■ Hong Kong
Croc catcher ready to hunt
PHOTO: AP
Australian hunter John Lever, who catches croco-diles with his bare hands, demanded chicken heads, a bamboo pole and a boat yesterday to trap a tricky crocodile that has evaded Hong Kong officials for two weeks. The chicken heads are a lure and Lever intends to catch the crocodile with his hands, a government spokeswoman said. Lever runs a crocodile farm in Queensland and boasts of having caught more than 90 crocodiles in the wild. This particular crocodile has been hanging out in a waterway near a small Hong Kong rural village.
■ Australia
Government denies lying
The government yesterday denied lying to the public over whether 14 Turkish boat people had claimed asylum after they landed on a remote island. An Austra-lian warship towed the Turkish Kurds' boat into international waters and told its crew to head back to Indonesia last week, as Canberra insisted the group had not asked for asylum. However the government backed down Thursday after issuing a letter from its people-smuggling task force which showed the men had pleaded with officials to treat them as asylum seek-ers, even pointing to the word "refugee" in a dic-tionary. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said there had been a simple mistake and the record was corrected as soon as possi-ble. The Turks are now in a Jakarta immigration deten-tion center and have asked for asylum in Indonesia.
■ Indonesia
Navy sinks Thai fishing boat
An Indonesian navy frigate sank a Thai fishing boat yesterday that it alleged was illegally catching fish in the Java Sea, officers said. The vessel was seized earlier this week and 18 Thais were arrested, said navy Captain Kadir. The frigate towed the boat into the Java sea and fired on it yesterday, he said. ``The sinking of the ship was a warning for those stealing fish and the rich material resources in Indonesian waters,'' said Rear Admiral Slamet Sugianto, Indonesia's eastern fleet commander. During the past month, Indonesia has either sunk or seized 16 foreign vessels it alleged were fishing illegally in its waters, Kadir said.
■ Philippines
Rebels blamed for murders
Suspected Muslim separatist rebels allegedly butchered a 40-year-old woman and her seven children in the south-ern Philippines, the military said yesterday. Villagers found Evangeline Balios and her children, aged from one to 13, hacked to death Thurs-day morning in Poblacion village in Zamboanga del Norte province, officials said.
■ Singapore
Toilet tips requested
Pop the lid on the cleanser, get out the scrub brush and be sure to leave the seat down -- it's time to get ready for World Toilet Day tomor-row. The Singapore-based World Toilet Organization has begun collecting tips to improve bathroom etiquette to mark the day, held annually on Nov. 16. The suggestions will be used to create the agenda for next year's World Toilet Summit in Beijing, the group said in a statement yesterday. Sug-gestions can be sent to the group's Web site (info@worldtoilet.org).
■ Germany
Robbers glue driver to car
Two robbers forced a taxi driver at gunpoint to glue his hands to the steering wheel and fled with his wallet, police said on Thursday. The thieves had taken a ride from Dresden to a suburb around midnight on Wednesday when one drew a pistol and ordered the driver to spread Super Glue over the wheel and grip it. They made off with several hundred euros, police said. The 31-year-old driver activated a radio alarm lever with his leg, and medics who responded to the call freed his hands with a chemical fluid, the Dresdner Morgenpost newspaper reported. Police provided no further details.
■ Colombia
Troops take rebel village
Counterinsurgency troops trekked through 800km of Amazon jungle to wrest control of an Indian fishing village from leftist rebels and seize a US-built airstrip being used to ferry drugs and weapons. The retaking of Araracuara last weekend is part of a broad offensive against guerrilla strongholds that has the rebels on the run, Colombia's army chief, General Carlos Alberto Ospina, said on Thursday. For a month, a 300-strong army battalion hacked through jungle in this roadless region to retake Araracuara and a strategic air base seized by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, five years ago.
■ Germany
Nuclear reactor closed
Germany yesterday switched off the first of 19 operational nuclear power stations due to be shut down over the next two decades under legislation to phase out nuclear energy. The 672 megawatt Stade nuclear reactor near the northern port of Hamburg is Germany's second oldest. Work on dismantling the plant, owned by utility E.ON EONG.DE, is due to begin in 2005, once its fuel has been removed. Germany's Greens made phasing out nuclear power a condition for forming a coalition with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) in 1998. Nuclear power generates nearly a third of Germany's electricity and the government is divided over which other energy sources should replace it.
■ Lebanon
Prisoner swap imminent
Hezbollah's leader on Thursday pledged to bring home all prisoners held by Israel and said he expected to hear from a German mediator in the next three days on the proposed swap of prisoners and bodies with the Jewish state. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah also said for the first time his guerrilla group was coordinating with the Lebanese government on the prisoner swap deal with Israel. Israel's Cabinet narrowly approved on Sunday a prisoner swap with Hezbollah.
■ Serbia
President sorry about war
The president of Serbia and Montenegro apologized on Thursday for the "evil" his country had caused during Bosnia's war of independence and asked for forgiveness. "I want to use this opportunity to apologize for any evil or disaster that anyone from Serbia and Montenegro caused to anyone in Bosnia-Hercegovina," President Svetovar Marovic said. "The time of forgiveness is before us. We have to have enough courage to create common ground to help each other heal our wounds," he said. Marovic was speaking after meeting Bosnian leaders, who said the apology would help heal the wounds of the 1992 to 1995 war.
■ Germany
Memorial to go ahead
The country's national Holocaust memorial will continue to be built with a company that co-owned the maker of Nazi poison gas used to exterminate millions of Jews, because overhauling the much-delayed project yet again could jeopardize its completion, Germany's parliament president announced Thursday. Attempting to end weeks of debate, the panel overseeing the memorial's construction reached a majority decision, with dissent from the leader of Berlin's Jewish community, Parliament President Wolfgang Thierse told reporters. He said most of the 22 members favored overturning an earlier decision to shun products of Degussa AG because including them acknowledges German companies' Nazi past.
■ Canada
Premier tells of rooftop caper
Feeling shackled by the Canadian Mounties and Italian carabinieri who were protecting him ahead of a 2001 G8 summit in northern Italy, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his grandson scampered across rooftops to get free. "My grandson said, `Grandpapa, let's escape.' So we managed to escape ... and it was quite a thrill. You know, we jumped from one roof to the other roof to a third roof," Chretien said with a boyish chuckle in remarks broadcast on CBC radio on Thursday. After spending some time on their own outside the compound, near Florence, they sauntered back in.
■ Greece
Gay TV kiss criticized
Greece's television regulator has fined a private channel 100,000 euros (US$116,900) for corruption of public morals over scenes in a late-night TV series that included a kiss between two men, the regulator said on Thursday. The drama series Close Your Eyes, which deals with the turbulent lives of a group of 20-somethings in Athens, has regularly topped the television ratings. In a written ruling, television and radio regulator ESR criticized the sexually charged language and the portrayal of a relationship between gay men in the show, which it said "could damage young people by making them too familiar with vulgarity."
■ Spain
Ear-scratching lawyer fined
Highway police in Madrid who stopped a driver they believed was using his cell phone erred twice. First, he was just scratching his ear. Second, he was a lawyer. Tomas Valdivielso showed the officers that the last call from his phone went out the night before. The duo huddled, then came back and fined him anyway for "holding his ear with his right hand in a permanent fashion." Valdivielso filed a 10-page appeal in which he says the fine failed to say which ear was being held, or even how many ears Valdivielso has, and argues that Spanish law does not bar scratching them while driving or oblige motorists to pull over to do it.
■ United States
Possible diabetes cure found
Scientists in the US have raised fresh hopes of a cure for insulin-dependent diabetes, a condition that affects about 17 million people around the world. They have succeeded in not only halting the disease in mice mimicking the human condition but reversing it. Researchers at the Massachusetts general hospital, part of Harvard medical school, are drawing up plans for trials on patients with type 1 diabetes. The researchers found that it was possible to stop the disease in mice by injecting them with a naturally occurring protein called TNF-alpha.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not