■ Uzbekistan
Tashkent rocked by bomb
An explosion blamed on a terrorist attack ripped through the Uzbek capital Tashkent yesterday, officials said. News reports said at least two people were killed and about 20 injured. Uzbek Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilkhom Zakirov said there were "several terrorist acts," that arrests had been made and an investigation was under way. He confirmed there were casualties but gave no further details. At least one of the blasts occurred around 9am at the Chorsu market in the Old City, said a spokesman for the National Security Ser-vice. Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported that according to initial infor-mation, a suicide bomber had blown herself up and that two people were killed and about 20 injured. It said its reporter had witnessed the explosion and reported that people had been thrown several meters by the blast.
■ Hong Kong
Teen in `mobile rage' attack
A 14-year-old girl flew into a rage and chased her mother around their apartment with a knife and wooden pole after she confiscated the teen's mobile phone, a police spokeswoman said yester-day. The terrified mother locked herself in the bed-room and police arrived at the scene on Saturday to see the girl in a frenzy, hacking at the door with the knife. "They had to use pepper spray to subdue the girl before they could rescue the mother," the spokes-woman said. The mother sustained slight injury to her arm, but no charges were filed.
■ China
Panel upholds sentence
A special judicial panel in Heilongjiang Province has upheld the ruling in the so-called BMW case, state media reported yesterday. A wealthy woman, Su Xiuwen, was driving her BMW last October, when a farmer taking his onion cart to market bumped into the car. Su became enraged, hit the farmer, then drove her car into the crowd. The farmer's wife was killed. A local judge ruled that the death was an accident and gave Su a two-year suspended sentence. But word of the case spread quickly through the Internet, triggering outrage and speculation that Su got off lightly because she was wealthy and her family had connections. The official New China News Agency reported yesterday that the special panel found the allegations of corruption and influence peddling were "groundless." The panel also determined that Su had not intended to kill Liu but was just a bad driver.
■ Vietnam
Marital row sparks suicide
A man committed suicide by self-immolation in southern Vietnam after an argument with his wife last Thursday, police said yesterday. Duong Hoai Phong, 28, a cafe owner, was arguing with his wife over their business when he took a bottle of gasoline from a street stall, poured it on himself and lit a match, said a police officer in Soc Trang. Phong died on Saturday in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital, the officer said. A neighbor said the couple argued every day.
■ Japan
Elephant dung a hot item
Elephant dung at Tennoji Zoo in Osaka Prefecture is a hot item for gardeners, zoo officials said yesterday. The zoo started giving away the dung once a month last June, after letting it compost. The free dung became so popular that the zoo bought a com-posting machine and began offering up 2kg of compost a week to the first 100 takers. The zoo's two elephants produce 120kgs of dung a day.
■ France
Saddam gets a lawyer
Jacques Verges, a French lawyer who has made his name representing controversial defendants, said on Sunday he had been contacted by Saddam Hussein's family to act for the former Iraqi dictator during his trial. But Verges, who defended the Nazi leader Klaus Barbie and the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, said he doubted whether Saddam would ever appear in the dock. "My concern is not the trial," he told the radio station France Inter. "My concern is they'll kill him before it." Verges said Saddam's nephew, Ali al-Tikriti, had written to him authorizing him to defend Saddam.
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