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TOKYO: An auto worker that killed seven people on a stabbing frenzy in downtown Tokyo had posted dozens of warnings of what he was going to do on Internet bulletin boards, police said Monday. As stunned mourners placed flowers, sweets and comic-book images at a makeshift shrine, new details emerged of how he kept a detailed log of his plans to wreak havoc in Akihabara, the hub of Tokyo's comic-book subculture. The 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato worked on a temporary contract at an auto components factory.
-- AFP
CHENGDU, China: Aftershocks Monday continued to threaten the stability of a swollen "quake lake" in southwest China amid urgent efforts to drain its rising waters to prevent a flood downstream. A 5.0-magnitude aftershock rattled the area of quake-devastated Sichuan province where the lake is located on Sunday, US seismologists reported, and China's state Xinhua news agency reported two further tremors on Monday.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Astronauts from the Discovery shuttle completed the third spacewalk of the mission Sunday, putting more finishing touches on Japan's Kibo science lab and replacing an empty nitrogen tank. In another trouble-free day of the mission, Ron Garan and Mike Fossum checked off a list of maintenance tasks large and small over six hours and 33 minutes outside the orbiting space station, heading back inside at 2028 GMT. Garan was slowly swept from one side of the ISS to the other.
-- AFP
KABUL: Afghanistan meets its donors in Paris Thursday with its most ambitious post-Taliban reconstruction plan on the table-a wide-ranging $50-billion strategy that spans five years. The Afghanistan National Development Strategy envisages strides in developing the security forces, infrastructure on which to build a market-led economy and a new emphasis on agriculture among a range of goals. Analysts say it is a realistic assessment of the needs still facing the destitute country seven years after the ouster of the extremist Taliban regime.
-- AFP
CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday urged the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to unilaterally free all its hostages and end the decades of armed conflict in Colombia. Nothing justified the presence of armed movements in Latin America, Chavez said at a diplomatic gathering in the northwest state of Falcon attended by Chinese and Iranian ambassadors to Venezuela. "At this point a guerrilla movement is out of place in Latin America," Chavez said.
-- Xinhua
VATICAN CITY: Two nuns chained themselves in front of the Vatican on Sunday to get Pope Benedict XVI's attention claiming they had been turned away from their convent. The nuns they have not been allowed back into their convent in central Italy when they returned after leaving for health reasons in 2005. "We were thrown helpless into the street like two bags of garbage," said Sister Albina Locantore, 73, who had chained herself along with 79-year-old Sister Teresa Izzi.
-- AFP
YANGON: Myanmar has given polio vaccination to 540 cyclone-survived children under five years of age in relief camps in Laputta, state media reported Monday. Another 720 children ranging from 9 months to 10 years of age were also given measles vaccination and a total of 770 storm victims of Kanback native village have also moved back from relief camps.
-- Xinhua
LUBLIN, Poland: Often considered sick, deviant or sinners, gays and lesbians in deeply Catholic Poland are being nudged towards Church-steered programs designed to help them fight their homosexuality. In the southeastern city of Lublin, a nondescript white building houses Odwaga, or Courage, an organization which offers "therapy" for homosexuals-to the consternation of gay rights groups who find it an aberration. Men are taught to kick a football around, women take cookery lessons and, above all, participants spend time praying with priests.
-- AFP
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