■INDIA
Fifteen dead in mine siege
Dozens of heavily armed Maoist rebels stormed a bauxite mine in the east and held roughly 100 mine employees hostage before police regained control of the facility early yesterday morning, authorities said. At least 11 police officers and four militants died in the nine-hour shootout in the Panchpatmali area of the state of Orissa, said senior police official M.M. Praharaj. The militants were hoping to steal large quantities of explosives used for mining, but they fled without them, Praharaj said. C.R. Pradhan, director of the mine company, National Aluminum Company Ltd, said the workers held inside the mine were not harmed, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted him as saying.
■PHILIPPINES
Health chief criticized
Environment groups yesterday lambasted the health secretary for supervising the burning of thousands of bottles of salmonella-tainted peanut butter. The Ecological Waste Coalition criticized Health Secretary Francisco Duque for supervising the incineration of the contaminated products last week in Taguig City in metropolitan Manila. The group said the disposal was a violation of the Clean Air Act, which prohibits the burning of materials that emit toxic and poisonous fumes. Greenpeace South-East Asia said the incineration was outrageous “when you consider that it was the health secretary involved in violating a measure intended to safeguard public health.”
■NEPAL
Ex-rebels win three seats
Former communist rebels won three of six seats in the national assembly, an election official said yesterday, but it will have virtually no effect on the 601-person assembly. The by-election on Friday saw the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) win three seats, and the Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and Madeshi People’s Rights Forum win one seat each, Election Commission spokesman Uddhav Baskota said. He said the election — to fill seats left vacant by resignations — will have no significant effect on the 601-member Constituent Assembly, which is charged with rewriting the Constitution and governing the Himalayan nation.
■MALAYSIA
Bus crash kills six
Six people were killed and five injured early yesterday when a bus went out of control and overturned along a major highway in Selangor state. The injured passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, the official Bernama news agency reported. The double-decker bus was carrying 34 passengers plus the driver and his assistant en route to the Selangor state from the northern state of Kedah when the accident occurred. The bus driver was among the dead.
■PHILIPPINES
Anti-drug agents killed
Three government anti-drug agents were killed in an attack yesterday in the south, the military and police said. Three agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency were also wounded in the ambush in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao Province, 930km south of Manila. Colonel Jonathan Ponce, a local army spokesman, said the agents were on a mission to raid a suspected safe house of a notorious drug pusher in the town when they were attacked. “The agents had just gotten off their vehicles when they were fired upon by unidentified gunmen,” he said. Superintendent Danilo Bacas, a regional police spokesman, said government forces have launched pursuit operations to track down the assailants.
■IRELAND
Man recovers from coma
A man brought home to die after being beaten senseless on a Sydney street in August has surprised his doctors and his family by coming out of a coma in a Cork hospital on St Patrick’s Day. David Keohane, 29, awoke eight months after sustaining serious head injuries in the attack, news reports said on Monday. Keohane’s family ascribe his miraculous recovery to daily prayers they offered to nun Mary MacKillop and said they would be writing to Pope Benedict XVI to expedite her sainthood. The Sydney nun was beatified after the Vatican recognized one miracle in her name. Two miracles are needed for sainthood.
■ISRAEL
Fishing boat explodes
The Israeli military says an unmanned Palestinian fishing boat has exploded off the Gaza coast in an apparent attempt to hit Israeli naval patrols in the area, but there were no casualties. An army spokesman said the boat was “a safe distance” from the nearest Israeli vessel when it blew up yesterday morning about 300m off the northern Gaza coast, near the Israeli border. The explosion was heard further along the coast in Gaza City but local Palestinian media did not immediately report on the incident.
■RUSSIA
Soldiers kills three
A soldier in Chechnya killed three fellow servicemen before attempting to kill himself, the Interfax news agency reported yesterday, citing a law-enforcement source in the war-ravaged region. “The serviceman killed the commander of his platoon and two soldiers with fire from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle,” the source told Interfax. The serviceman then attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head with the same rifle but failed and was hospitalized, said the source, adding that the incident was under investigation. The shooting took place on Sunday evening at a Russian military post near the village of Borzoi in the south of Chechnya.
■TURKEY
Police probe ‘coup plot’
The state-run news agency said police were searching the headquarters of a TV station and several branches of a secularist association as part of a widening probe into an alleged coup plot. The Anatolia news agency said police raided the pro-secular Kanal B television and branches of the Association to Protect Contemporary Life early yesterday. More than 200 suspects have been detained since 2007 in the case that highlights a rift between an increasingly powerful class of pious Muslims and secular elites who fear the Islamic-rooted government is seeking to impose religion on society.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police find body parts
Body parts from the same man have been turning up across the countryside. Police say they’re investigating a murder, but have yet to identify the victim. On March 22 a left leg was found in a travel bag near a highway in the village of Cottered, 65km north of London. On March 29, an arm — cut off at the elbow and the wrist — was found in the village of Weathampstead, 24km southwest of Cottered. Two days later, on a farmer found a head in his field in Asfordby, 140km north of both locations. Post-mortem examinations have confirmed that the body parts belonged to the same man. Since then, more body parts have turned up, including a right leg last Monday and part of a torso on Saturday. Officials have been unable to give a precise physical description of the man but say he suffered from eczema.
■UNITED STATES
Deputy marshal to be tried
Deputy marshal John Ambrose faces trial on charges alleging he leaked secrets to the Mafia. Ambrose, 50, was due to go on trial yesterday for allegedly telling organized crime figures seven years ago that a so-called made member of the Chicago mob had switched sides and was providing detailed information to federal prosecutors. US District Judge John Grady has ordered extraordinary security including screens in the courtroom to conceal the faces of key witnesses from spectators. Ambrose is accused of leaking information to the mob about former hit man, Nicholas Calabrese, who was the government’s star witness at the landmark 2007 “Family Secrets” trial that targeted top members of the Chicago mob. Ambrose was assigned to guard Calabrese on two occasions when witness security officials lodged him at “safe sites” for questioning. Ambrose is charged with stealing information from a Witness Security Program file on Calabrese and passing it to a go-between believing it would go to reputed mob boss John “No Nose” DiFronzo.
■UNITED STATES
Soldiers’ bodies arrive
The remains of five soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq arrived at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, in a quiet ceremony on Sunday evening. Five flag-draped transfer cases were unloaded from a jet as families watched. The five soldiers were killed on Friday when a suicide bomber driving a truck detonated a tonne of explosives near a police headquarters in Mosul.
■UNITED STATES
Family stunned by arrest
Relatives of a Sunday school teacher arrested in the killing of an eight-year-old girl found stuffed into a suitcase said on Sunday they are baffled by the accusations against the woman they know as a loving, single parent. “I just can’t comprehend. There are no words,” said Brian Lawless, the father of 28-year-old Melissa Huckaby, who is being held in San Joaquin County Jail on suspicion of kidnapping and killing Sandra Cantu. Lawless said Huckaby lived for her five-year-old daughter, Madison. “She just always had an extra patience with her. Never raised her voice. Never yelled. Never struck her,” he said. “She was that same way with other children. She loved other children.”
■COLOMBIA
Motorcyclists seek releases
A caravan of some 500 motorcycles completed a three-week ride on Sunday dedicated to hostages held by Colombian rebels, but fell short of securing the release of captives, organizers said. Caravan leader Herbin Hoyos said riders were encouraged by the support they received along the nearly 5,000km route. But he lamented not persuading members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to release at least one captive before the ride’s conclusion in Bogota. “I promised publicly to give my motorcycle to any guerrilla who came forward to turn over a captive,” Hoyos said.
■UNITED STATES
Christian center homes burn
A massive fire damaged or destroyed dozens of wood-frame buildings, mostly unoccupied summer homes, at a 146-year-old Christian center in New Hampshire on Sunday. State Fire Marshal William Degnan said no injuries to civilians had been reported at the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center on Lake Winnipesaukee. Witnesses said they watched as buildings burned to the ground in minutes. One firefighter was hurt when a propane tank exploded.
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,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
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
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