■The Philippines
Terrorist on the run
One of the top members of the radical Jemaah Islamiah network escaped from a cell at Philippine national police headquarters on Monday with two other prisoners, police chief Hermogenes Ebdane said. "They could have escaped in the wee hours of the morning," Ebdane told a news conference. Al-Ghozi has admitted to being a member of Jemaah Islamiah and has also been indicted for a December 2000 bombing on a Manila suburban train, one of a series of near-simultaneous explosions in the city that day in which 22 people were killed.
■ China
Man jalied for poaching
A man who killed and skinned a giant panda and sold the fur for 200 yuan (US$24) has been jailed for 14 years, state press reported Monday. Yang Shicheng, a farmer from Baoxing county in southwest Chongqing municipality, shot the panda cub in a mountainous area of Sichuan province in October 1999, the Xinhua news agency said. He later sold the fur to a man named Gao Hongyou. Gao subsequently sold it to Gou Chengxue for 2,000 yuan (US$243) and he was caught by police when trying to sell it at an even higher price in Chongqing in November 2002.
■ Australia
Bikini-waxing record falls
An Australian beautician yesterday claimed a place in the Guinness Book of World Records after bikini-waxing 130 people in just four hours. The previous record-holder took more than three minutes per waxing, but Perth beauty therapist Lareesa Guttery ripped through the volunteers in less than two minutes apiece. "At one point we actually ran out," Guttery told Australia's AAP news agency. "We had to go out into the mall and persuade people to come in and get waxed ... I think I could do 200 if we can get the volunteers," she said.
■ Thailand
Claims sully police's image
Bribery and kidnap claims by Thailand's best-known "massage parlor" tycoon have eroded the Thai public's already jaded view of the country's police, according to poll results published yesterday. The saga of Chuwit Kamolvisit, who owns six of Bangkok's ritziest up-scale "massage parlors," has dominated the front pages of the country's newspapers since he went public with his claim that he paid 12 million baht (US$286,000) per month in bribes to the police. Chuwit claimed top police and government leaders were among his customers.
■ India
Temple angers residents
Residents of Hindu pilgrimage town in southern India are irked over captive-elephant dung from a local temple polluting their water sources, a report said yesterday. The temple's growing herd of 62 captive elephants produces a whopping 10 tons of dung every day in Kerala's Guruvayur town, and the temple has no proper way of disposing of it, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. Quoting a local resident, the report said often the elephants' dung sits for four days before it is removed and dumped near water sources. "Recently the temple insured its elephants for a hefty sum. But what about us?" the resident asked.
■United States
Hit-and-run suspect beaten
A motorist who allegedly hit and killed a 3-year-old boy was pulled from his car and beaten by a group of men who saw the crash, sheriff's officials said. Honorio Martinez, 37, was charged with felony driving without a license that resulted in a death, Palm Beach County sheriff's officials said. The boy, Armant Williams, darted into traffic late Saturday and was struck by Martinez' car on a rural West Palm Beach road, sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said. More than a dozen men, friends of the boy's father, saw the crash and stopped the car about a half-block away, Miller said. The men dragged Martinez, 37, out of the driver's seat and punched him several times, Miller said.
■ United States
Storm approaches Texas
A hurricane watch was posted along the South Texas coast as Tropical Storm Claudette crawled across the Gulf of Mexico. Campers packed up and left low-lying South Padre Island and the Coast Guard helped rescue swimmers caught in strong currents. The projected path would bring the storm across Padre Island with landfall Tuesday afternoon north of Brownsville, said Jim Campbell, a forecaster in the National Weather Service office in Brownsville. A hurricane watch was in effect along the Texas Gulf Coast from Port O'Connor, about 113km northeast of Corpus Christi, to Brownsville and south along the Mexican coast to Rio San Fernando.
■ France
Bastille Day celebrated
France's Bastille Day celebrations were to kick off yesterday with a military parade down the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris, held under tight security following the assassination attempt on President Jacques Chirac a year ago. A German general, Holger Kammerhoff, will take the lead in the parade, in which some 3,840 troops, 280 horses, 350 vehicles and more than 100 aircraft will take part. Kammerhoff will be at the head of 120 troops from Eurocorps, the five-nation embryonic EU force based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.
■ Switzerland
Soft porn arouses fish
Fish can be aroused by an aquatic equivalent of pornography, according to researchers at a Swiss university. They discovered that male sticklebacks ejaculate more sperm if first stimulated by a "soft porn" film showing flirting fish. It is thought that the image sparks off a competitive instinct in the spectating sticklebacks to ensure they stand the highest chance of fertilizing their female's eggs. The researchers at the University of Fribourg believe the fish porn simulates conditions in the wild where mating male sticklebacks ejaculate more if they are threatened by other finned Romeos swimming nearby.
■ Germany
Squirrel pesters man
A squirrel "adopted" a human who strayed into its forest in Germany, refusing to budge from the man's shoulder, a situation which forced him to call police for help, authorities said Sunday. Calling from his cell phone, the agitated rambler told police in Goettingen he was walking through the woods when the squirrel scampered up to his shoulder. Repeated attempts to give the furry admirer the brush-off resulted only in the animal becoming more persistent. "You've got to help me, I can't get this crazy squirrel off my shoulder," the unidentified caller told a police dispatcher.
■Russia
Port blast injures 26
Twenty-six people were injured when a series of explosions which ripped through the naval arsenal near Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok, medical officials said yesterday. Most of those injured after the explosions began early Sunday were local residents. The blasts completely destroyed several nearby buildings. Seven people remained hospitalized in serious condition, the source said. The ensuing fire at the arsenal, which stocked naval and artillery shells, was brought under control by midday. The cause of the explosions was not known.
■ Iran
Khatami orders inquest
Iran's President Mohammed Khatami ordered four ministers on Sunday to investigate the death of a Canadian freelance photographer who had been arrested outside a Tehran prison, the ISNA student news agency said. Montreal-based Zahra Kazemi, 54, a Canadian of Iranian descent, died on Friday of what relatives and friends say were head injuries and Iranian officials called a "brain attack." She was detained last month for taking pictures of Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where many dissidents are jailed, and later taken to a hospital.
■ Zimbabwe
UN won't arrest torturer
The UN has refused to arrest a Zimbabwean police officer accused of torture who is currently working for it in Kosovo as a member of an international training team. The UN was informed in early June that the alleged torturer, Detective Inspector Henry Dowa, was working for it in Prizren, Kosovo, but it declined to take any action, according to documents obtained by reporters. Dowa has been named by several Zimbabwean torture victims as having directed and carried out beatings with fists, boots and pickaxe handles, and as having administered electric shocks to the point of convulsions, at Harare police station.
■ Israel
Palestinians impoverished
A Palestinian Authority official said Sunday that 70 percent of Palestinian families live below the poverty line due to what she termed oppressive measures by the Israeli army. Palestinian Authority Minister of Social Affairs Intissar Al-Wazir, better known as Oum Jihad, said that the Israeli Army siege and closures had caused deteriorating living conditions in the West bank and the Gaza Strip. She said that more than 70 percent of the Palestinians in different parts of the Palestinian territories are below the poverty line, while the unemployment ratio had reached 65 percent in the strip and 55 percent in the West Bank.
■ Spain
Police defuse bomb
Police defused a bomb in a hotel in the northern city of Pamplona on Sunday where thousands of tourists celebrated the famed San Fermin festival. Police said the bomb was found in a women's bathroom at the Maisonnave hotel in Pamplona's old quarter. The hotel is popular with tourists thronging the city for the annual running of the bulls and other festival events. An anonymous caller who tipped off police to the 4kg bomb said it was in retaliation for the hotel's refusal to pay "protection" money, according to the national news agency Efe. Citing government sources, Efe said the caller identified himself as a member of the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
Agencies
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