■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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home