■ Singapore
Girls strip, burn `friend'
Two teenage girls were sent to a Singapore reform home after slapping, kicking, punching, stripping and burning a "friend" with a cigarette butt. The three hours of abuse was triggered by an argument over US$2.94, The Straits Times reported yesterday. A district court sent Normalinah Jamali, 17, and Izmariani Abdul Rahman, 16, to the Reformative Training Centre for at least 18 months, after hearing how the pair were among 10 girls who spotted the victim on Nov. 12, 2002. Izmariani accused the victim of stealing the money and demanded that she hold a "settlement talk."
■ Australia
Blast rocks Sydney
A massive blast in Sydney that yesterday destroyed an abandoned car and left a crater 4m wide and almost 4m deep was felt 30km away. Police would not say what type of explosive was used. They have questioned a 28-year-old Sydney man over the early morning incident. Police spokesman Wayne Murray said the counter-terrorism unit had been called in, but it was not known whether there was anything sinister involved. "At this stage we are not sure how the blast took place or its origin," Murray told Australia's AAP news agency. "It's a strange one. We are certainly treating it as suspicious and as a serious matter."
■ Singapore
Visa violators whipped
Fourteen Indian men alleged they were whipped and tonsured by Singapore authorities for overstaying their work permits. The men were deported on Friday to Madras, capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the Asian Age newspaper reported. They claimed they were stripped down to their underwear and not allowed to bathe or shave for several days in the Singapore immigration office as punishment for staying beyond the stipulated period on their work permits. "We were locked up in jail for three months," deported worker Chandra Bose said. "We were whipped and before being deported our heads were tonsured."
■ New Zealand
Loo seat burns woman
A woman will require plastic surgery for serious burns after she sat on a New Zealand public toilet smeared with an unknown chemical, media reported. The woman was one of four to suffer burns from the chemical, which had been smeared on seats and other areas in a public toilet in a park in the city of Christchurch, in the early hours yesterday, the New Zealand Press Association reported. "It appears that a clear, gel-like substance had been smeared on the toilet seats, press-down buttons and on the building's walls," said Senior Sergeant Neru Leifi. A sample of the chemical had been sent for analysis. Three of the women were treated and discharged but the fourth was still in hospital, a police officer said.
■ Pakistan
Journalists travel to jail
A Pakistani court has sentenced two French journalists to six months in prison and fined them about US$1,700 each after they pleaded guilty of unauthorized travel inside the country, court officials said yesterday. Judge Nuzhat Ara Alvi convicted Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau, both from the French weekly, L'Express, of visiting the southwestern city of Quetta without a visa, the officials said. Court officials said the two French men, arrested on Dec. 17 in Karachi, had pleaded guilty of unauthorized travel.
■ United Kingdom
Fish and chips are French
The reputation of fish and chips as Britain's national dish took a battering on Friday when a historian said the classic meal originated elsewhere. Panikos Panayi, history professor at Leicester's De Montfort University, said his studies had shown deep-fried battered fish and potatoes were a mixture of French pommes frites and fried fish dishes brought by Jewish immigrants. "Over time it has become anglicized," he told Reuters. "It has almost become part of Britain." The popular dish is sold in paper at "chippies" across the country.
■ United Kingdom
TV host in trouble
The BBC suspended a popular daily talk show on Friday after its presenter branded Arabs "suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors" in a newspaper article. Show presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former parliamentarian with the ruling Labour Party, later expressed "very deep regret" over the column, which questioned whether Arab nations had contributed anything to civilization. The BBC said it would suspend his daily talk show Kilroy starting Monday while it conducts an internal investigation into his article in the Sunday Express newspaper.
■Turkey
Death penalty
Turkey has signed a protocol to abolish the death penalty even in wartime as it seeks to meet EU criteria to begin entry talks, Foreign Ministry officials said on Friday. The European Commission in Brussels welcomed the decision as a "significant step" in Turkey's progress towards establishing a European-style democracy. "Today our representative at the Council of Europe signed Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which lifts the death penalty during wartime," a Foreign Ministry official told Reuters. Turkey is implementing swathes of political and economic reforms, with a view to persuading Brussels by the end of next year that it is ready to start accession talks. Muslim Turkey is the only EU candidate not negotiating its entry into the bloc because of its poor human rights record. Turkey confirmed the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime, under Protocol 6 of the Convention, in November.
■United States
Ventura at Harvard
Jesse "The Body" Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, political pundit and pro wrestler, will soon teach at Harvard University, a university spokesman said on Friday. The college dropout will serve as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government throughout the spring semester.
■United States
THC in `runner's high'?
The same family of chemicals that produces a buzz in marijuana smokers may be responsible for "runner's high," the euphoric feeling that some people get when they exercise, US researchers say. Unusually high levels of anandamide were found in men who ran or cycled at a for about an hour, according to a study made public this week by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California. Anandamide is a cannabinoid, or lipid molecule, that is naturally produced in the body. It is known to produce sensations that are similar to those of THC, the chemical in marijuana with psychoactive properties.
■ United States
Briton dies dirty bomb plot
A British citizen who was arrested last August in a sting operation pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal charges that he plotted to sell shoulder-fired missiles that he knew were to be used against commercial airliners in the US, as well as a so-called dirty bomb, to people he believed to be terrorists. The man, Hemant Lakhani, 69, a London resident of Indian ancestry, is accused of suggesting multiple attacks on cities and aircraft in the United States with weapons he said he could provide, as well as offering to obtain a radioactive "dirty bomb," anti-aircraft guns, tanks and radar systems.
■ United states
Beatle forced to sign guitar
The doctor accused of forcing Beatle George Harrison to autograph his guitar as he lay dying is leaving his top post at a New York hospital, a spokesman said on Friday. The move to replace Dr. Gilbert Lederman as head of the radiation oncology department at Staten Island University Hospital had been planned for two years and is not directly related to the controversy involving the late Harrison, a hospital spokeswoman said. Harrison's family filed a US$10 million lawsuit last week claiming Lederman, who treated the musician, coerced a failing Harrison to autograph his son's guitar and sign autographs for his two daughters.
■ United states
Killer to carry victim's photo
A judge ordered a woman to carry a photo of the man she killed in a head-on collision, and the man's parents complied by sending a picture of him in his casket. Now, her lawyer is crying foul and the family is refusing to provide another picture. Prosecutors said Jennifer Langston was drunk and talking on a cell phone in June 2002 when she crossed the center line and hit a pickup truck carrying teacher Glenn Clark and his pregnant wife, Annette. He died, his wife remains in a coma and their son, born by Caesarean section five months after the crash, is being raised by relatives.
■ United states
Terror suspect goes to court
The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case of a US-born terrorist suspect captured abroad and labelled an enemy combatant by the US government. Yaser Esam Hamdi appealed a decision by the US to hold him indefinitely without filing charges. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held incommunicado. It is the second terrorism-related case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear that seeks to clarify the uncertain legal status of detainees. The cases challenge the efforts of the administration of US President George W. Bush to indefinitely detain dozens of terrorist suspects without filing charges -- a violation of civil rights under the US constitution.
■ United states
Female circumcisers caught
A couple was charged with agreeing to circumcise two young girls in what is believed to be among the first cases filed under a federal law banning female genital mutilation. Todd Cameron Bertrang, 41, and Robin Faulkinbury, 24, were arrested Friday at their Los Angeles home after an FBI agent posing as a father of an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old contacted Bertrang via e-mail. Bertrang boasted that he had performed more female circumcisions than ``anyone else in the Western Hemisphere,'' according to the affidavit. Faulkinbury was identified to the agent as Bertrang's "slave" who assisted him in the procedures.
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