Briefs

INDIA

Top court upholds caste-based quotas

NEW DELHI — India’s top court yesterday upheld an affirmative action program reserving more than a quarter of the seats at the country’s top government-funded schools for members of the lower castes.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled that lower-caste students belonging to financially well-off families should not be allowed to benefit from the program.

A complex hereditary system divides Hindus into castes. Those on the lower rungs of the ladder face discrimination, even though the system was made illegal nearly six decades ago.

Last year, the government announced that 27 percent of seats at India’s prestigious state-run professional schools would be set aside for lower-caste students. That was in addition to 22.5 percent of seats already reserved for India’s indigenous peoples and its dalits, or untouchables, who have no caste and have suffered centuries of severe, often violent, discrimination.

INDIA

Family refuses care for two-faced baby

SAINI — The family of an Indian baby born with two faces has refused special medical treatment for the infant, saying she is the incarnation of a Hindu goddess.

The month-old girl suffers from what appears to be craniofacial duplication, a rare congenital disorder in which part of the face is duplicated on the head.

Lali, born to a family of poor farm laborers in a village about 34 miles east of New Delhi, has an extra pair of eyes, nose and lips. Media reports said she ate with both mouths and blinked all four eyes.

The anomaly gave the newborn godlike status in the village, with hundreds of people flocking to the family’s dilapidated brick house to worship her and seek blessings.

INDONESIA

Frog without lungs found on Borneo

BANGKOK — A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said yesterday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.

The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia’s Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. Mr. Bickford was part of the trip and co-authored a paper on the find that appeared in this week’s edition of the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology.

BANGLADESH

Islamists clash with police; 50 hurt

DHAKA — At least 50 people were injured as Islamist activists clashed with police in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka yesterday over a plan to give women equal rights to inheritance, police and witnesses said.

Two police motorbikes were burned and two cars were damaged during the hourlong clash outside the national Baitul Mokarram Mosque near the Presidential Palace.

The clashes erupted as police halted a march by several hundred activists of Khalafat Majlis, a radical Islamic group, which was protesting a proposed policy on women’s rights.

From wire dispatches and staff reports