ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Millions of internet users in Pakistan were not able to access the popular video sharing website YouTube after the government decided to block it for allegedly featuring cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. The cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, had triggered widespread protests across the Muslim world. Pakistan's foreign ministry had recently registered a strong protest with the Danish government against the re-publication of the cartoons. YouTube, powered by Google, allows people to easily upload and share video clips through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

LUCKNOW, India - A man allegedly kidnapped his own son to extract ransom from his father (the child's grandfather). Lucknow Inspector General of Police Arvind said police tracked phone calls after the father lodged a kidnap report and found that he was the culprit. As soon as we confronted the relatives, they spilled the beans, Arvind said.

NEW DELHI, India -  Three travel agents have been arrested for allegedly sending over 100 people to the US on forged documents in the past three years, police said. As many as 102 passports of different Indian individuals were found from the suspect’s office.
They were allegedly charging up to Rs.500,000 from successful applicants and Rs.20,000 as facilitation fee from those who failed to acquire visas. Around 2-3 million people are trafficked annually in and out of India.

 

DHAKA, Bangladesh -  A once-in-50-years rat infestation predicted in local folklore has struck Bangladesh this year, decimating the crops of tens of thousands of people. The last rat plague hit the Asian country in 1958 and the current one has affected residents in the country's remote Chittagong Hill Tracts. Local authorities say the rat population begins to soar when the bamboo forests begin to blossom. The crop, which has not blossomed for decades, began to do so this year. Healthy rodents, feasting on bamboo blossom, can breed up to eight times a year, far higher than normal. The rat plague can last three to four years until the population declines.

 

PATNA, India - A murder suspect was brutally thrashed by a mob and left almost dead in Bihar's Hajipur district while policemen watched. Ravi Kumar, a student in his 20s, had allegedly killed his friend Om Prakash in a quarrel over a cell phone in Hajipur's Pokhra neighbourhood. The mob snatched him from police custody Saturday morning and beat him with bamboo sticks and bricks and kicked him repeatedly. "He is battling for his life in the hospital," a senior police official told IANS. The incident follows a similar case when a mob lynched an alleged rapist in a village in Saran district.

 

KOLKATTA, India - A woman in a West Bengal town was pushed to death from a third-floor balcony by robbers who went on looting the house as the victim's terrified husband and son watched, police said. Chandana Das, 42, was allegedly pushed off the balcony by a gang of 15 that raided her home in Kanchrapara town. The woman's husband is a jeweller. The gang left with Rs.2 million worth of cash and jewellery, and left behind the lifeless body of the woman who bled to death.

 

NEW DELHI, India - A 35-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly hatching a plot to murder her husband after their dispute over their daughter's marriage. Shabana was arrested for hatching the conspiracy, while Faisal Khan, 23, and Imran Khan, 18, was arrested for murdering Ali Jan, 42, at his northeast Delhi. "Shabana during her interrogation revealed that her husband Ali Jan was a drunkard and used to beat her often. The couple had a dispute over their daughter's marriage," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast Delhi) Jaspal Singh said.

 

PATNA, India - The police have begun a probe into the seizure of four kg low-grade uranium from Supaul district in Bihar near the Indo-Nepal border. Six people, including a schoolteacher had been arrested. The estimated value of the seized uranium is about Rs.50 million in the international market. The police suspect the seized uranium was either being smuggled from Meghalaya to Nepal or from Nepal to Supaul.