● BEIJING. Fireworks kill one during Chinese New Year celebrations. One person died and 270 others were injured in China?s capital while setting off fireworks as part of Lunar New Year celebrations, state media said yesterday. Authorities blamed most of the incidents on poorly made fireworks, which are traditionally ignited to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. A 25-year-old man suffered head injuries on Saturday, New Year?s eve, and died early Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency said.

● MANILA. Gunmen kill newspaper editor in Philippine south. Gunmen wearing baseball caps shot and killed an editor of a community newspaper yesterday in the troubled southern Philippines, police said, a day after a team of UN rights investigators visited the region. Hernani Pastolero, 64, editor of the weekly paper Lightning Courier was sipping coffee in front of his house in Sultan Kudarat town on Mindanao island when gunmen shot him twice in the back of his head yesterday morning.

● JAKARTA. Indonesia seeks 20 yrs jail for Christian beheadings. Indonesian prosecutors yesterday sought a 20-year jail sentence for the main defendant in the beheadings three Christian schoolgirls from religiously divided Central Sulawesi province. Prosecutors said Muslim militant Hasanuddin masterminded the beheadings of the Christian girls in 2005 to avenge the killings of Muslims during three years of communal violence in Central Sulawesi?s Poso region. About 2,000 people from both communities died in the violence before a peace pact was signed in 2001, and sporadic attacks and fighting have continued since. Poso has been tense since the execution of three Christian militants in September over their role in the massacres of Muslims at a boarding school in 2000.

● WASHINGTON. Japanese scientists grow teeth from single cells. Japanese researchers said they had grown normal-looking teeth from single cells in lab dishes, and transplanted them into mice. They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together. They said their method was the first to show an entire organ could be replaced using just a few cells.