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World news quick take

■Singapore
Phone used for toilet photos
A newspaper deliveryman has been accused of using his mobile phone in an attempt to secretly photograph a woman in a Singapore public toilet, it was reported yesterday. Criminal lawyers told The Straits Times it was the first time they had heard of a mobile phone being used in such an offence. Teng Poh Kuan, 48, allegedly insulted the woman's modesty at a squash and tennis center using his Nokia 3650, a phone which can take photographs and short video clips, the report said.

■ The Philippines
Man stabs nephew to death
A 44-year-old man in the Philippines stabbed dead his nephew, overcome by jealousy when his mother ironed the clothes of the victim, a police report said yesterday. The suspect, Arturo Pajares, was arrested immediately after he attacked his 22-year-old nephew, Bambi Pajares, on Monday night in the district of Paco in Manila. Police said the victim died while undergoing treatment at a hospital for a stab wound to the chest. Investigators said the older Pajares got jealous with his nephew when his mother ironed the clothes of the victim, while not extending the same attention to him.

■ Thailand
Thaksin in soup controversy
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has come under fire from conservationists for eating shark-fin soup and thereby encouraging the killing of sharks, news reports said yesterday. Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, who is chairman of the local chapter of WildAid, an international conservation group, said the prime minister set a bad example when he feasted on shark-fin at a Chinese restaurant during a high-profile lunch on Monday with former prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa. "This food has no more nutritional value than various ordinary dishes you can choose from," a local newspaper quoted Kraisak as saying.

■ Singapore
Muscles may give away lies
A new version of a lie detector developed by a Singapore neurologist relies on muscles to give deceivers away, a published report said yesterday. Dr. Lo Yew Long said he put people through tests that checked how their muscles behaved when they responded to a set of queries. Lo placed a rod emitting magnetic pulses over each subject's head to stimulate impulses which were transmitted to the person's hand. A separate machine recorded the muscle activity in the hand when the answers were given. Hand-muscle activity when the subject was lying was found to be markedly different from that accompanying truthful answers, Lo told the newspaper.

■ Cambodia
Cop kills self with grenades
A deputy police chief in central Cambodia allegedly committed suicide by blowing himself up with two hand grenades in his office, authorities said yesterday. Police said Kong Chak, 32, deputy police chief of Tbeng commune in Kompong Thom province, asked his colleagues to buy him a liter of alcohol and a liter of gasoline early Monday morning. After drinking the alcohol, Chak pulled the pin on one of the Chinese-made grenades and marched into his office, police said. His colleagues begged him to throw the grenade away and not to kill himself, said Chu Soman, deputy chief of provincial police. He said nothing and just walked into his office holding it. All of the other men ran away and a few moments later heard an explosion inside the office, he said.

■United Kingdom
No nudes are bad news
No nudes were bad news for one disappointed dance patron, who complained to Britain's Advertising Standards Authority. The authority, in a ruling released yesterday, agreed that the patron had been deceived by a leaflet which showed two finely honed and naked performers leaping across the stage. When the Phoenix Dance Theater troupe performed at Sadler's Wells Theater in London, the patron complained, the dancers were fully clothed. The Advertising Standards Authority held that the leaflet was misleading "because the images did not resemble the actual performance."

■ France
Nudes good for sales
The naked female form is considered a suitable way to promote anything from lawnmowers to margarine in France and a recent pan-European TV survey found that French mainstream TV viewers were more likely to see breasts and bottoms during ad breaks than anyone else on the continent. Current examples include ads for a security firm which show a woman clad in a chastity belt with the slogan "Even in those days, it was a good idea to protect your belongings." Suchard promotes its chocolates with a nude model and the words "You say no, but we hear yes" and a financial information database uses a pair of naked female buttocks alongside the slogan "Has she got decent foundations? Check out the solidity of your company."

■ Mexico
Crime rampant in capital
Mexico's capital has a lot of crime. Crime rates rose dramatically in Mexico City during the 1990s and while they have stabilized, they remain high and polls regularly list crime as the major worry of the capital's citizens. A poll last year of 35,000 people across Mexico, sponsored by the business-backed Citizens Institute for Studies of Insecurity, found that more than 80 percent of Mexico City residents said they felt insecure. Most citizens distrust police and officials acknowledge that a majority of crimes go unreported because people believe it would be a waste of time or dangerous. Former and current police are often implicated in crimes.

■ Germany
Skinheads go on trial
Three members of a German skinhead rock band went on trial on Tuesday charged with spreading hate through songs that attack Jews and foreigners, prosecuted by federal attorneys to show that the government is serious about cracking down on neo-Nazi music. Each of the members of the Landser is accused of forming a criminal organization, an unusually severe charge for the alleged offenses that carries a maximum five-year prison term. Prosecutor Wolfgang Siegmund accused them of propagating an "Aryan revolution," producing CDs in the US, Sweden, Britain and Poland to skirt postwar German laws outlawing publication of neo-Nazi materials.

■ Germany
Lawnmower man fined
A German gardener has been fined and stripped of his license for driving his lawnmower while drunk, a court said. The court fined the 45-year-old man 400 euros (US$460) and banned him from driving all vehicles, including his mower, for three months after police did a check on him as he was parking the vehicle, which has a maximum speed of 6kph. Defense lawyer Stefan Deppe said his client would appeal.

■Djibouti
Fighter jet crashes
A French Mirage fighter jet crashed during a training flight late on Tuesday in the east African country Djibouti, killing both the pilot and navigator, the defense ministry said yesterday. The two-seat air-to-ground attack plane was practicing a nighttime attack maneuver near 8pm, some 40km south of the capital, when the accident took place, the chief of staff for French forces in Djibouti said in a statement. The identities of the two officers were not given. An internal inquiry would be conducted, the defense ministry in Paris said. Djibouti, a former French colony, hosts France's largest military base in Africa.

■ United Kingdom
Gatecrasher clown is sorry
The comedian who gatecrashed Prince William's 21st birthday party over the weekend has apologized for "going too far" and says he now wants to put the episode behind him. "I've gone too far and it won't happen again," Aaron Barschak, 36, told the BBC yesterday. After parading outside Windsor Castle in a peach party dress on Saturday evening and being moved on by police, Barschak had a couple of drinks in a local pub, scaled the walls of the castle and presented himself to a police officer guarding the event as an inebriated guest. He was directed to the party, where he leapt onto the stage, did his comedy turn and kissed Prince William on both cheeks.

■ United States
Warnings of deadly virus
Inhabitants of the east coast of the US are being warned of a possible severe outbreak of the deadly West Nile virus following very heavy rainfall which has created a breeding ground for "larger, hungrier" mosquitoes. There are growing fears that stagnant water, lying in various containers, from discarded beer cans to empty plant pots, has led to marsh-like conditions that have dramatically increased the numbers of the insects hatching on the sodden eastern seaboard. West Nile virus, first detected in New York four years ago, last year claimed 284 lives among 39 US states.

■ Guatemala
Dictator runs for office
Human rights groups list Efrain Rios Montt among the most ruthless dictators in Latin American history, saying he directed a scorched-earth campaign that exterminated innocent Mayans while trying to weed out guerrilla forces during the height of a 36-year civil war. But the retired brigadier general is pushing for a new image as he makes a third attempt to run for president. In an about-face, he says the government should punish those responsible for atrocities committed during Guatemala's 1960-96 civil war. Yet while he supports the idea of high-ranking military officials facing justice, he says he won't go after them if elected.

■ Turkey
Security forces kill rebels
Two rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have been killed in a clash with security forces in southeastern Turkey, local officials said yesterday. The clash occurred on Tuesday in a mountainous area in the Siirt province when security forces -- combing the region for PKK militants -- encountered a group of rebels, according to security officials in Diyarbakir, the main city of the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Four PKK militants were killed in nearby Bingol province last week.

Agencies
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