■ Australia
Drunken politician rebuked
An Australian lawmaker allegedly showed up drunk to the state parliament just hours after politicians debated -- and rejected -- a call to kick drunken legislators out of Parliament until they sober up. But while Peter Black was merely reprimanded by the New South Wales state premier on Thursday, the senior opposition member who accused him of being under the influence of alcohol was suspended from the debating chamber. The two-day suspension of Barry O'Farrell came after state lawmakers rejected a Greens Party proposal to ban legislators from Parliament for being drunk. O'Farrell was ordered out of the chamber for using an expletive to describe Black's apparent intoxication.
■ australia
Boys arrested for murder
Two Australian teenagers have been arrested and charged with murder after the bodies of two Thai prostitutes were found in a crocodile-infested river, police said yesterday. The two women, aged 27 and 58, were found with their legs bound in the Adelaide River outside Darwin, the capital of the remote and rugged Northern Territory in Australia's tropical "Top End." Northern Territory police said in a statement the two 18-year-olds were arrested in neighboring Queensland state after search warrants were carried out by Queensland police late on Wednesday. Both were charged with two counts of murder.
■ Hong Kong
Tycoon may not drive
The tycoon son of Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) has been banned from driving after being repeatedly caught speeding, a news report said yesterday. Richard Li (李澤楷), 37, who runs Hong Kong's former telephone monopoly company PCCW, was also warned he faces jail if he breaks the ban, according to the South China Morning Post. Li, who owns a fleet of luxury cars, was banned for six months after being caught speeding four times in the past two years and running up a total of 16 points on a penalty system. The tycoon, himself one of Hong Kong's richest men, did not attend the court case in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
■ Hong Kong
Naked news off the air
A "naked news" TV channel featuring a stripping newscaster has been taken off air in Hong Kong after only a fortnight. The newscasts, run on an Internet broadband TV network, featured 18-year-old Chan Long slowly stripping as she read a five-minute news bulletin. Only four of the broadcasts, run on Saturdays and Sundays, went out before the decision to pull the plug on the channel, according to the South China Morning Post. The show's creator, Jesse Au, said the Cantonese-language bulletins would be switched to a Web site and would continue to run.
■ India
Policeman offers fingers
An Indian policeman sliced off three of his fingers and offered them at a temple to show his support for the Hindu nationalist government's re-election bid, police said yesterday. Rathinam Rajappan, a constable in the town of Karipatti in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, brought his offering of fingers in a plastic bag to the temple dedicated to the Hindu warrior god Ram. But he found the temple's doors were locked and he fainted from the loss of blood. Passers-by rushed him to hospital.
■ United States
Donated cadavers blown up
Seven cadavers donated to Tulane University's medical school in New Orleans were sold to the Army and blown up in land mine experiments, officials said. Tulane receives up to 150 cadavers a year from donors but needs only between 40 and 45 for classes. The university paid National Anatomical Service less than US$1,000 a body to deliver surplus cadavers, thinking they were going to medical schools in need of corpses. The company sold seven cadavers to the Army for between US$25,000 and US$30,000. The bodies were blown up in tests on protective footwear against land mines at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Tulane said it has suspended dealings with the company.
■ Mexico
Another Juarez body found
The partially clad body of a woman was found Wednesday on the outskirts of this sprawling border city near an area where officials have discovered other victims in a string of murders that has drawn international outrage. A truck driver discovered the body along a desert road in Anapra, a poor, desert district where the bodies of three young women who had been raped were found last year, said Manuel Esparza of the government's special prosecutor's office for crimes against women. The condition in which the latest victim was discovered suggested she may have been a victim of an eerily similar string of sexually motivated killings, in which unknown assailants have sexually abused about 100 young women, leaving their partly clad bodies in the desert.
■ United Kingdom
Scandal plagues dog show
Fresh scandal hit the competitive world of dog shows on Wednesday when the owners of a dog tipped to win a prize at Crufts said it had been doped by a jealous rival. Owners Clive and Nancy Evans said their Doberman "Kerri" was fed drugged meat minutes before she entered the ring at Britain's premier dog show, leaving her dazed and confused.
■ United States
Exotic pets confiscated
A man will have to find a way to live without his prize possessions -- six little monkeys and a tarantula. Two marmosets, two capuchins, two squirrel monkeys and the spider were confiscated from the home of Orlando Lopez on Tuesday, leaving him brokenhearted. Mike Pastore, director of field operations for Animal Care and Control, said the monkeys were in good condition, but they didn't belong in an apartment. "They need to be swinging from trees," Pastore said on Wednesday. Lopez was allowed to keep his Great Dane, a Chihuahua, a cat and a tank of fish. He was issued a summons to appear before the environmental commission.
■ Israel
Mossad chief's phone stolen
The Mossad spy agency may be the scourge of Arab militants and former Nazis, but it has failed to find thieves who stole the boss's mobile phone. Meir Dagan, the retired general who heads Israel's shadowy foreign intelligence agency, lost the phone when his car was broken into in Tel Aviv last month, security sources said on Wednesday. Court orders barred publication of the theft during the police hunt for the culprits. The sources said they did not want the thieves to realize the value of what they had stolen. No arrests have been made.
■ Media deaths detailed
Thirty-six journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2003, with the war in Iraq triggering a sharp increase from the 19 of the previous year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. Thirteen journalists, more than one third of the year's casualties, were killed in hostile actions in Iraq, while six others died from illness or traffic accidents while covering the war, the CPJ said in its annual report, Attacks on the Press. It was the highest annual total from a single country since 24 journalists were killed in Algeria in 1995 at the height of civil strife between the government and Islamist militants.
■ United States
Noriega denied release
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was denied early release from prison, despite a letter from a Miami federal judge saying the 70-year-old former general has done enough time. The US Parole Commission decided last week to deny Noriega's request for parole, said Tom Hutchinson, the commission's executive director. US District Court Judge William Hoeveler, who sentenced Noriega for his 1992 drug trafficking conviction, said Noriega is a converted Baptist who frequently sees the pastor who baptized him. Hoeveler had originally sentenced Noriega to 40 years in prison, but in 1999 reduced his sentence by 10 years.
■ israel
Rabbis strike over pay
Striking rabbis threatened to marry couples in parking lots and lock cemetery gates on Wednesday, complaining that they haven't been paid for months and the government is out to reduce their authority. Thousands of rabbis and local religious council workers have stayed on the job without pay far longer than ordinary workers, citing religious obligations to carry out their duties. The threats of parking lot weddings weren't being carried out on Wednesday. Hundreds of guests thronged to at least one Jerusalem wedding hall, and a rabbi carried out the ceremony under the traditional canopy inside.
■ Israel
McDonald's in language flap
McDonald's, the fast food chain that claims to be an equal-opportunity employer, has been criticized in Israel for forcing employees to speak only Hebrew to customers. It has banned the use of Arabic, which is an official language in Israel, spoken by 20 percent of the population. Russian, which is not an official language but is spoken by 20 percent of the population, is also banned. The rules emerged after one worker, Abeer Zinaty, 20, claimed she was dismissed from the branch of McDonald's in Ramle, near Tel Aviv. She has been supported by Mossawa, a civil rights group representing Arab Israelis, which has brought the case to the attention of the Israeli parliament and the employment ministry. Mossawa claims the problem at McDonald's is common throughout Israel.
■ Russia
Ads threatened in space
Orion, the Big Dipper and Andromeda could be joined in the heavens by ads for soft drinks and cigarettes if a Russian inventor's device catches on. Alexander Lavrynov, a spacecraft designer, said he has patented a device for putting advertising into space that would be seen from Earth. "Space commercials could embrace huge areas and a colossal number of consumers," he said. "This would literally be intercontinental coverage."
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
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