■CHINA
Officials ordered to smoke
Officials in Gong’an County, Hubei Province, have been told to smoke nearly a quarter million packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined, state media reported yesterday. The Gong’an County government has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said. Departments that fail to meet their targets will be fined, the report said. “The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax,” Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong’an cigarette market supervision team, was quoted as saying. The measure could also be a ploy to aid local cigarette brands such as Huanghelou, which are under severe pressure from competitors in Hunan Province.
■CAMBODIA
Four die in karaoke blaze
A police officer said four women who worked at a karaoke parlor were killed and two other people injured as a fire swept through their room while they slept. Major Thuch Ra said the four, aged 15 to 22, died early on Sunday in the northwestern city of Battambang. Another woman and a 25-year-old man were in critical condition from the blaze, which was believed to have started from faulty electric connections. He said the victims were believed to have been drunk and at least initially were not aware that a fire had broken out.
■CAMBODIA
Princess Eugenie targeted
Thieves tried to rob Queen Elizabeth II’s 19-year-old granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, and her friends while they were traveling in Cambodia, a British newspaper reported yesterday. Royal protection officers had to intervene to protect the princess, the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, when a thief tried to steal her friend’s purse as they walked through Phnom Penh one night, the Sun said. The two officers tackled the thief but were pelted with stones by another man, forcing them to let him go and focus on getting the princess to safety. They also managed to retrieve the purse.
■INDIA
Nor’wester kills 11
At least 11 people were killed and 15 injured when a powerful nor’wester hit West Bengal, a news report said yesterday. The casualties were caused on Sunday by house collapses and lightning strikes, PTI news agency reported. Seven villagers were killed in the central district of Malda when the storm uprooted trees and electrical poles. Four people died in different areas in the North 24-Parganas district, the report said. Fifteen workers were injured when lightning struck them in Burdwan district. A nor’wester is a type of storm that occurs in West Bengal during springtime or early summer, leading to a cooling effect.
■THAILAND
Four killed in shootings
Four people have been killed and two injured — including a child — in separate shootings in the restive south, local police said yesterday. They said two men on motorbikes shot dead a 59-year-old pork vendor early on Sunday afternoon while he was riding home with his nine-year-old nephew in Narathiwat Province. The child was injured when he fell from the bike. That evening, a 51-year-old construction worker was also killed and his colleague injured in another drive-by shooting nearby. A Muslim defense volunteer was shot dead in the same province later on Sunday night while he was parking his motorbike in front of his house.
■IRAQ
Pope may make visit
Pope Benedict XVI may visit in the middle of this month as part of his tour of the Middle East, a leading newspaper reported yesterday, citing “parliamentary sources.” Baghdad’s daily al-Sabbah newspaper quoted an unnamed lawmaker as saying that the Vatican was considering a visit to Baghdad on invitation from President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The Pope’s visit “would let him see situation on the ground, particularly for the Christian community,” al-Sabbah quoted the lawmaker as saying.
■SYRIA
Hamas chief re-elected
Exiled Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal has been re-elected head of the Palestinian Islamist movement’s politburo, a statement from the group in Damascus said. Mahmoud Zahar and Khalil al-Hayya, both senior leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, were also elected members of the politburo in an internal vote, the group’s top decision-making body, it said in a statement on Sunday. Meshaal, who is one of Israel’s most wanted men, lives in exile in Damascus. Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, further exacerbating a long-running feud with the secular Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
■IRAQ
No extension of US pullback
The government says the June 30 deadline for US troops to withdraw from urban areas is “non-extendable.” A rise in violence has prompted concern about whether local forces are prepared to take over security responsibilities. In particular, US commanders have pointed to the northern city of Mosul as a possible exception to the withdrawal plans. But spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said yesterday that the government is committed to the timeline in the security agreement, calling the withdraw deadline “non-extendable.” The agreement calls for US forces to pull back from cities by the end of next month and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011.
■ISRAEL
Netanyahu names US envoy
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has named US professor and historian Michael Oren as the next ambassador to Washington, his office said on Sunday. “He will assume his functions shortly,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said. Oren, a Columbia and Princeton-educated historian who is currently a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, is expected to assume his post before Netanyahu leaves for a meeting with US President Barack Obama in the middle of this month. In a lecture at Georgetown last month, Oren said Tel Aviv must unilaterally withdraw from the occupied West Bank, an idea rejected by Netanyahu, a report in Haaretz said.
■ISRAEL
Rabbis want limit on women
Rabbis want authorities to reduce the number of female foreign workers, as their male employers seem to easily succumb to their charms, a report said yesterday. The plea follows an appeal lodged at a rabbinical court south of Tel Aviv by a scorned wife whose husband had an affair with a Filipina employee, the Maariv daily. “The authorities should apply restrictions to guard the honor of Israel’s daughters,” wrote Rabbi Nahum Gortald, the head of the tribunal. “It is inconceivable that a man leaves a spouse whose beauty bears the traces of time for a younger foreign employee,” he said. There is no civil marriage law in the country, and people of different religions must go abroad to marry.
■UNITED STATES
Home sought for detainees
Washington has made a formal request to Germany to take in some prisoners held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman for Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday. Confirming a report that was to appear in yesterday’s Der Spiegel magazine, the spokesman said the ministry was reviewing the request. He declined to provide details. Der Spiegel said Washington had asked Germany to take about 10 prisoners who cannot be sent to their home countries and who are classified as not posing a security threat.
■MEXICO
Police find 11 bodies
Police found 11 bodies dumped around a southern state, including seven wrapped in plastic bags and thrown off a bridge. Guerrero state police said the bodies of five men and two women were found in a river between Acapulco and Cuernavaca. They were wrapped in bags and dumped off a bridge. The other four bodies were found in a 600m ravine in Pilcaya. The bodies were all found on Sunday. Investigators did not have any suspects or possible motive for the killings, but warring drug cartels often dump the bodies of rivals.
■CANADA
Kidnappers ‘kind’: victim
A woman freed last week after being kidnapped in Nigeria described her abductors on Sunday as “mostly kind at heart” and said she was well-treated during nearly two weeks of captivity. Looking none the worse for wear after 13 days as a hostage, Julie Ann Mulligan, 45, told reporters that her captors seemed motivated by a need to earn money to improve their desperate economic plight. “The kidnappers were mostly kind at heart,” she said. “The job ... was a business of money that there desperately isn’t enough of for most of the people in Nigeria,” Mulligan said. “They did not hurt me physically and they did not torment me unnecessarily or psychologically ... I did live the hard life of many typical Nigerians, though, for 13 days. And believe me, it’s not an easy one.” Mulligan was kidnapped on April 16 while participating in a cultural exchange in Kaduna.
■UNITED STATES
Gunmen kidnap toddler
A three-year-old boy has been kidnapped by two gunmen who broke into his family’s home in Southern California and tied up his mother and her five other children. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Beavers said the men burst into the San Bernardino home with handguns on Sunday and stole money and property, then left with three-year-old Briant Rodriguez. The mother told investigators she did not know the two gunmen.
■UNITED STATES
Father kills wife, sons
A father shot and killed his wife and two of his sons — one five months old and the other seven years old — before killing himself in the front yard of their Florida home on Sunday night, authorities said. Another son, a 13-year-old, was pursued through the garage by his father, evaded several gunshots, and made it safely to a neighbor’s house, Polk County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Scott Wilder said in a statement. Investigators believe Troy Ryan Bellar, 34, and his wife, Wendy Bellar, 31, were arguing at about 9:30pm at their home in Lakeland when she tried to leave the home with two of the children. Bellar apparently opened fire with a 7.62mm rifle and killed his wife, five-month-old Zack James Bellar and seven-year-old Ryan Patrick Bellar in the front porch area.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
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