■ PAKISTAN
Eight die in explosion
At least eight people died and seven were injured when a three-story building in Rawalpindi collapsed yesterday morning after fireworks stored on the ground floor exploded, police said. A dozen residents remained trapped inside the remains of the building, but rescue teams had recovered the dead and injured from the rubble, Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said. "The building collapsed in the wake of explosions of illegally stored fireworks," he said. The building was located near the local police station and contained both residential apartments and shops on the ground floor.
■ CHINA
Registry to open on Aug. 8
Beijing's wedding registry said it would stay open for business on the Summer Olympic Games' opening day, an auspicious date expected to attract thousands of couples hoping for a little extra luck, state media reported yesterday. Guo Xusheng, a spokesman for the city's Civil Affairs Bureau, denied rumors that the registry would close for the start of the games on Aug. 8, Xinhua news agency said. The number eight is considered especially lucky because it rhymes with the Mandarin word meaning to get rich. Beijing set the opening date for the Olympics to fall on the eighth of August, the eighth month of the year, with the games to start at 8:08pm.
■ CHINA
Test compensation paid
The government has begun compensating military and civilian veterans of its atomic bomb tests, state media reported, offering a small peak into the highly secretive program. The compensation was included in an overall 15.12 billion yuan (US$2 billion) paid out last year to military veterans or their families, Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju (李學舉) was quoted as telling Xinhua news agency on Saturday. No details were given about the numbers of nuclear bomb test veterans compensated, or the amounts they were given, although Xinhua said they included both uniformed personnel and civilians.
■ AUSTRALIA
Deckhand attacked by shark
A mako shark attacked a fisherman on his boat deck, biting him on the leg after the man reeled it in while fishing off the east coast yesterday, an official said. The 20-year-old deckhand was airlifted by helicopter rescue, said Brian Russell, a spokesman for the rescue service. He was flown to the Gold Coast Hospital where his condition was reported as stable before he underwent surgery. The man had been fishing for tuna when he reeled in a 3m, 90kg mako shark and landed it on the deck. "He stepped on its tail and it whipped around and latched on to his tight calf, biting through to the bone," Russell said. "The shark had his leg clamped in its jaws for several minutes until other deckhands cut its head off."
■ CHINA
Officials to be punished
Railway officials who hired untrained workers to adjust tracks are to be punished over a train accident in eastern China that killed 18 people and injured nine, investigators said. The deaths occurred on Wednesday when a train hurtling through the night at more than 120kph slammed into a group of about 100 workers carrying out track maintenance near Anqiu, Shandong Province. Investigators found the China Railway 16th Group hired unlicensed, part-time migrant workers and failed to provide them with required safety training, Xinhua news agency said, citing an official with the regional railway bureau.
■ UNITED KINGOM
Helicopter crash kills two
Two people died on Saturday when a civilian helicopter crashed near a golf course in Harrogate, Yorkshire, the local fire and rescue service said. The victims of the crash, both of whom were in the helicopter, were not immediately identified. No one else was believed to be aboard, said Carl Bosman of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service. Inspector Tad Nowakowski of North Yorkshire Police said the victims were a middle-aged man and woman who lived in northern England.
■ POLAND
Customs officers strike on
Hundreds of trucks lined up on the border with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia on Saturday, as a strike by Polish customs officers stretched into its sixth day. Fourteen checkpoints on the border with the three ex-Soviet states have been clogged as only a handful of Polish officers showed up for work, Russia's NTV television reported. Only drivers with nothing to declare and vehicles with diplomatic plates are being allowed through, the report said. At the Belarusian town of Brest, a major East-West cargo crossing point, only one customs booth was operating Saturday, Russia's Vesti 24 television said.
■ ITALY
Jesuit leader meets pope
The new leader of the Jesuits met yesterday with Pope Benedict XVI and told him the religious order would study the pontiff's invitation to confirm their "total" adhesion to Catholic teaching, including the topics of divorce, homosexuality and liberation theology. The Jesuits have had a tense relationship with the Vatican on issues of doctrine and obedience. The Reverend Adolfo Nicolas, a Spanish missionary and theologian with extensive Asian experience also discussed Japan with the pontiff. Nicolas served there for 33 years and has said the West doesn't have a monopoly on meaning and spirituality and that Asia has much to offer the Church.
■ ALGERIA
Two killed in clashes
Two armed Islamist militants were killed in clashes with security forces, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Saturday. Kadour Romane -- a 29-year-old who was thought be a top leader of the Arkam Falange, an affiliate of local branch of al-Qaeda -- was killed on Friday in the town of Beni Khalifa, southwest of Algiers, the statement said. He was thought to have been involved in several attacks in the region over the past years, the statement said. A police patrol killed a second militant, identified as 41-year-old Ould Laamri Sofiane, as he entered a grocery store in the northern town of Tidjelabine on Friday, the statement said.
■ FRANCE
Oil spill case appealed
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace said on Saturday it would respond to French oil giant Total SA's appeal of a guilty verdict against it in the 1999 sinking of the oil tanker Erika by launching its own appeal. In a statement, the group said it thought that Total was trying to limit the full legal consequences of the Jan. 16 verdict against it. "Greenpeace is going to take advantage of this appeal to make [Total] put the right value on the damages" it caused, the statement quotes Greenpeace France staffer Yannick Jadot as saying. The oil spill -- France's worst-ever -- soiled 400km of Atlantic coastal beaches in the northwestern region of Brittany and killed up to 75,000 birds.
■ United States
Tantric master breaks record
A Dutch man who calls himself a tantric master has broken his own world record by standing in ice for 72 minutes. The 48-year-old Wim Hof stood on a Manhattan street in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes on Saturday. He set the world record for full body ice contact endurance in 2004, when he immersed himself in ice for one hour and eight minutes. Hof says he survives by controlling his body temperature with the tantric practice of tumo. His feat kicks off BRAINWAVE, a five-month series of events in New York exploring how art, music, and meditation affect the brain.
■ United States
Christian Brando dies
Christian Brando, the troubled eldest son of the late actor Marlon Brando, has died from pneumonia at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 49. Brando died on Saturday morning at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, said David Seeley, an attorney representing Marlon Brando's estate. Seeley said Christian Brando was taken to the hospital on Jan. 11. "This is a sad and difficult time for the family," Seeley said. Born on May 11, 1958, Christian Brando was a high school dropout and never had much of a career. He had small roles in a handful of movies, including 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! but he was better known for his brushes with the law. He spent five years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in 1990 for killing his sister's boyfriend, Dag Drollet, at the Brando family's hilltop estate.
■ United States
Miss America crowned
Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, was crowned Miss America 2008 on Saturday in a live show in Las Vegas billed as the unveiling of the 87-year-old pageant's new, hipper look. Haglund, of Farmington Hills, Michigan, sang Over the Rainbow to clinch the title. She beat Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, the first runner up, and Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto, the second runner up for the US$50,000 scholarship and year of travel that comes with the crown. Haglund, who studies music at the University of Cincinnati, grew up in a pageant family. Her mother is an active volunteer, and her grandmother Iora Hunt, competed for the crown as Miss Michigan 1944.
■ United States
Cat to lose two of five legs
Cats may have nine lives, but one unique feline has five legs -- for now. The cat, named Babygirl, will undergo surgery to remove the extra leg and another crippled leg, though the operation has not yet been scheduled. The surgery is expected to leave the cat with three legs, and improve her quality of life, according to the Washington Area Humane Society in western Pennsylvania, where the cat will live until a home can be found for her.
■ United States
Five killed in car crash
A car speeding down a private airport runway in Ocala, Florida, ran off an embankment and was airborne for 60m before smashing into a tree early on Saturday, killing all five young men in the vehicle, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Investigators did not know whether the BMW was alone or was racing another car on the air strip at the exclusive "fly-in" community of Jumbolair Aviation Estates, officials said. According to the preliminary investigation, the car ran off the 26m-high embankment at the end of the runway.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
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