■ Afghanistan
Army, Uzbek militia, clash
The Afghan National Army (ANP) entered the provincial capital of Maimana to restore calm after forces loyal to Uzbek warlord Rasheed Dostum overran the northern province of Faryab earlier this week, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported Saturday. Provincial security chief Mohammad Humayun said yesterday that ANP forces were patrolling Maimana city and there was no resistance from the Dostum's militia. However, Dostum forces were still in some parts of the city. The central government had despatched a contingent of 750 men to control the unrest that began after Dostum forces attacked Faryab on Tuesday from northern regions where an Uzbek strongman holds sway.
■ Cambodia
Face-off with Thai troops
Weapons were drawn in a land dispute between Cambodian and Thai troops Friday, local media reported. The site of the confrontation was a disputed territory about 7km from the Poipet commune in Banteay Meanchey province. When Cambodian troops were erecting a fence around the disputed area, they were faced with about 200 Thai troops. The Thais told the Cambodians to cease construction, their demand fortified by guns and tanks. "This is a misunderstanding," Tim Sareth, deputy chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces' border affairs bureau, told the English-language Cambodia Daily. "No bullets have been fired."
■ Japan
North Korea talks planned
Japan and North Korea will likely hold talks on the kidnapping of Japanese nationals by Pyongyang's agents as early as this month, a report said yesterday. At the talks, Japan wants to confirm Pyongyang's "positive stance" toward the kidnapping issue, voiced by North Korean officials to Taku Yamasaki, a confidante of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, earlier this month, the Asahi Shimbun said, quoting government sources. Yamasaki is a former lawmaker from Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He and another LDP lawmaker secretly went to China to meet the North Korean officials in a bid to seek the resumption of stalled talks on the abduction issue.
■ Hong Kong
SARS hero attempts suicide
A Hong Kong teenager who contracted SARS while working as a volunteer during last year's outbreak has attempted suicide after being shunned over his illness, a news report said yesterday. The 19-year-old, who was refused a place in sixth-form college after missing exams because he was in the hospital, was talked down from the roof of a parking garage in Hong Kong's Tuen Mun district Friday night. The teenager, who has not been named in order to protect his identity, was depressed over the treatment he had received since surviving SARS last year, according to the South China Morning Post. He contracted SARS while working as a medical volunteer but was thrown out of the Auxiliary Medical Service when he was infected.
■ China
Man bites dog to death
A man bit a dog to death in eastern China after it attacked him as he walked home with friends after a night out, a news report said yesterday. The man, who was drunk, pounced on the dog when it nipped him on the fingers and cheek in Shanghai and repeatedly bit it until it died, according to the South China Morning Post.
■ United States
Man got too close to Bush
US fighter jets forced a small plane to land on Friday after it flew into restricted airspace that extends nearly 50km around President George W. Bush's Texas ranch, news reports said. The Secret Service, the agency tasked with protecting the president, questioned its pilot after the plane landed in San Marcos, Texas. Bush and his family were at his Crawford, Texas, ranch at the time for a long Easter weekend, but the Secret Service said they were not in danger. The pilot could have his pilot certificate taken away temporarily or permanently for violating flight restrictions.
■ United States
Easter bunny whipped
It may not have been as gruesome as Mel Gibson's movie, but many parents and children got upset when a church trying to teach about Jesus' crucifixion performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs. People who attended Saturday's show in Glassport, Pennsylvania, described it as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified. Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn't meant to be offensive. "We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter bunny, it is about Jesus Christ," she said. Performers also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, a parent who saw the show. "It was very disturbing," Norelli-Burke said.
■ Iraq
US wants French help
Washington has contacted Paris to request a French role in an international protection force for UN employees in Iraq, but it is too early to respond, the foreign ministry's spokesman said on Friday. "I can confirm that France was approached by the American authorities on the question of protecting the United Nations in Iraq," Herve Ladsous said at a ministry briefing. "However, the question of a possible UN re-involvement in Iraq depends on a number of questions that are far from being resolved," Ladsous said. The UN withdrew its foreign employees from Iraq after a bomb attack on its Baghdad headquarters last August.
■ Bulgaria
Police gassed by accident
Forty-eight people were hospitalized due to gas inhalation in Sofia on Friday after a man dropped a teargas device in a traffic police station in "an unpremeditated incident," the interior ministry said. A 51-year-old butcher apparently dropped a teargas spray which is "freely available in shops" when he went to collect his driver's licence, said the secretary-general of the interior ministry, Boiko Borissov. Hospital officials said six people were in serious condition, but their lives were not in danger.
■United Kingdom
Dancers sticking to floor
Ballroom dancers in a northern English town have seen their carefree footwork become more leaden recently -- after officials coated the floor of their dance hall in a semi-adhesive goo for safety reasons. According to the Daily Telegraph, the amateur dancers in Todmorden, Yorkshire, complain they can no longer whisk their feet elegantly around the floor of the local town hall, where the weekly classes are held. The culprit is a semi-adhesive polish now used on the town hall floor after some people complained the surface was dangerously slippery.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not