Four illegal migrants were killed when they wandered into a minefield in northeast Greece after crossing the border from Turkey on a popular people smuggling route, a Greek Defence Ministry official said yesterday.
The minefield, near the village of Kastanies, was signposted in English and Greek, the official said. The migrants are thought to have climbed over a barbed wire fence along the frontier under cover of darkness.
"The bodies of the four men were too badly damaged to be identified, but papers carried by two of them suggested they were Georgian," said the official, who asked not to be named.
Doctors allowed to carry guns
Doctors in Iraq will have the right to carry guns to protect themselves, the government said yesterday, in a bid to address the security concerns of a profession that has been targeted by gangsters and militants.
Thousands of Iraqi doctors have fled over the past five years, leaving the country desperately short of qualified medical personnel. Doctors held a conference in Baghdad in June to ask for better protection.
Once the elite of Iraqi society, medical specialists became a particular target for insurgents, militias and kidnappers in search of rich ransoms during the violence that followed the US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Technology is no panacea
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates urged the military yesterday not to believe that technology can solve every problem and suggested quick-fix, low-tech solutions can sometimes be more valuable.
The comments reflect Mr Gates's vision of a US military that can adapt quickly to fight complex insurgencies, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as being ready to take on conventional conflicts against nation states.
"Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish," Mr Gates told US military officers at National Defence University in Washington.
Herbal remedy as Viagra alternative
A Chinese herbal remedy called horny goat weed is a promising alternative to Viagra for impotent men, Italian researchers said yesterday.
The herb has long held a reputation as a natural aphrodisiac. The lab experiments, which did not look at whether the plant actually increases desire, could lead to new drugs to help men get erections, said Mario Dell'Agli, a researcher at the University of Milan, who led the study.
"This could be the natural Viagra," he said in a telephone interview. "The novelty is that we have synthesised a new molecule that one day may be able to replace Viagra."
Nepal state names 'living goddess'
Nepal's new Maoist-led government has appointed a six-year-old girl as a "living goddess" in the ancient city of Bhaktapur, for the first time snapping the link between the ancient ritual and the ousted monarchy.
For centuries, the head priest of the Nepali monarchy appointed the "Kumaris" in several towns in the Kathmandu valley. But with the abolition of the monarchy in May, that position has also disappeared.
Instead, officials at the state-run Trust Corporation overseeing cultural affairs appointed Shreeya Bajracharya as the new Kumari of the temple-town of Bhaktapur near Kathmandu, Deepak Bahadur Pandey, a senior official of the agency said.
Shreeya was enthroned on Sunday amid prayers by Buddhist priests and will be worshipped by devout Hindus and Buddhists until reaching puberty.
Asked what she wanted to become in future, a quiet Shreeya just said: "nurse". She loves to eat biscuits and flattened rice, a common Nepali food, her aides said.
Air traffic controller oversleeps
Two airplanes due to land on the Greek island of Lesbos had to circle above the Aegean sea for more than half an hour because an air traffic controller overslept, police said yesterday.
An Olympic Airlines aircraft, arriving from the Greek capital Athens, and a Slovakian Airlines plane made several failed attempts to contact control tower personnel.
"They were calling the tower to get directions, but no one would answer," a police official, who declined to be named, said. "The woman later said she overslept."
The airport's secondary control service assisted the pilots to land after they had circled for 40 minutes. Police said the controller, who was not named, would be suspended for a few days.