■ Afghanistan
US gets security assurances
US, Afghan and Pakistani security officials agreed Monday to better coordinate intelligence to combat Taliban and al-Qaeda forces operating in border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the US military said. The agreement came as US forces in Afghanistan were preparing to step up operations in the border areas and amid reports that the offensive could reach into Pakistani territory.
■ Hong Kong
Fake US bonds found
A Luxembourg man and a Hong Kong resident were each sentenced yesterday to 16 months in jail in Hong Kong after being caught with 750 fake US government bonds with a total face value of US$375 billion, police said. A District Court judge sentenced Luxembourg native Guy Arthur Marie Mathias Bermes, 58, and Sheung Kwok-leung, 61, after they were convicted of conspiring to have custody or control of counterfeit currency notes, said Senior Inspector Jackie Tam, who investigated the case.
■ Cambodia
Fishermen try to sell bomb
Cambodian fishermen attempted to sell a large live bomb dropped from a US B-52 airplane for approximately US$30, police said yesterday. Fishermen Van Samath, 24, and Yon Ye, 18, reportedly dove into the river Friday to retrieve the 1.5m, 200kg bomb that was dropped on the country in the early 1970s. Stung Sen district police chief Srey Puthy said he was alerted by villagers who had fled at the sight of the two men pulling the bomb in a cart along the road to a scrap metal dealer.
■ Indonesia
Wife killed over sex position
A construction worker confessed to killing his 24-year-old wife for refusing to vary their sexual positions. Edi Susanto, 34, told police he killed Eko Supriyantun out of disappointment over her reluctance to add variety to their sex life. Susanto, a construction worker in Semarang, Central Java, returned home during a work break last week for a brief conjugal visit with his wife and expressed a desire for something new. When his wife refused, he flew into a rage and started strangling her and beating her head against the bed post until she blacked out, police said. He then electrocuted his wife several times in an unsuccessful attempt to make her death look like a suicide, police said.
■ Thailand
Man tries to rape dog
A Thai man was suffering from multiple cuts and a bruised ego after he got drunk and attempted to rape a dog, which fiercely resisted his advances, news reports said yesterday. Police in Samut Prakan province, on Bangkok's southeastern fringes, were quoted by the mass-circulation Thai Rath daily newspaper as saying Toryip Rawang, 33, had been drinking heavily with friends before the incident early Monday. Toryip was questioned by police after residents of the area notified local authorities when they saw the bloodied man walking along a road. He told police he noticed a brown female stray dog wagging its tail and "acting sexy" and pulled it into some tall grass by the roadside. But the dog resisted, biting him on his face, chest and arms before he gave up his attempt and tried to stagger home. Under further questioning Toryip admitted he had previously raped three dogs from a nearby Buddhist temple, also under the influence of alcohol. He said he always became aroused when he drank heavily but did not have enough money to pay a prostitute.
■ United Kingtom
Teen convicted for hacking
A London teenager was sentenced on Monday to 200 hours of community service for hacking into the computer system of a US physics research laboratory to store his personal collection of music and film files. Joseph James McElroy, 18, of Woodford Green, told Southwark Crown Court in London that he hacked into 17 computer systems at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago over a two-week period in June 2002 to store and exchange hundreds of gigabytes worth of computer files with his friends. The breach forced technicians to shut down a portion of the computer network for three days, the court was told.
■ Iran
Election boycott planned
Iran's leading reform party announced on Monday that it would boycott the parliamentary elections this month. The boycott was announced one day after more than a third of the Parliament's members resigned to protest a ban on hundreds of reformist candidates. Mohammad Reza Khatami, the party leader and younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami, said that his Islamic Iran Participation Front had decided by a large majority not to take part in the poll. "We have no hope that free and legal elections will be held on Feb. 20," he said at a news conference. "Therefore, it is impossible for the Participation Front to take part in the elections under current circumstances."
■ Turkey
Collapsing building kills 11
Digging with their bare hands, rescue workers in central Turkey yesterday searched for dozens feared trapped in the rubble of a 10-storey apartment building which collapsed and killed at least 11 people. Temperatures fell below freezing overnight as rescuers and relatives picked through the ruins of the building in the city of Konya, 250km south of the capital Ankara. CNN Turk television said the death toll stood at 11, with 27 people rescued. A two-year-old girl was among the dead. Bystanders cheered workers who pulled out two small girls nearly eight hours after the 36-apartment block buckled at around 8:30pm on Monday, a Muslim holiday.
■ United States
Prison hostage drama ends
One of the longest prison hostage standoffs in US history has ended without injury after two inmates surrendered in the prison watchtower where they held a female officer captive for 15 days, according to US news reports on Monday. The surrender late on Sunday at the medium to high-security Arizona State Prison Complex at Lewis ended a saga that drew national attention, after the two inmates snatched the officers during an escape attempt last month. The men released one male guard last week, and on Sunday after protracted negotiations, one of them donned his prison uniform, went up to the roof and waved to his jail mates before smoking a cigarette and surrendering.
■ Sweden
Cash returned after 40 years
A wallet lost by a Swedish teenager more than 40 years ago has been returned, complete with the cash its owner once considered a small fortune. Gulli Wihlborg was 18 in 1963 when she lost the red wallet while riding her bicycle in the southern Sweden town of Trelleborg, the Trelleborg Allehanda newspaper reported on Monday. Last week, someone anonymously sent her the long forgotten wallet -- along with the 45 kronor and 54 oere (US$6.17) she was using to pay half her rent.
■ United States
Ricin sent to Senate office
The Senate majority leader's office has apparently suffered its second bioterror attack in three years, with another suspicious white powder delivered through the mail system -- this time laced with poisonous
ricin, officials said. "This
is a criminal action," said Republican Senator Bill Frist, whose staff discovered the white powder in their Dirksen Senate Office Building mailroom on Monday afternoon. Sixteen people on the floor were decontaminated, and others who might have been in the area were urged to contact Senate officials, Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said. However, no one was expected to get sick, said Frist, who normally uses
his Capitol Building office instead of the Dirksen office.
■ United States
Utah terrified by UN `plots'
The House of Representatives in Utah voted to request Congress to withdraw
from the UN, asserting the organization was a threat
to the sovereignty of the US. The nonbinding resolution, which passed 42-33 Monday, favors "freeing the nation from a large financial burden and retaining the nation's sovereignty to decide what
is best for the nation and determine what steps it considers appropriate as the leader of the free world in full control of its armed forces and destiny." Some of Utah's conservative Republicans have long harbored fears that the UN is plotting to take over the US, destroy freedom, create a world government and levy a global tax.
■ South Africa
De Klerk wants coalition
Former South African President F.W. de Klerk on Monday urged his one-time apartheid party to back a coalition with the African National Congress, saying
it was the only way
to heal racial divisions. Speaking on the 14th anniversary of a historic speech in which he effectively ended white
rule, de Klerk said the
New National Party must work with South Africa's black leaders in this year's general elections. "It was through negotiations that we in this country averted a catastrophe and it will only be through negotiation and dialogue that we will develop a communal vision of transformation," he said.
■ Italy
Letter bomb suspect held
A man was arrested early yesterday on suspicion of involvement in the mailing
of several booby-trapped parcels to EU officials, including EU Commission President Romano Prodi, police said. The man, believed to be a member
of a militant anarchist group, was arrested in the early hours at his parents' home near Cagliari, in the south of Sardinia. They said he was suspected of having sent
a package with spent bullet casings and firecrackers to Prodi's home in Bologna on Jan. 12. The suspect, Lucas Farris, was said to be a leading member of the Sardinian Association of Insurrectional Anarchists.
■ Canada
Cities score cash injection
Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin, said on Monday that he would help the country's financially strained cities chart a new course by granting up to US$5 billion in the next decade to build housing and transportation and provide clean water.
The promise represented a potential turning point
for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and other cities suffering growing gang violence and homelessness in recent years as well as worsening finances because of reductions in federal aid since the mid-1990s.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
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