India

At least 37 dead after bus crash

A bus packed with passengers crashed through a guard rail and fell off a bridge in western India early on Tuesday, killing at least 37 people and injuring another 15, police said. The bus was carrying passengers from the beach resort state of Goa to Mumbai when it crashed in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, said Mahendra Singh Pardeshi, a police official.

France

15 Mali rebels killed, army says

Fifteen Islamist fighters have been killed in recent days in the northern Mali, the French army said on Tuesday, announcing the seizure of a large cache of arms and ammunition. The claim came two weeks after France said more than 150 Islamist rebels had been killed since the middle of February.

Australia

Media reforms set to falter

Australian plans to reform media laws and strengthen scrutiny of newspapers and media mergers appeared doomed on Tuesday, prompting new tension within Prime Minister Julia Gillard's struggling minority government. Gillard's plan to appoint a media advocate, to enforce rulings against newspapers and to review mergers, was struggling to gain parliamentary support.

Pakistan

Arrest made inreporter's death

Pakistan has arrested a former militant leader in connection with the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, security officials said on Monday. Qari Abdul Hai, once a leader of the outlawed Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was arrested on Sunday during a security crackdown in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, said the officials.

Japan

Nuclear plant hit by power cut

Engineers at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant partially succeeded on Tuesday in restarting cooling systems after a power cut underlined its still-precarious state two years after a tsunami struck. Equipment in pools that keep used fuel cool lost their power supply at 7 pm (local time) on Monday, operator TEPCO said. By late Tuesday two of the cooling systems were back up.

Egypt

Gadhafi's cousin arrested

Egyptian police arrested on Tuesday Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam, a cousin of Muammar Gadhafi, who is wanted in Libya for his role under the former Libyan leader, Egyptian state media reported. But Dam, reached on his cellphone, sought to downplay the arrest, and said he would file a complaint with the Egyptian public prosecutor and Libyan authorities.

AP-Reuters-AFP

(China Daily 03/20/2013 page11)