■ Hong Kong
Porn video shocks airport
Hong Kong's airport is up in arms over a Japanese porn video which shows a model posing in the nude in various locations at its state-of-the-art facility. The Japanese-language video came to light here after some Hong Kong newspapers printed shots from the film, which shows a young model clad in only a pair of high heels and a silver raincoat, which she flashes open time and again. "We can't allow this to happen and we are very shocked," a spokeswoman for the airport authority said yesterday, adding that it had reported the matter to police. Some newspapers said the 60-minute film, called Exposure trip in Hong Kong, shows the model "engaging in lascivious acts in direct view of the airline counters at the departure hall."
■ Australia
Boy who sparked riot buried
Extra police were on standby near a remote Outback town yesterday as hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of a teenage boy whose death sparked a nine-hour riot in an Aboriginal ghetto in Sydney. Hundreds of kilometers away, in Sydney, dozens of police including dog handlers warily watched hundreds of Aborigines who staged a march near the scene of the riot to protest the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey. The marchers demanded an independent inquiry into his death. Claims that police chased Hickey to his death on Feb. 15 sparked the rampage by mostly Aboriginal teenagers that left 40 officers injured.
■ India
Six die in space center fire
Authorities yesterday investigated an explosion and fire at a research facility at India's main space center that killed at least six people and seriously injured three. Madhavan Nair, the head of India's space program, launched the inquiry into the fire at a solid propellant plant at the government's Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island just off India's southeastern coast. Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, said firefighters contained the blaze on Monday evening. The cause remained unclear.
■ Hong Kong
Protest venue blocked
The organizers of an anti-government rally that attracted 500,000 people in Hong Kong have had their booking for an anniversary protest venue blocked, a news report said yesterday. The Civil Human Rights Front tried to book the city's Victoria Park for a march on July 1, the first anniversary of the mass rally which made headlines worldwide. However, organizers have been told all six football pitches have already been reserved on that day and they can only book the central lawn, the South China Morning Post said. Government officials refused to say who had booked the park.
■ Vietnam
Bomb smuggler sentenced
A man has been given a life jail sentence after being convicted of making explosives that killed 46 people when they detonated in a crowded bus in Vietnam last April, a court official said yesterday. Nguyen Van Thuan, 46, bought war-era shells and grenades and extracted the explosives, which his wife then sold on the black market in Hanoi, an investigative police officer said. Four kilograms of recycled explosives detonated on a bus in a busy marketplace in Bac Ninh province last April, killing a total of 46 people and injuring 47. Thuan was given a life sentence for smuggling and transporting explosives at the end of the one-day trial which ended on Monday.
■ United Kingdom
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