■ China
Corrupt ex-official jailed
A Chinese court has sentenced a former vice mayor of Shenzhen to 20 years in prison for taking bribes on construction projects in the southern boom town, newspapers reported yesterday. Separately, a deputy governor in the northeastern province of Liaoning was dismissed from his post because of corruption, reports said. Wang Ju, who was in charge of construction in Shenzhen beginning in 1991 and became a vice mayor in 1998, was tried on charges of taking more than US$100,000 in bribes from real estate developers in a mixture of Chinese yuan, Hong Kong dollars and US dollars, the Guangzhou Daily reported.
■ Indonesia
Four dead in violence
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed four people in Indonesia's central Sulawesi province, which has seen a resurgence in Muslim-Christian violence in recent weeks, police said yesterday. Assailants killed two Balinese migrants late Saturday as they sat outside their house on the outskirts of the town of Poso, said Lieutenant Colonel Abdi Dharma. In a separate incident, gunmen killed two villagers and injured four others in Rompi district, 100km west of Poso, he said. Dharma declined to speculate on a motive for both sets of killings.
■ Hong Kong
Elusive croc resurfaces
A stray crocodile that vanished after evading capture for weeks in Hong Kong has resurfaced after several days, as journalists caught it in photos published yesterday. But the wily creature steered clear of a new hunter from China, brought in after it eluded an Australian expert's earlier pursuit. The Apple Daily tabloid ran a photo yesterday of the 1.2m beast -- eyes bulging from the water -- reportedly taken Saturday about 3km from the swampy area where it had lingered since it was first spotted Nov. 2. The newspaper said its reporters saw the croc near their boat while covering the new expert brought in to snare the reptile.
■ Thailand
Man returns bad-luck glass
A German tourist has returned a sliver of glass he filched from a revered Thai temple in the hope of ending a run of bad luck that has plagued him since taking it, reports here said yesterday. The tourist, who signed his name as Juergen Z, reportedly wrote that he had found a tiny glass tile chipped off a wall in Bangkok's Wat Phra Kaew, or Temple of the Emerald Buddha, while visiting it two or three years ago. "Whether I have been cursed or not, I don't know, but something supernatural has been occurring ... and I have faced only bad luck, both in my personal and work life," the letter said according to the daily.
■ Hong Kong
Miss Ugly contest staged
China has staged a Miss Ugly contest a week ahead of its hosting of the Miss World competition, a news report said yesterday. Fifty unattractive women competed in the contest for the facially challenged in Shanghai, which had as its top prize plastic surgery worth 100,000 yuan (US$12,000). Zhang Di, 26, won on the basis that her appearance would most benefit from plastic surgery, the Sunday Morning Post said. "My small eyes, flat nose and poor skin have been such a burden to me that I have no self-confidence," she told the newspaper. The manager of the plastic surgery centre that will treat her promised to make her "a totally different girl" within two weeks.
■ United States
Shopper trampled in rush
A woman shopping in Florida was trampled by shoppers who ignored her head injury and stepped over her as she suffered a seizure on the floor of a department store, according to reports late on Saturday. Television station WKMG Local 6 reported that Patricia Van Lester, 41, waited in line for three hours early Friday to buy a DVD player on sale at a Wal-Mart store in Orange City, Florida. When the doors opened at 6am, she entered and picked up a DVD player but was knocked to the ground by the crowd that had gathered for the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season on the morning after the Thanksgiving holiday. She was flown to a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she is expected to be kept for several days. Store managers called to ask about Van Lester and offered to save a DVD player for her, Ellzey said.
■ Congo
Plane crash kills 22
A Soviet-made plane crashed Saturday in central Congo, killing all 22 people aboard, a Congo government spokesman said. The crash happened just after takeoff at the city of Boende, 800km northeast of the capital, Kinshasa, government spokesman Vital Kamerhe said. The plane was a twin-engine Antonov 26, used for passengers and cargo. Kamerhe and other government officials said they did not know whether the aircraft was carrying members of the military or civilians. Hamadoun Toure, a UN spokesman, said the plane was not one of those belonging to Congo's UN military mission, which is overseeing ceasefires and peace deals in the central African nation after a five-year war.
■ Iran
Enrichment to resume
Iran insisted Saturday its decision to suspend uranium enrichment is voluntary and temporary, saying it plans to enrich enough fuel in the future for at least one of seven nuclear power plants it expects to build. Hasan Rowhani, head of the powerful Supreme National Security Council, also said Iran would punish countries that backed US efforts to take Iran's nuclear record to the UN Security Council at last week's board meeting of the UN nuclear agency by cutting them out of development contracts. "Our decision to suspend uranium enrichment is voluntary and temporary. Uranium enrichment is Iran's natural right and [Iran] will reserve for itself this right. ... There has been and there will be no question of a permanent suspension or halt at all," Rowhani told a news conference.
■ United States
Diplomats get dress code
Concerned that sartorial scofflaws may be sullying the "professional image" of the US, the US State Department has introduced a diplomatic dress code, according to an internal memorandum seen Saturday. Although diplomats are not often associated with the kind of outerwear favored by Madonna or Britney Spears, the memo bars US envoys and their charges from sporting midriff-baring clothing, halter tops and plastic sandals at work. And, while the rules do not mandate morning coats, striped trousers or top hats, they do remind members of the US Foreign Service that clothes still make the man (or woman) in the halls of diplomacy. "As the leading US foreign affairs agency, the Department of State is in the front line of customer service to the public at home and abroad," says the directive, entitled "Department of State Guidelines on Appropriate Dress."
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
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