■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.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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