■ 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.
RSS