BANGKOK: A policeman was killed on Wednesday and five people wounded in Thailand’s restive south, becoming the latest victims in a wave of violence which has claimed more than 100 lives this year, police said. The officer was shot dead while riding a motorbike in Pattani province on Wednesday morning, police said, adding that a village official riding pillion had been wounded in the attack. "He was shot four times in the right side of his chest and died at the scene," deputy regional police chief Major General Thani Thawitsri told AFP, adding the officer had been identified as 46-year-old sergeant major Vicharn Changsan.

BEIJING: A school principal killed two students with an axe in front of their classmates, and then killed their mother before committing suicide in central China, state media said on Wednesday. Qiao Haijun went into two classrooms in the village school in Qumo township in Handan city Monday, killing a 14-year-old boy during a natural science class and then going to the boy’s seven-year-old brother’s class to kill him, the Yanzhao Evening News in Hebei province said.

MEXICO CITY: Police in Mexico’s Michoacan state arrested a man they found cooking up a batch of tamales - no crime in itself, though this suspect chef was working with human flesh, the daily Milenio reported on Wednesday. On entering the suspect’s Morelia home, police found "a hair-raising scene: in the living room, the head and thorax of a person; on the patio, the intestines, feet and hands; and in the laundry room the already cooked extremities apparently ready to be put on the table" where the man was preparing the tamales, the newspaper reported. Authorities said the man, a tamale vendor, was believed to have murdered and dismembered an unidentified victim in order to use the body in the traditional dish, which has a cornmeal wrap around varying ingredients including meat. Tamales are typical street fare in Morelia.

NEW DELHI: policemen of a local woman imposed a curfew in the northern Indian Hindu pilgrimage town of Haridwar, reports said. Television news channel Aaj Tak showed footage of riot police fighting pitched battles with stone-throwing locals in the heart of the town. The tension began late Tuesday after a woman claimed two policemen raped her, the United News of India news agency said. Police have denied any of their men were involved in the incident. Haridwar, located in tiny Uttaranchal state, is a highly revered pilgrimage site for Hindus as it marks the place where the sacred Ganges River leaves the Himalayas and reaches the plains. Thousands of pilgrims visit Haridwar every day to take a dip in the Ganges.

JAKARTA: Indonesian police shot dead two robbers armed with bows and arrows as they tried to make off with thousands of dollars in compensation payments to local tribesmen in eastern Papua, police said on Wednesday. Police are investigating whether the attack was purely a robbery or whether there was another motive, provincial police spokesman Daud Sihombing said. The Free Papua Movement has waged a sporadic low-level armed revolt for independence since Indonesia took control of the mountainous jungle-clad territory from Dutch colonisers in 1963. "Four people attacked the officers, there was contact, and two of the attackers were shot. The other two fled," Sihombing said on local radio. He said it was not clear whether any of the money was actually taken. Police were escorting 150 million rupiah (17 thousand dollars) on behalf of a company paying compensation for use of traditional lands, Sihombing said. The incident took place in western Manokwari district of Indonesia’s rugged easternmost province.

PHNOM PENH: a court for distributing forged documents purporting has charged a man who impersonated Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk’s long lost son to be from the monarch, officials said on Wednesday. Police on Sunday arrested 32-year-old taxi driver Vorn Touch, who had spent months on the run following the jailing of his partner-in-crime last November, deputy prosecutor Pen Sarath from Pursat provincial court told AFP. "He published fake royal messages from the king" identifying himself as Prince Norodom Naradipo, he said, adding that it was allegedly part of a ploy aimed at swindling money from Cambodians living overseas. The prosecutor said Vorn Touch had confessed to circulating forged letters from the king by an unidentified person in the capital and would remain in jail.

MOSCOW: A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked at the International Space Station on Wednesday with three astronauts on board, on the third manned mission to the orbiting craft since NASA halted shuttle flights after the Columbia disaster. American Edward Michael Fincke, Dutchman Andre Kuipers and Russia’s Gennady Padalka, who had blasted off two days earlier from Kazakhstan, docked at the station some 400 kilometers above the Earth at 9:01 Moscow time (0501 GMT). They entered the hatch of the space station some 90 minutes later to be greeted by the two-man crew finishing their six-month mission, who offered them bread and salt according to Russian tradition. Fincke, who was making his first journey to space, and Padalka will replace US astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kalery, who have been there since last October. Kuipers, making his maiden space voyage on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), will stay at the ISS for nine days before returning to Earth with Foale and Kalery on April 30.

LIPETSK, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that European calls for him to open negotiations with separatists from Chechnya could be compared to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s proposal of a truce with Europe. Touring this central Russian city with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a key ally in Europe, Putin told reporters that he did not find Western calls for peace talks to be "always constructive." "As before, we are now being urged to start talks with people whom we and our partners in Muslim countries consider to be terrorists," Putin said. "Terrorist number one, Bin Laden, made a truce proposal to Europe that as far as I know was rejected," he said. "Why? And why are similar calls addressed to Moscow?" he demanded.

WASHINGTON: Powerful tornados ripped through several towns in the northern US state of Illinois, killing four people inside a tavern in Utica and injuring six people elsewhere, media said on Wednesday. Spawned by a severe storm front on late Tuesday, the tornados collapsed several buildings and damaged dozens others in Utica, a town of 1,000 inhabitants some 145 kilometers south of Chicago, CNN news channel said. One of the collapsed building was a tavern where four people were killed. Four other people, including three children were injured in Utica. The storms knocked out power to some 1,500 homes.

MOSCOW: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi entered talks on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin likely to focus on the conflict in Iraq. "Of course we will talk in detail about what is happening in Iraq," Putin said before the talks began late Tuesday. Berlusconi in his turn said that "we have a fairly positive prognosis for the three Italian hostages" abducted on April 12, with kidnappers demanding that Rome withdraw its 3,000 troops from the US-led occupation force in Iraq. The two leaders have developed a close personal friendship and Berlusconi is seen as one of Putin’s closest allies in Europe.

TAIPEI: Taiwan prosecutors have subpoenaed popular film actress Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia for allegedly exposing her ballot to show her choice of president in last month’s election, it was reported here on Wednesday. Lin was requested to report to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday, the United Evening News said. Prosecutors could not be immediately reached for queries. Lin, who had openly expressed her support for presidential candidate Lien Chan from the opposition Kuomintang, allegedly showed her marked ballot in front of TV cameras before casting it into the ballot box at a Taipei polling station on March 20. Exposing marked ballots is prohibited by Taiwan’s election laws and punishable by imprisonment of up to two years, labour service or fine of up to 200,000 Taiwan dollars (6,061 US).

GARDING, Germany: Two German air force Tornado jets collided in mid-air Wednesday, killing two of the four people on board, police said. The remaining two passengers were able to eject and parachute to safety. They suffered slight injuries and were receiving treatment. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, which occurred at about 0825 GMT, but a police spokesman said there had been "extreme weather conditions" at the time. Wreckage fell on undeveloped land near the St. Peter-Ording beach resort on the North Sea. There were no reports of injuries on the ground. Police cleared an eight-square-kilometer (three-square-mile) area surrounding the crash site to examine the wreckage. A defence ministry spokesman said the armed forces would run the investigation. The two jets belonged to the 51 Immelmann reconnaissance squadron based in the northern town of Jagel, an air force spokesman said.

ROME: Karl Hass, a former Nazi officer convicted in a wartime reprisal massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Rome, died Wednesday in a rest home where he had been serving a life sentence under house arrest, officials at the home said. Hass, 92, had been living at the Garden rest home, in the Alban hills near Rome, since 1992. The former SS major had been convicted and sentenced in 1998 to life in prison for the reprisal killings at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome when the Italian capital was under German occupation during World War II. He had been spared prison because of frail health and his age and because he had returned voluntarily from Switzerland after the sentencing. Survivors include a daughter who lived in Geneva, Switzerland, and who came every few weeks to visit Hass. The rest home director Riccardo La Rosa said. "He was the kind who didn’t socialize with the others. He spoke little, he read books and above all newspapers."