■ THAILAND
School torched in south
Suspected Muslim insurgents burned down a school in the restive south yesterday, a day after detonating two bombs that killed one person and left 71 wounded, police said. Arsonists torched the school in Narathiwat province at about 1am local time when it was empty, Lieutenant Anurak Chathapon said. Nobody was injured but the two-story schoolhouse was destroyed. The attack bore the trademark of Muslim insurgents, Anurak said.
■ GERMANY
Bus fire leaves 20 dead
A tour bus caught fire on a highway near the city of Hannover on Tuesday night, killing 20 people after a passenger reportedly sneaked a cigarette, police said. Survivors told authorities the fire broke out in the bathroom of the bus after a person apparently smoked a cigarette there, police spokesman Stefan Wittke said. When the door was opened, flames shot out and quickly engulfed the bus, he said. “Passengers who were sitting close to the exit could get away, but the others had no chance,” a fire department official said. In addition to the deaths, thirteen people were injured in the blaze, including three with serious burns, according to the fire department. The bus had 39 primarily elderly passengers and the driver aboard, the company that owns it said. Wittke, however, said 33 people were aboard the bus.
■ CHINA
Factory owner held
Authorities have detained the owner of a feed processing factory suspected of selling chicken feed tainted with an industrial chemical that was later found in eggs, state media reported. Xinhua news agency said late on Tuesday that authorities in Shenyang found that the factory mixed an ingredient tainted with melamine into feed sold to the country’s leading egg producer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group. Xinhua said the owner of the Mingxing Feed Processing Factory, Gao Xingtao, was detained and the remaining tainted animal feed made by the factory was destroyed.
■ COLOMBIA
Army chief resigns
Army commander General Mario Montoya resigned on Tuesday after a probe tied scores of officers to the disappearance of a group of men who were later shot, dumped in mass graves and reported as killed in combat. The scandal has already forced President Alvaro Uribe to purge 27 officers from the army as the UN and rights groups call security forces to stop killing civilians to falsely inflate combat successes. Montoya had been the spearhead of Uribe’s recent military successes against rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
■ PUERTO RICO
Voters oust governor
Puerto Rico voted on Tuesday to oust an incumbent governor who is under indictment for allegedly violating campaign finance laws, electing a challenger who vowed to fight crime and spur the island’s economy. Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila conceded the election after Luis Fortuno of the New Progressive Party took a strong lead in early returns. Fortuno had 53 percent of the vote to 41 percent for the governor with 42 percent of ballots counted. The governor had urged islanders to support him despite a 24-count indictment charging him with wire fraud and other offenses for allegedly raising money illegally to pay off campaign debts from his terms as Puerto Rico’s nonvoting delegate to Congress from 2000 to 2004.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
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