■ China
Judges make house calls
Shanghai judges have been making pre-dawn house calls -- and detaining some people for up to two weeks -- in a crackdown aimed at beefing up lax enforcement of orders to pay debts and other court decisions, an official said yesterday. All courts in Shanghai have been "mobilized" in the campaign aimed at clearing up cases that have been pending for more than half a year, said an official at the Shanghai High Court's propaganda department. He gave only his surname, Chen. If debtors refuse to pay, officials seize their assets, Chen said. "In the worst-case scenario, we can detain them for up to 15 days," he said.
■ South Korea
Five die in Web suicide pact
Five South Koreans who apparently forged a suicide pact over the Internet were found dead in a hotel room yesterday, police said. An empty bottle of cyanide was found alongside the bodies of three men and two women, aged 19 to 29, in the hotel in Suwon, 30km south of Seoul. "We strongly suspect that they had met through the Internet and agreed to commit suicide together," said detective Yeom Gyu-Ho. Empty bottles of liquor and soft drinks were also found in the room. Suicide notes from the five have been found on the Internet, police said.
■ Hong Kong
SARS survivors shunned
Recovered SARS patients in Hong Kong are being shunned by friends and colleagues one year after the outbreak, according to a study released yesterday. More than one in five people say they avoid close contact and will not let their children near former patients, fearing they may still be contagious. Thirty per cent of respondents said they believed former patients should be barred from working in the catering industry and 27 per cent said they should not be allowed to work with children, according to the survey by Hong Kong's Chinese University.
■ India
Mom kills herself over cricket
An Indian woman committed suicide after her husband did not allow her to watch a cricket match between India and Pakistan, it was reported yesterday. Police said Ansuia, 35, a resident of the Delhi satellite town Noida, used kerosene oil to set herself on fire after a fight with her husband on Sunday, the day India and Pakistan played their fourth match in Lahore. Her husband did not want her to watch the match as it was distracting their children from studying for their school examinations, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The cricket series was leveled 2-2 after vice-captain Rahul Dravid and Mohammad Kaif led India to a five-wicket victory.
■ Australia
Singing Dingo honored
He started life like any other native Australian dingo pup, but now Dinky -- the singing, piano-playing toast of an outback roadhouse -- has been voted the country's most trivial icon. Dinky outclassed 300 other budding trivia trophy winners through his talent for singing along while his owner's daughters played the family piano and even tinkling the ivories a little himself. To clinch the title, Dinky beat a West Australian man who can stationary jump on his unicycle 232 times per minute and another man who boasts that he can clip nine out of 10 toenail cuttings into a paper basket from more than 1m away.
■ United States
O'Neill off the hook
No crime was committed in the release of thousands of documents to former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill but 140 of the documents should have been marked "classified," officials said Monday. A review by the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice found "no criminal statutes were violated" in the release of the documents for a book and shown on TV, according to an investigation summary. The investigation showed that among the items released to O'Neill were 140 documents not marked classified even though they contained national security or sensitive information.
■ United States
Crack taken to preschool
A 4-year-old Indiana boy brought crack cocaine worth up to US$10,000 to his preschool class, authorities said. Police said the boy took rocks of crack cocaine out of his backpack on Monday and showed them to other children in his Head Start class, saying the drugs were flour. Teachers realized it was cocaine and called authorities. Police searched the boy's home, but did not find the parents, Sergeant Russell Burns said. The boy and his sister were placed in protective custody and arrest warrants were issued for the parents, Burns said. No names were released.
■ United States
Sex-tour suspects indicted
Two operators of a New York travel agency have been indicted for organizing "sex tours" to Southeast Asia, the first such case involving a US-based company. Douglas Allen, 59, and Norman Barabash, 58, were charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of promoting prostitution in their operation of Big Apple Oriental Tours, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Monday. Spitzer accused the men of using the business to solicit customers for prostitution rings operating in the Philippines and Thailand. Allen and Barabash pleaded innocent to the charges on Feb. 27. If convicted, they could face up to seven years in prison.
■ Japan
Court rejects WWII suit
A court yesterday rejected a multi-million dollar lawsuit by Chinese nationals despite acknowledging they were forced to become slave laborers at mines and other locations during World War II. The Sapporo District Court rejected
the US$8-million claim in compensation that 43 former Chinese laborers or relatives demanded from the Japanese government and six companies. Chief Judge Masaaki Okuda conceded that "the plaintiffs were forcibly taken to Japan or deceived to come here and were coerced to do hard labor," according to Jiji Press news agency. But he turned down the compensation claims on the grounds that the statute of limitations for seeking redress under the Civil Code was 20 years.
■ The Philippines
Police find fake fortune
Soldiers searching for possible bombs at a bus terminal in the southern Philippines discovered over US$2 million in fake bills in a passenger's luggage, the military said yesterday. An army special forces team securing the bus terminal in the city of Davao was inspecting the bags of people about to board a bus last Friday when they came across US$2.17 million in counterfeit bills in the baggage of a 25-year-old man bound for the city of General Santos, an army report said.
■ Brazil
Pastor dies in theater
A pastor died of a sudden heart attack while watching Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of The Christ, church officials said Monday. Pastor Jose Geraldo Soares, 43, was watching the film, which has been criticized for its violent depiction of Jesus Christ's final hours, when he suffered a "violent heart attack" in a movie theater in Belo Horizonte, capital of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, said Pastor Amauri Costa de Oliveira.
■ United States
Schwarzenegger to respond
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger must answer written questions, but doesn't have to give a deposition in a libel lawsuit filed by a Hollywood stuntwoman who alleged he groped her on film sets, a judge ruled. Judge Robert Hess said Monday that the governor may be deposed later if attorneys for Rhonda Miller can justify it. "If you've got something perhaps a bit more compelling as to why you want to depose him, I think that that ought to be considered," the judge said.
■ Ivory Coast
Rivals agree to talks
The president and his opponents have agreed to hold talks aimed at breaking a political impasse threatening the fragile peace process in the world's top cocoa producer, officials said on Monday. But an alliance of President Laurent Gbagbo's critics, including rebel forces and a major opposition party, said it would still fulfil its vow to march tomorrow in the main city of Abidjan despite an official ban on protests.
■ Germany
Sale of nuclear plant in doubt
The German government is likely to drop its controversial plan to sell a mothballed nuclear plant to China, sources close to the government said on Monday. Plans to allow the sale had been fiercely criticized by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Green coalition partners and some of his own Social Democrats. Critics said the plant, designed to reprocess plutonium to make so-called mixed-oxide fuel rods for nuclear power stations, could be used to manufacture atomic weapons. They also said the export would smack of hypocrisy, since Berlin is committed to phasing out nuclear power on German soil. "We think it's over," said one source close to the government who declined to be named. "It's all being shelved with the aim that it should be forgotten."
■ Jamaica
Hermaphrodite avoids jail
A British drug smuggler caught trying to leave Jamaica with nearly 16kg of marijuana avoided a jail sentence Monday by claiming to be a hermaphrodite, or a person who has both male and female features. A perplexed Judge Valerie Stephens gave Jonathon Featherstone of Tottenham, London, a suspended six-month jail sentence and fined the individual US$4,800 after he -- or was it she -- admitted to trying to smuggle the drugs out of Jamaica on March 16. The judge was presented with a conundrum when an attorney for Featherstone, whose passport identifies the bearer as a male, declared that his client was in fact a "legal and functional female who can get pregnant and experiences normal female biological functions." The attorney said this would pose a problem for Jamaica's penal system because it had no arrangements for inmates with such physical characteristics.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was