■CHINA
Fireworks truck explodes
A truck carrying gunpowder to a fireworks factory exploded, killing four people, destroying three vehicles and tearing up chunks of the highway, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. At least 35 people were also injured in Saturday’s accident on the road near Xiaogan, Hubei Province, Xinhua said. “The blast cut the road up to 10 meters long and one meter deep. More than 700 square meters of road surface were blown up,” Zhang Liang, a highway administration official, was quoted as saying. The truck was carrying 5 tonnes of gunpowder from Liuyang in Hunan Province to a fireworks factory in Hebei Province, the report said. The truck’s three occupants, including the owner of the cargo, were detained by police.
■INDIA
Singh flies to Russia
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew to Russia yesterday on a visit to cement ties between the two allies and finalize a deal to expand cooperation on nuclear energy. Singh’s two-day trip, his sixth to Russia as prime minister since 2004, was also designed to firm up defense deals that have been hit by delays in delivery, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Singh will hold talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as part of an annual leadership meeting between the two countries that forged a strategic partnership deal in 2000, officials said. The prime minister, who visited Washington last month, said he hoped the Russia trip would focus on defense, civil nuclear energy and science issues.
■CHINA
Police reward for porn sites
Authorities have offered rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,465) to Internet users who report Web sites that feature pornography, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. However, the censors’ latest campaign against content that harms public morality appears to have encouraged Internet users to look for porn online. Within the first 24 hours, a hotline set up on Friday by Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center was flooded with more than 500 phone calls and 13,000 online tips, Xinhua said. The center is looking for Web sites and mobile phone-accessible sites that contain obscene material or advertise sex products, the report said. Rewards ranging from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan will go to the first person to report each Web site, the center said.
■JAPAN
Swine flu deaths reach 100
The number of deaths in the country from the A(H1N1) swine flu virus has hit 100, Kyodo news agency reported yesterday. The latest fatality was reported in Kyoto, where a 74-year-old man had died after infection, the news agency quoted the local city office as saying. The man had an underlying illness, it said. The flu strain had caused at least 7,826 deaths worldwide as of Nov. 27. Flu transmission is active in East Asia and it remains “stably elevated in Japan,” but may be decreasing slightly in cities there, the WHO said.
■INDONESIA
Police nab roo smuggler
Police said on Saturday they had arrested a man believed to have smuggled 10 rare kangaroos by boat from New Guinea. East Java maritime police officer Widarmanto said that the police had caught the man on Friday off the coast of Surabaya with the red kangaroos. “When we caught him, five of the red kangaroos were already dead. The police then safeguarded the other five,” Widarmanto said.
■IRAQ
Election law in limbo
Parliament met on Saturday to vote on a new electoral law for polls early next year, but no quorum was reached and the session was postponed until yesterday, speaker Iyad Samarrai said. “There are only 113 members present and therefore no quorum. A new session will take place tomorrow [Sunday] at 11am,” he told members of parliament. There are 275 seats in the legislature and at least 138 members must be present for a session to go ahead. President Jalal Talabani had called Saturday’s session to vote on a draft law to govern legislative elections, urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the law, without which the general election can not proceed.
■UNITED STATES
Waco mammoth on display
A site where dozens of prehistoric mammoths died in a landslide and flooding some 68,000 years ago has opened to the public in Waco, Texas. The fossils were discovered in 1978 by two men hunting for snakes. They took one of the bones to a Baylor University museum official who identified it, triggering an archeological dig. Baylor and the city preserved the remains for two decades and, following a community fundraising effort, a permanent pavilion was built over the site, which opened to the public for the first time on Saturday. Visitors can observe the mammoth remains from walkways above the dirt where the fossils remain encased. Legislation is pending to make the site a national monument and part of the National Park Service.
■UNITED STATES
Parachutist electrocuted
Authorities say a man died after parachuting from a cellphone tower at night and hitting high-voltage power lines. Pinal County sheriff’s Lieutenant Tamatha Villar said that 23-year-old Darrell Dunafon and two friends broke into a cell tower site about 48km south of Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday night and were parachuting off the approximately 122m-tall antenna. Dunafon’s parachute tangled in nearby 12,000-volt power lines and he was shocked with a live wire. Villar said the two friends called for help and rescue crews turned off the power and cut Dunafon down.
■HONDURAS
Truck overturns, 11 killed
A flat-bed truck overloaded with 26 people plunged off a mountain road and down a ravine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring everybody else on board, highway police said on Saturday. The accident occurred late on Friday in Meambar, Comayagua department, 130km north of the capital Tegucigalpa, police said. The small truck was so overloaded with riders that its driver lost control and swerved over the side of the road into a deep ravine, they said.
■BRAZIL
Suspected bombers nabbed
Sao Paulo police arrested seven members of a neo-Nazi group suspected in a June 14 bombing during a gay pride parade that injured 22 people, police said on Friday. The four men and three women arrested are members of the “Hooligan Impact” group suspected of setting off a homemade bomb inside a bar in the city’s gay district after a gay pride parade, the police’s Racial Crimes and Hate Crime unit said. Two of the suspects were arrested 10 days ago and five others were picked up on Friday, unit chief Margarette Barreto said. They will be charged with organized crime and with injuring 12 people, police said, adding that only 12 of the 22 injured people came forth to press charges after the bombing.
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges were assisting with emergency cases as more than 1 million doctors were expected to strike Hospitals and clinics across India yesterday turned away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals began a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata. More than 1 million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralyzing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases. The strike, which began at 6am, cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, the Indian Medical Association said in a statement. The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied