Interesting story, thanks.
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Interesting story, thanks.
Thanks for the news.
China has poured more troops into the earthquake-ravaged province of Sichuan to speed up the search for survivors as time ran out for thousands of people buried under rubble and mud.
Weary rescuers pulled at tangled chunks of buildings and peered into crevices for signs of life after Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake crumpled homes, schools and hospitals.
The government dispatched 50,000 troops to the southwestern province to dig for victims as the national death toll climbed past 13,000. It is likely to rise steeply after state media said 19,000 were buried in the province's Mianyang area alone.
On the edge of Mianyang city, people roamed around a sports ground housing the homeless, holding cardboard signs with the names of relatives in hopes of information. Most were from nearby rural Beichuan county, one of the worst-hit areas.
"They have said nothing about what's going to happen to us. This is just a temporary place. I don't know when or if we'll be able to go home," said Hu Luobing, from a Beichuan village where she said everything had been destroyed.
She was leaving her daughter in the shelter of the sports ground, where some 10,000 Beichuan survivors had gathered, to look for clothes.
Others were seeking food and relief from the cold rain.
"I've had nothing to eat since last night. I've only been given some bread and a bottle of water for my child," said Bai Chenchu, one of thousands camped out at the sports ground.
Another had only the clothes on his back.
"I'm wearing everything I own," said 15-year-old Xi Dongli.
Pictures from Beichuan, a hilly area that rescuers have struggled to reach, showed near total devastation. Survivors lay alongside the dead in the open air, surrounded by buildings reduced to mangled slabs of concrete.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who has been in Sichuan leading rescue efforts, making emotional appeals to urge on workers and visiting crying, orphaned children, was in Beichuan by midday.
"Your pain is our pain," he said on state television. He stood amid a cluster of residents, one with blood on her head and some of whom wiped away tears.
"Saving people's lives in the most important task."
Beichuan county alone was in urgent need of 50,000 tents, 200,000 blankets and 300,000 coats, as well as drinking water and medicine, Xinhua said.
"Beichuan has just disappeared. There's nothing left," said Li Changqing, a salesman in Mianyang.
Reuters
A 39-year-old man killed five members of his family, some apparently with an axe and reported the deaths to police himself, police said.
The dead were his wife, daughter aged 7, and his parents and father-in-law.
The man went to police on Wednesday and they found the bodies of the wife and daughter in an apartment in Vienna. They may have been killed with an axe, Austrian news agency APA quoted police as saying.
He admitted the other killings and the bodies were found outside Vienna in Upper Austria. It was unclear how they died.
- Reuters
A car bomb has exploded at a police barracks in northern Spain's Basque country, killing one person and wounding four, police said.
The bomb exploded in a Civil Guard barracks in the town of Legutiano just before 3am today (1pm NZT), a Basque Country police spokeswoman said, and a police rescue team with dogs was used to search for people trapped in the rubble.
One person trapped under the wreckage died and the blast wounded four others, two men and two women.
There was no warning before the attack, which took place in an area that is often the target of Basque separatists. No one has claimed responsibility, police said.
The Basque separatist group ETA has killed more than 800 people in four decades of violent struggle for independence for the Basque Country, which lies in northern Spain and southwestern France.
ETA's last fatal victim was a former small town politician for Spain's governing Socialist Party, gunned down just before a national election in March, police said.
Reuters
A Perth man has failed to have his lengthy sentence reduced for a "brutal, callous and degrading" crime on a young boy he and his boyfriend kidnapped and raped for three weeks.
Robbie Sebastian Wheeler, 43, was sentenced to 23 years and eight months jail in the Western Australian District Court last May after admitting to the kidnapping and sexual abuse.
He and his partner Victor Leslie Urquhart, 46, were also found guilty by a jury of plotting to murder the then 14-year-old boy, who they held as a sex slave in their Perth home between August 30 and September 19, 2005.
Urquhart was sentenced to a total of 20 years and seven months in prison.
Wheeler appealed his sentence on the grounds it was too long for the crime.
But the WA Supreme Court today dismissed the appeal.
"I accept that the total sentence in this case was very severe," Justice Christopher Steytler said.
"However, the circumstances of the case are truly exceptional."
Psychological and psychiatric reports prepared for the appeal said Wheeler was a borderline psychopath with a high risk of re-offending.
Wheeler was more concerned for his own wellbeing than that of his victim, the reports said.
Justice Steytler said the boy was shackled for 21 days and subjected to depraved, degrading and humiliating acts.
"The appellant's behaviour was brutal, callous, degrading and sustained," he said.
During sentencing last year, the court was told the boy suffered from eating and sleeping disorders, frequent flashbacks and nightmares, that he had become reclusive and had at least once attempted suicide.
Wheeler and Urquhart abducted him from a Perth street, dragged him inside their house, handcuffed him to a bed and gagged him with gaffer tape.
Over the next three weeks they repeatedly had unprotected sex with him, forced him to use sex toys on himself, made him watch pornographic videos, had sex with each other in front of him and made him defecate in a bucket.
They also made plans to kill him, dump his body in bushland and dissolve it with acid.
Wheeler will be eligible for parole after serving 21 years and eight months.
Urquhart will be eligible for parole after serving 18 years and seven months.
- AAP
Authorities imposed a dawn to-dusk curfew in parts of India's historic western city of Jaipur a day after eight bombs ripped through bustling streets, killing around 60 people and injuring 150.
The blasts within minutes of each other brought fears that Pakistani or Bangladeshi Islamist militant groups were trying to undermine a fragile peace process between India and Pakistan. But police have not yet blamed any particular group.
Bombs, many strapped to bicycles, exploded by a main temple and markets inside the pink-walled city. Slippers, broken pieces of glass and bits of clothes now litter the main market place.
The bustling walled city's main courtyard was mostly deserted with a few people coming back to take personal belongings out of damaged cars and motorbikes left behind after the bombs.
Hundreds of policemen looked for unclaimed objects in the rubble, while many people in Jaipur preferred to stay indoors.
"It was very scary and most of us just ran as there was smoke and cries for help in every direction," said Anil Saxena, a businessman at a popular jewellery market.
Authorities cleaned a blood-splattered street in front of Hawa Mahal, or the "palace of wind," a five-storied sandstone building built by a Hindu king for his queen in 1799 AD.
Many Hindus offer prayers in temples on Tuesdays and officials say that was probably what attackers were looking for.
"There were hundreds of people there like me to offer prayers. I wonder what would have happened had the blast taken place inside the temple," Vikram Singh, an injured college student, said from his hospital bed.
India's junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal was quoted by local media as saying there "might be the involvement of some foreign hand in the blasts" - a phrase often used in India to refer to Pakistan.
Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is due to visit Islamabad in a week's time to review a four-year-old peace process between the two nations.
Only in the last week, Indian soldiers came under heavy cross-border fire trying to stop armed men from sneaking into its part of Kashmir. Later eight people were killed in clashes in a Kashmir village. It was some of the worse violence in Kashmir this year.
But police in Jaipur said they did not know who was behind Tuesday's bombings.
"It is too early to name one particular group and we are analyzing the material used to cause the blast to determine what it exactly contained," AS Gill, Rajasthan's police chief said.
Authorities said they do not have information about any foreigners injured in the blast. It is low season in the tourist state of Rajasthan.
Reuters
Wow, that's harsh but I guess for the safety of everyone, it's a good idea.
I feel for China, this was a horrible disaster and I hope they get through it quickly.
What the hell? That guy's insane and needs help...