■Hong Kong
SARS cure moves forward
Hong Kong virologists say a SARS vaccine has been developed and will soon be tested on animals, a news report said yesterday. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong said they have been collaborating with their counterparts in China to develop experimental vaccines, the South China Morning Post reported. Yuen Kwok-yung, head of the university's department of microbiology, said an inactivated strain of the SARS coronavirus was ready to be tested in animals, adding that "this is an important first step in the development of a vaccine."
■ Vietnam
Tribesmen sent to jail
Fifteen ethnic minority men in Vietnam were given sentences of up to 10 years in prison for "violating the national unity block" after organizing protests in the troubled Central Highlands region, a judge said yesterday. on The men, members of the Ede tribe, were sentenced Monday at the end of a one-day, closed-door trial in the central province of Dak Lak, said Judge Nguyen Loc from the provincial People's Court. The sentences are the latest in a string of prison terms following mass anti-government protests that broke out in 2001. The men sentenced on Monday were accused of holding follow-up protests last year.
■ New Zealand
Old scam finds new guise
New Zealand police have warned that e-mail letters purporting to offer millions of US dollars of funds from Iraq are being received in the country, a newspaper reported yesterday. One claims to be from the financial adviser to Saddam Hussein's son Uday, and offers a 20 percent share of more than US$100 million if the money can kept in the recipient's account for "safekeeping" until it is safe to hand back to the government in Iraq, Wellington's Dominion Post reported. "It is like old crime in new bottles," said police electronic crime unit national manager Maarten Kleintjes. "Use your common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, then don't get into it."
■ China
Animals attack in zoo
Hungry tigers and lions have been attacking each other at a Chinese zoo that says it can't afford to feed them due to a slump in visitors amid SARS fears. A 5-year-old lion was killed and two tigers injured in brawls at the Xiamen Haicang Wild Animal Park in the southeastern coastal city of Xiamen, said Liu Huichun, its general manager. "Hunger has made the animals irritable and they have returned to the laws of the jungle," Liu said. Zoos and other tourism-dependent businesses have been devastated by official efforts to contain the disease by discouraging Chinese from traveling. The public also is anxious about pets and zoo animals after reports the disease might have originated in animals.
■ India
Man castrated by in-law
A man was castrated by the brothers of his wife who opposed his marriage in the northern city of Agra, a report said yesterday. The Times of India newspaper reported that Meghendra was invited for dinner by his two brothers-in-law on Sunday. When he arrived with his wife, they beat him up and cut off his genitals. He rushed to a police station in the city bleeding profusely and was sent to a hospital. The accountant had married his current wife, an office assistant, after throwing out his first wife after she become disabled in an accident.
■United Sates
Exhibit shows lives of labor
Their jobs make them feel invisible, but using donated cameras a group of America's low-paid workers -- janitors, doormen, cleaners and dishwashers to name a few -- have documented their lives in photographs. In an exhibition called "Unseen America" now showing at the Labor Department in Washington, the pictures record the lives of people who are usually never in the public's eye. "Most people don't think about all of those millions of people who make our lives what they are -- the people who make our clothes, look after our children, open doors, wash dishes in restaurants," said Esther Cohen, who developed the show.
■ United Kingdom
Ambulance driver ticketed
An ambulance driver speed-trapped at 167kph on a crucial transplant dash faces court in a test case with implications for emergency drivers across the country. Senior ambulance officer Mike Ferguson, an advanced driver with 36 years' service, was clocked at 3:30am as he sped down the A1 highway in an official car with blue flashing lights. He is being prosecuted after a dossier from Lincolnshire police was sent to the crown prosecution service despite health service protests that the transplant liver was urgently needed. A second summons from Cambridge-shire police, whose cameras caught the car at the same speed at 4am, has been withdrawn.
■ Italy
Mixed early results in vote
Local elections seen as a test for Premier Silvio Berlusconi's two-year-old government showed mixed results Monday, according to the partial returns, with the Italian leader's conservatives leading in a significant race in Palermo but trailing another in Rome. The two days of voting for 12 provincial governments and about 500 city councils, including nine mid-sized cities, ended Monday afternoon.
■ United Kingdom
Poet demands asylum
An Iranian refugee in Britain has sewn up his eyes, ears and mouth in protest at his treatment by the British government. Abas Amini, a political poet and communist activist who fled Iran to Britain two years ago, took the action after the Home Office said it would appeal a decision to grant him asylum. Amini, 33, has gone on hunger strike in Nottingham, in the English Midlands, and is refusing all medical attention. Speaking with difficulty through an interpreter, he told BBC Radio on yesterday he was forced to come to Britain after being tortured and jailed in Iran. "Shouldn't a human being have a square foot of earth to live on and to live in peace?" he was quoted as saying.
■ United States
Single Marines get hugs
US Marine infantry troops arriving back from duty in Iraq are being greeted at one California base by women who wear "official hugger" signs and make lonely soldiers feel welcomed, a newspaper reported Monday. The warm embraces at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, were organized by Alisa Hertzler, coordinator of the base's Single Marine Program, according to the weekly Navy Times. Earlier this month, she watched six Marines arriving home from the Iraq war and noticed that four of the men had no loved ones there to greet them, typical of unmarried soldiers. "So I just asked them if I could hug them," Hertzler said.
■United Kingdom
Church head rethinks gays
The archbishop of Canterbury believes the Church of England should change its teaching on homosexuality to accept gay relationships, his biographer was quoted as saying in a newspaper yesterday. The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, who was enthroned as leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion in February, privately feels the church should alter its position on gays as it has done on slavery, marriage after divorce and money lending, Rupert Shortt wrote in his biography, an extract of which was published in The Times.
■ Serbia
Massacre suspects arrested
Police have detained 23 people suspected of having links with the 1991 massacre in the Croatian town Vukovar, Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic was quoted as saying Monday. More than 200 patients and civilians at the Vukovar hospital were killed during a brutal three-month siege of the eastern Croatian town by rebel Serbs backed by the then Yugoslav army. Mihajlovic gave no other details about the suspects, but said that Belgrade authorities had been given "more documentation" about the case from the UN war crimes tribunal officials during the visit last week of chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
■ Poland
Arabs visit Auschwitz
A group of 300 Israeli-Arabs and Jews toured the historic Jewish district of Poland's southern city of Krakow Monday, beginning an unprecedented visit that aims to help Muslims understand what Jews suffered in the Holocaust. The group of 150 Israeli-Arab intellectuals, athletes and businessmen, joined by as many Jews, were to spend the coming two days touring and learning about the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. The visit to the camp, which comes at a time of great polarization and bitterness created by 30 months of Mideast fighting, will be the largest by a group of Arabs, according to a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum.
■ Greece
Court hears Ocalan case
A Greek court began trial proceedings Monday concerning a bungled 1999 plot to protect Kurdish Turkish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan that instead led to his capture. Ocalan, who is jailed in Turkey and being tried in absentia in Greece, is among 13 defendants accused of endangering Greece's safety in the ill-fated operation to shelter Ocalan after he was expelled from his former base in Syria. A retired Greek naval officer, Andonis Naxakis, and two of Ocalan's Kurdish associates face felony counts. Ocalan is charged on a misdemeanor count of entering Greece illegally. Nine other Greeks faced charges of assisting or sheltering Ocalan.
■ Turkey
Big boys suffer downsizing
Turkish men have a tendency to exaggerate the size of their sexual organs, according to a condom maker planning to set up shop in Turkey. Despite a national norm of 17cm set up by the National Standards Institute, a questionnaire by the manufacturer Condomi revealed that most Turkish men that it asked believed their penis to be about 22cm long, the newspaper Sabah reported. Research was carried out among 400 interviewees in eight Turkish provinces. Sabah said most potential condom users felt they ought to buy the XXL size. The report said about only 20 percent of Turkish men would in fact qualify for such a size.
Agencies
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