■ Cambodia
Workers, police clash
Eight garment factory workers were arrested yesterday following clashes with riot police that threaten efforts to rebrand the nation's clothing industry as a haven of decent labor standards. Witnesses said around 300 riot police armed with AK-47 assault rifles and electric-shock batons, and 400 mostly female workers came to blows outside the Won Rex factory to the west of Phnom Penh. There were no reports of casualties. Workers said they had wanted to march to the National Assembly to protest being forced to work over-time and not being paid properly. An uneasy stand-off ensued after the crowd dispersed, with four water-cannon trucks remaining on standby outside the sealed-off factory.
■ Hong Kong
Crocodile eludes hunter
A rogue crocodile that has evaded more than two weeks of attempts to capture it in Hong Kong appeared yesterday to have sneaked away from the swampland where it was first spotted. Australian crocodile hunter John Lever said he believed the 1.2m creature had swum under cover of darkness out of the swamp where it being hunted. Lever, who has spent five days trying to capture the crocodile watched by more than 100 spectators and journalists, spent four and a half hours trying to find it before announcing yesterday morning: "You can't catch a crocodile if you can't find it and it just isn't here."
■ Japan
Killer grandma caught
A 63-year-old woman was arrested yesterday for allegedly asking a group of friends to run over her daughter so she could collect insurance money, police said. Teruko Fukazawa conspired with the group
to disguise the August 1999 killing of her 33-year-old daughter as a traffic acci-dent, according to a police spokesman. Public broad-caster NHK said Fukazawa received ?48 million (US$440,370) in insurance money. It was unclear whether any money was split between Fukazawa and her five alleged conspirators. Police have also arrested four of the men and have obtained an arrest warrant for the fifth.
■ China
Matricide cases rock Beijing
Chinese state media revealed two mothers in Beijing were butchered recently by their sons. A 64-year-old widow was held down by one son, while another son chopped her with a cleaver and a third son bludgeoned her with a brick. The Star Daily said they killed her on Sunday, convinced she was posses-sed by their dead father's ghost. After killing their mother, the three brothers locked the other nine members of their family in a room while they tried to "kill" their father's ghost, the report said. A 16-year-old boy killed his mother on Nov. 10 with a cleaver after she failed to get him a cake on his birthday and beat him for doing poorly in school, the newspaper said. Police arrested the teen four days later.
■ Vietnam
US warship on visit
A US Navy frigate, the USS Vandergrift moored yester-day in Ho Chi Minh City in the first visit by a US warship since the Vietnam War ended nearly three decades ago. The warship, which is part of the US Seventh Fleet, is on a four-day stopover and sailed from its base in Japan. The historic visit comes a week after Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra made a landmark trip to Washington for talks on military relations
■ Georgia
Political rivals hold rallies
Opponents and supporters of Georgia's embattled President Eduard Shevardnadze staged rival rallies across the country Tuesday as a high-ranking US diplomat flew in and urged both sides to find a peaceful solution to the former Soviet republic's deepening political crisis. B. Lynn Pascoe, deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department had a 90-minute meeting with Shevardnadze in the capital, Tbilisi, to discuss the wave of unrest that has overtaken the country since a disputed parliamentary election more than two weeks ago. "This issue should be resolved quickly and to the maximum extent to the satisfaction of everyone involved," he told reporters.
■ United Kingdom
Drug program expanded
A ?442 million expansion of the British government's program to identify hardcore drug-using criminals and get them into treatment was announced on Tuesday by the Home Secretary David Blunkett. The criminal justice intervention program, which targets heroin and crack cocaine users who commit crime to feed their addiction, has been running in 30 of the highest crime areas since April. It is now to be extended to 36 police divisions across England at a cost of ?442 million over the next three years. Under the program, class A drug users are referred to drug workers while in police custody and are guided into treatment. Class A drugs are the most strictly controlled category which includes heroin and cocaine.
■ Russia
Kids made to pay to pee
Pay toilets are commonly found, but in school? For a short time, students at a high school in the southern Russian city of Taganrog had to do more than raise their hands an ask for permission to use the bathroom -- they had to fork over cash, NTV television reported Tuesday. School officials instituted a plan to charge pupils for toilet trips in order to pay for repairs that were needed after students vandalized bathroom fixtures, NTV reported. The network broadcast part of what it said was an amateur video taken in a hallway at the school, which showed a boy asking a cleaning woman whether he could use the bathroom. Her reply: "Pay."
■ United States
Funding for nuclear weapons
The US Congress late Tuesday allocated millions of dollars for research into new types of nuclear weapons and bolstering readiness at the Nevada nuclear test site, but, bowing to critics, trimmed the administration's program. By a vote of 387 to 36, the House of Representatives passed a spending bill for energy and water programs that contains US$7.5 million to study the feasibility of the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which one Energy Department official insisted "would enhance the nation's ability to hold deeply buried targets at risk."
■ Zimbabwe
Police arrest union leaders
Riot police arrested Zimbabwe's main trade union leaders and dozens of rights activists around the country on Tuesday as they broke up marches called to protest a deepening economic crisis, union officials said. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) said police had arrested more than 360 people in the capital Harare and several other towns. There was no independent confirmation of the figure and police were not available for comment.
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Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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