■ 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.
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