China to launch rockets from aircraft

SHANGHAI • China will develop rockets that can be launched into space from aircraft, a senior official told the state-run China Daily newspaper, as Beijing aims to send hundreds of satellites into orbit for military, commercial and scientific aims.

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has designed a solid-fuel rocket that could carry a 100kg payload into low earth orbit, said the head of the agency's carrier rocket development Li Tongyu.

REUTERS

Plan to help widowers in Indian state

NEW DELHI • An Indian state said it is considering giving monthly cash handouts to men who lose their wives, a first for a country that traditionally provides such payments only to women.

Haryana state chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Monday the plan is to roll out the changes next year once laws had been amended.

Haryana pays a monthly pension of 1,600 rupees (S$34) to the state's 650,000 widows every month. But widowers receive no such payout.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Thai army drops defamation suit

BANGKOK • Thailand's army said yesterday it would drop a defamation case against three human rights workers who alleged that troops tortured suspected insurgents, a rare climbdown by a military notorious for taking critics to court.

The charges against the chair of Amnesty International Thailand and two others were widely seen as an attack on the reporting of alleged army abuses.

The 2016 report was based on interviews with 54 former detainees.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE