■INDIA
Ritual performed for storks
Scores of Buddhist villagers in the country’s northeastern state of Assam performed a unique funeral ritual for more than 800 endangered storks that died after a tree where they were nesting fell, a news report said on Monday. The Asian openbill storks died when the 200-year-old banyan tree that served as their colony crashed last week into a pond inside a Buddhist monastery some 300km east of state capital Guwahati, the IANS news agency reported. The villagers, most of them farmers, considered the banyan tree sacred and believed that the storks were their guardian angels.
■CHINA
Authorities target bad blood
Agents who collect or supply blood that causes death or serious illness face stricter punishments starting yesterday in an attempt by authorities to crack down on the illegal sale of blood. Those found guilty of collecting or supplying blood that causes at least five people to contract AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C or syphilis, or that leads to severe anemia or organ malfunction, could face 10 years to life in prison, said a statement by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate carried by the official Xinhua News Agency. Unhygienic blood-buying rings were responsible for infecting thousands of people with HIV/AIDS in rural areas of central China during the mid-1990s.
■CHINA
Patient goes on rampage
A 20-year-old man angered at recent surgery killed one person and wounded five in a stabbing rampage at two hospitals in eastern China, state press said yesterday. The man, surnamed Zhou, entered a hospital in the city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, with a pair of tailor’s scissors on Monday afternoon, stabbing two staff members before fleeing, the Beijing News said. Shortly after, he went to a nearby clinic where he attacked doctors and nurses, killing one person and injuring three others, it said. Zhou was unhappy about a surgical procedure he underwent in July, it said, without giving other details. He was arrested by police.
■INDIA
Workers kill boss: report
Sacked workers allegedly beat to death the local chief executive of an Italian company that had laid them off, media reports said yesterday. Scores of former employers at auto parts maker Graziano Transmissioni attacked chief executive Lalit Kishore Choudhary after a meeting to discuss a long-running labor dispute, local newspapers reported. “A total of 40 injured from both sides have been admitted,” Mahesh Sharma, a doctor at Kailash hospital in New Delhi, told the Indian Express. “Half a dozen are in the intensive care unit.” Choudhary, a 47 year-old father with one son, was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, reports said.
■INDONESIA
Rebels arrested over flag
Police have arrested 18 suspected rebels in the country’s easternmost province of Papua for hoisting a separatist flag, officials said yesterday. The detainees allegedly raised the “Bintang Kejora,” or “Morning Star” flag on a street outside the office of the independent Papuan Customary Council in Papua’s Timika Kwamki Baru sub-district, about 100m from a police precinct station. Besides nabbing 18 men, the police also confiscated a number of home-made spears and knives during a raid on houses in the neighborhood, the state-run Antara news agency reported. Timika’s district police chief said the men were would be prosecuted under subversion laws.
■BRAZIL
Gunmen kill 15 people
Hooded gunmen killed 15 people on a ranch owned by an alleged drug trafficker on Monday, in what police described as an apparent settling of scores. Five assailants invaded the ranch of a man known to police by the nickname “Polaco,” federal police officer Claudio Cesar said by telephone from Guaira city. The alleged trafficker and two of his sons were among the dead. Five more people were wounded, Cesar said, two of them seriously. The gunmen apparently fled by boat to neighboring Paraguay. Police in both countries were searching for the suspects, Cesar said.
■UNITED STATES
Elvis museum on sale
The Elvis Is Alive Museum is once again for sale on eBay. The museum’s collection includes photographs, books, FBI files, DNA reports and other memorabilia that aim to support the theory that Elvis Presley never died. Its owner, Andy Key of Mississippi, says military duties will keep him away from home for at least five months. Key set a minimum starting bid of US$15,000 on the listing, which ends on Friday. He bought the museum on eBay last year for US$8,300. Key told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that he hopes someone local buys the contents of the museum and continues running it in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
■PUERTO RICO
Tempest kills four
Heavy rains drenched the country on Monday as a slow-moving tropical disturbance lingered, killing four people, flooding streets and neighborhoods and forcing public schools to close. Firefighters and rescue crews spent much of the day helping people stranded in deluged towns along the island’s southern coast, where scores of residents took refuge in shelters. Families abandoned their homes by boat in a submerged neighborhood in Combate, a small southwestern town. The mayor of the town of Penuelas said burial vaults popped up out of the drenched ground in the municipal cemetery, disgorging a few coffins. More than 60cm of rain fell in 24 hours in Patillas county in southeastern Puerto Rico, said Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila. At a news conference, he warned that 30cm more could fall in the next 24 hours.
■UNITED STATES
Veteran reporter dies
Nancy Hicks Maynard, the first black female reporter at the New York Times who, with her husband, became publisher of the Oakland Tribune and the founder of a renowned institute that trains minority journalists, has died. She was 61. Maynard died on Sunday, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education said. She had been ill for several months. “She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media,” A. Steve Montiel, a former president of the institute, said in a statement posted on the site. “We’ve lost a leader who made a difference.” After marrying Washington Post reporter Robert Maynard in 1975, the couple helped found the nonprofit institute that bears their name to train minority journalists.
■UNITED STATES
Mars rover eyes big crater
After conquering one Martian crater, the NASA rover Opportunity is setting out to explore a far bigger one measuring about 21km. Whether the six-wheel rover will get there is another story. It must drive 11km across the equatorial plains — equal to its total distance traveled since landing in 2004. “We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway,” chief scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University said in a statement on Monday.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
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