■ Malaysia
Husband tapes sex session
A Malaysian woman received a rude shock when a videotape that she believed contained clips of a family vacation instead was filled with shots of her husband having sex with another woman. The 31-year-old teacher, who was home alone at that time, was further shocked when she saw that several clips of the sex video was shot in her home and that she recognized the other woman, said the New Straits Times daily. The wife immediately reported the matter to the police, the report said. Police said the cheating husband and his girlfriend have been called in for questioning and would be charged with indecency.
■ Bangladesh
Floods cause havoc
Floods ravaging northern Bangladesh killed two people, marooned about 150,000 villagers and damaged rice crops, news reports said yesterday. The deluge caused by heavy rains this week has gripped the districts of Sylhet, Sunamganj, Habiganj and Netrokona. Monsoon floods are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by rivers. The monsoon starts in June, but heavy rain has already hit parts of the country, the weather office said. Two men drowned after their boat sank in swirling flood waters on Monday in hard-hit Sylhet district, where nearly 100,000 people have been stranded in their flooded homes, Janakantha daily reported.
■ Hong Kong
Police attitude shocks city
A women's support group yesterday slammed Hong Kong's police after a survey showed nearly a third of officers believe a husband has the right to beat his wife. The survey follows the gruesome murders last week of a woman and her two young daughters after she'd pleaded with police and social services for protection from her violent husband, a case which has shocked the city. The Chinese University study found 29.7 percent of the 74 police officers questioned believed a husband could hit his wife and 28.4 percent said some women "seem to ask for beatings from their husbands." A quarter of them also believed a husband was entitled to have sex with his wife whenever he demanded.
■ Indonesia
Bodies found on streets
Indonesian police recorded 208 bodies found on streets and other public places in the capital, Jakarta, during the first three months of this year. Of the 208 corpses found, half were unidentified and at least 26 were believed to have been murder victims, reported The Jakarta Post, citing Jakarta police spokesman Senior Commissioner Prasetyo. Urban activist Wardah Hafidz said the high number of dead demonstrated a collapse of the "social bond" in the metropolis, home to an estimated 10 million to 12 million people.
■ China
Sex leads to sterility
While countless clinical studies around the world show that an active sex life contributes to the average person's well-being and health, one prominent Chinese doctor is warning it can lead to sterility. Li Bing, a senior gynecologist at the Guangzhou No 2 People's Hospital in southern Guangdong province, believes that sex among teenagers may contribute to increasing sterility among young Chinese women, the China Daily reported yesterday. Li claims that because more young women are having sex in China's increasingly open society, it is leading to greater pregnancy rates, which in turn results in more abortions, which can result in sterility.
■ Brazil
Prison riot talks to resume
Negotiations to end a prison riot that left at least six inmates dead in the Amazon rainforest state of Rondonia were scheduled to resume yesterday, prison officials said. The uprising began Sunday afternoon at the Urso Branco State Prison in the capital city of Porto Velho. The riot erupted when prison administrators rejected prisoners' "totally unreasonable demands, such as the right to have prostitutes come into the prison and the right to use drugs," the prison director said. He said at least two prisoners were decapitated. "The prison was built for 350 but there are more than 1,000 in here now,'' he said.
■ United States
NYC firefighters stressed
Firefighters who worked at ground zero in the first month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are experiencing high rates of depression, anxiety and stress, according to a new study. The survey of 2,000 firefighters found that 62 percent of those who worked at the site of the World Trade Center collapse in the month following the attacks still experience at least occasional depression, said Samuel Bacharach, director of the Smithers Institute at Cornell Uni-versity's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, on Monday. The study also found elevated levels of stress and anxiety among those who worked at ground zero in the first month.
■ Poland
German tourist deported
A 24-year-old German resident of Berlin was served a deportation order from Poland back to Ger-many Monday after a visit to a former Nazi death camp sent him into a state of shock, the Polish PAP news agency reported. The young man arrived in the Polish Baltic port city of Gdansk with a group of 12 other German tourists last week. After a visit to the nearby Stutthof former Nazi death camp he experienced a nervous breakdown and said he wanted nothing more to do with Germany, the PAP reported. He. stayed on in a Gdansk hotel after the rest of his group had returned to Germany and threatened to commit suicide when police came to remove him. He told police his family had fought in the World War II.
■ United States
Vietnam War suit fails
A US federal appeals court refused to resurrect a law-suit against US soldiers who allegedly committed war crimes during the Vietnam War. The suit was filed by seven Vietnamese citizens on behalf of victims and survivors of the 1968 My Lai Massacre. A Utah district court dismissed the suit in 2002 because the 10-year statute of limitations under the Torture Victim Protec-tion Act had expired. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling on Friday in an opinion made available on Monday. The court agreed that sufficient arguments were not made to waive the 10-year time limitation by almost 30 years.
■ United States
Murder suspect charged
An employee at a trash-hauling company in Kansas City, Missouri, has been charged with strangling 12 women or girls in an arrest authorities said was made possible by new DNA technology. They said Lorenzo Gilyard preyed on prostitutes and teenage girls from 1977 to 1993, sexually assaulting all but one and strangling them. If he is convicted on all charges, he would be the worst serial killer in the city's history.
■ United States
Terrorists may attack: Ridge
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned Monday that terrorists might try to launch new strikes against Americans in the coming weeks, both on US territory and overseas. Ridge said security would stepped up at US venues considered vulnerable to attack, including this summer's presidential conventions and the upcoming unveiling of a new World War II memorial next month in Washington. "With so many symbolic gatherings in the next few months, we must be aggressive," Ridge told a gathering of radio and television broadcasters in Las Vegas.
■ Haiti
Chile expands patrols
Chilean troops will deploy to central Haiti next week, extending the multinational peacekeeping force's presence in the region where as many as 400 rebels still hold sway, a military spokesman said Monday. Haiti's interim leaders, meanwhile, met with former members of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government to form a council that will organize 2005 elections. Some 3,600 peacekeepers from the US, France, Canada and Chile have been deployed to help Haiti's meager police force, after hundreds of officers fled amid a three-week popular rebellion that ousted Aristide on Feb. 29.
■ United States
Hate statistics released
Online games that allow children to "shoot" illegal immigrants, Jews and blacks are among the thousands of extremist Web sites described in a report by an international human rights organization. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has been tracking hate Web sites for nine years, describes in the report released Monday more than 200 of about 4,000 online hate sites it monitors. The group said it has seen a surge this year in the number of sites that promote terrorist recruitment, urging young people to join "holy wars" and become suicide bombers. The report includes sites that deny the Holocaust, theorize Sept. 11 conspiracies and glorify al-Qaeda. The more common hate sites features racism, anti-Semitism and gay bashing.
■ United Kingdom
DNA registry saves the day
A man was jailed for six years Monday in a manslaughter case that saw police track him down through a national DNA database that included one of his relatives. Standing on a bridge, Craig Harman, 20, had thrown a brick onto a highway, where it smashed through the windshield of a truck and hit the driver Michael Little in the chest. Little had a heart attack and just managed to stop his vehicle before dying at the wheel. Harman, who had fled the scene, left a trace of his blood on the brick. Eventually the search was narrowed down to two counties in England, and produced 25 names of people who had been tested by police. The name on the top of the list was a relative of Harman's. The gamble paid off when six months after Little's death, detectives knocked on Craig Harman's door and asked for swab. It was a perfect match, and Harman, a sports clothes salesman in Frimley, Surrey, confessed to "his dark secret."
■ United States
Environmental prizes given
Seven environmental activists were awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize on Monday in San Francisco, California. The award, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize for the environment, carries a monetary compensation of US$125,000.
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
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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