding kills 18
The death toll from heavy flooding throughout the country has risen to 18, health authorities said yesterday, while nearly 190,000 people have fallen sick. Twenty-four of the country’s 76 provinces have been deluged since Sept. 11 and the public health ministry said that 18 people were swept away and drowned in the flood waters in north, northeast and central regions. Nearly 190,000 people have received medical treatment for flood-related complaints, including trench foot, colds and skin irritations. The Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department said 839,573 people have been affected, but flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains has receded in 19 provinces.
■ SRI LANKA
UN resumes food aid
The UN said yesterday it would send food to those displaced by fighting in the rebel-held north, two weeks after aid workers were ordered out of the region. Mohamed Saleheen, head of the UN’s World Food Programme in the country, said 60 trucks would enter the Tamil Tiger-controlled Wanni District to deliver badly needed supplies to civilians. “The convoys will travel early next week. The government has agreed to allow our international staff to go along to witness distribution,” Saleheen said. “Hopefully, this is the beginning of many such trips.” UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said the trucks would show that the world body had not deserted those caught up in the escalating civil war.
■ AUSTRALIA
Groups oppose Cocaine
Lobby groups yesterday called on the government to ban a caffeine-laden soft drink called Cocaine that is due on the market in November. “Calling a drink Cocaine is just wrong,” Queensland Consumer Association state secretary Max Howard told the Sunday Mail. He urged Canberra not to follow the UK and the US in permitting the sale of Cocaine. Paul Dillon, head of Sydney-based Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, said the product would send a message that cocaine was cool. “This reinforces what many young people tell us [about] the image of cocaine — that it’s a soft drug that’s glamorous,” Dillon said.
■ INDIA
Two killed in bombing
The death toll from Saturday’s bomb attack on a busy shopping area of New Delhi has risen to two, police said yesterday. “Two people have died and 22 are injured,” Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. One of those killed in the attack was a young boy who picked up a bag containing the bomb dropped by two men on a motorcycle. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which came two weeks after several markets in New Delhi were hit by serial explosions that killed 24 people and injured at least 100.
■ WEST BANK
Palestinian shepherd killed
Palestinians and Israeli police say a 19-year-old shepherd has been found shot to death in the West Bank. Palestinians say Yihya Atta Bani Minya of the town of Aqrabeh was shot by settlers. Palestinian local government official Ghassan Daglas says two teenagers saw a white car belonging to settlers pursue the shepherd late on Saturday and then heard shots. Israeli police spokesman Danny Poleg says the youth’s body was found with gunshot wounds and taken to an Israeli forensics center for an autopsy. He said yesterday police are investigating. Recent months have seen a spike in violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinians, and in some cases against Israeli security forces.
■ ISRAEL
US provides radar system
Officials say the US has provided the country with an advanced radar system that will give early warning in case of an Iranian missile attack. The officials say the new radar was flown in last week along with some 120 US crewmen and has been set up at the Nevatim air base in the Negev desert. The system can pick up a ballistic missile shortly after launch. That will cut the response time of the Arrow system, designed to intercept incoming missiles. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the radar’s arrival has not been officially made public.
■ BULGARIA
Ship sinks in Black Sea
A ship sank early on Saturday off the Black Sea coast in bad weather, and 10 crew members are still missing, the transport ministry said. Only an empty lifeboat had been found at the scene off Cape Emine where the 5,000-tonne Tolstoy went down, the ministry said. The ship, sailing under a North Korean flag, sent no distress signal, but the authorities were alerted by a Russian satellite center, Nikolai Apostolov, head of the maritime office said earlier. The transport ministry said 10 people were on board. The captain was Russian and the rest of the crew were Ukrainian, the port official said. A port official in Rostov-on-Don, from which the Tolstoy sailed on Sept. 21, had earlier said there were 13 crew members on board.
■ IRAQ
Security forces take Babel
Security forces will take control of the central Shiite province of Babel within a month, the provincial governor Salem al-Saleh Meslmawe said yesterday. “We have discussed with the government and the coalition forces and there is an agreement to transfer security. This will be done within a month,” Meslmawe said. Babel will be the 12th out of Iraq’s 18 provinces where security responsibilities are to be transferred to Baghdad by the US-led coalition forces. “The security [in Babel] is very good and Iraqi security forces can control it,” the governor said, adding that the transfer would take place between mid to late next month.
■ IRAQ
Official escapes being killed
A provincial governor said he escaped an assassination bid on Saturday as he returned from a security force operation north of Baghdad in which a wanted al-Qaeda commander was killed. Salaheddin governor Hamad Hamud al-Qasi said he was on his way back to the provincial capital Tikrit after watching the operation in the town of Tuz Kharmatu when his convoy was hit by two roadside bombs and small-arms fire. “After the explosions, there were clashes between security forces and terrorist groups in which five guards have been wounded,” Qasi said.
■
UNITED STATES
Woman finds bat in coffee
It wasn’t just the caffeine that gave a Cedar Rapids woman an extra jolt after she had her morning coffee. It was also the bat she found in the filter. The Iowa Department of Public Health says the woman reported a bat in her house but wasn’t too worried about it. She turned on her automatic coffee maker before bedtime and drank her coffee the next morning. She discovered the bat in the filter when she went to clean it that night. The woman has undergone treatment for possible rabies. Health officials say that the bat was sent to a lab but that its brain was too cooked by the hot water to determine whether it had rabies.
■ UNITED STATES
Dogs stay in driver’s seat
Lapdogs and other pets can continue to ride in comfort in the lap of their owner. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is vetoing a bill to fine motorists US$35 for sharing the driver’s seat with lapdogs or other animals. Republican Assemblyman Bill Maze says the practice is distracting. He introduced the bill after seeing a woman driving with three dogs on her lap. Schwarzenegger says he’s signing only bills that are “the highest priority for California.” And a lapdog ban isn’t one of them.
■ CANADA
Ottawa to limit oil exports
Canada will ban the export of tar-like bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to countries that don’t match Canadian targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday. “We are imposing regulations on the oil sands to achieve important environmental targets for this country,” Harper said at a press briefing, adding that Canada will not allow the emission target to be avoided “by exporting to countries that do not impose sufficient environmental standards ... We think that’s environmentally responsible.” The US is the largest consumer of bitumen from the oil sands in Alberta, the western Canadian province that holds 173 billion barrels of the oil source in its reserves. Harper’s promise is likely to have no impact on bitumen exports to the US, said Environment Minister John Baird said, but could affect Asian markets. Canada will not meet Kyoto Protocol targets, but Harper has pledged to reduce Canada’s emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
■ COLOMBIA
Ten-year-old joins shootout
Police were surprised on Friday when they discovered that a thief that was shooting at police officers was a 10-year-old boy who engaged in crime alongside his father. The incident happened in the city of Cucuta, capital of the Norte de Santander Province, near the border with Venezuela, when police were called in to intervene over a burglary at a condominium building. Colonel Carlos Villadiego, police commander in the province, said a patrol was deployed and found two suspects who were holding a private watchman hostage. “The person who was pointing a gun at the watchman was a 10-year-old boy, and the person who was at the time stealing property was that child’s father,” Villadiego said. When they were discovered, the pair attacked police and tried to escape, but they were eventually caught. “The perfect synchronization that father and son had was striking — one ran while the other covered him [by] shooting at police — a pretty difficult situation for officers, in the knowledge that they were facing a boy,” Villadiego said. The child was handed over to a state agency that takes care of minors, while his father was arrested.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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