■ China
Vengeful maid kills cat
A maid angry at being scolded drowned her employer's
cat and cut up the woman's clothes in southern China, a news report said yesterday. The maid went on her revenge spree in Guangzhou after being told off for breaking a TV remote control before her employer went away for the May Day holiday. She fled after drowning the cat and cutting the clothes into pieces and the employer is seeking compensation from the maid agency she hired
the woman from, the South China Morning Post reported.
■ Hong Kong
Robbery victim tied to tree
A man was robbed of HK$65,000 (US$8,333) and strapped to a tree for 16 hours during a hike in a country park, police said yesterday. Leung Wai-ho, 41, was eventually rescued at 8am
on Thursday by another hiker who heard him shouting for help. The incident happened when Leung was hiking alone at Pokfulam Country Park
on Hong Kong Island. He was confronted by three robbers at about 4pm on Wednesday. The men took away his mobile phone and wallet, gagged him with a piece of cloth and then tied his feet and arms to a tree. Leung was also ordered at knifepoint to reveal the PIN numbers of his credit card. One of them went twice to a bank and withdrew a total of HK$65,000 from his bank account, the police said.
■ India
Mobile phones are deadly
A fight between an Indian college student and his mother over buying a
mobile phone ended in her attempting to commit suicide and his death, it was reported yesterday. Sanjeeb Das, 18, insisted that his mother Mili buy him a mobile phone because all his friends had one. Mili and her husband Samir, an employee at a
cloth store, said they couldn't afford it. Police said when Sanjeeb turned verbally abusive his mother consumed a handful of sleeping pills and locked herself in a room in their house on the outskirts
of the eastern city of Calcutta, the Telegraph newspaper reported. The boy broke
into her room to find her unconscious. Presuming she was dead, he hanged himself using one of her saris, police said. Both were rushed to hospital -- Sanjeeb died, but his mother survived.
■ The Philippines
MP tried to stage attack
Philippine police said yesterday they had foiled
a plot by a member of parliament to bomb his own election rally in an attempt
to win sympathy votes. The brother of Congressman Edgar Erice was arrested while driving a van carrying
a home-made bomb to a campaign rally in Manila, police superintendent Marcelino Franco said.
He said Erice's supporters planned to stage a bomb attack to attract a sympathy vote for the congressman, who is standing for mayor in Caloocan City, north of the capital.
■ United States
HIV man charged
A man diagnosed with HIV in the state of Washington has been accused of putting 170 people at risk of contracting the virus that causes AIDS, local health officials said Thursday. Anthony Whitfield, an Oklahoma native, was charged with 12 counts of first-degree assault with sexual motivation. Whitfield also faces five counts of witness tampering and 10 counts of violating a no-contact order from the public health office barring sexual contact with anyone without protection or without informing partners of his condition. The people at risk included 40 people who had sex with Whitfield and another 130 who had sex with his previous sexual partners, she said.
■ Bosnia
Probe for ruling party
The top international envoy to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, on Thursday ordered a full audit of the ruling party in the Serb-run part of the country, saying he had new evidence of its links to organized crime and extremist nationalists. Ashdown also upheld a freeze on public funding for the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS), which governs the Republika Srpska and was founded by top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic. "Other information now available to us indicates that the SDS has been involved in financial activities that appear on the surface to be quite possibly criminal, linked to extremist nationalist groups and are certainly deeply disturbing," Ashdown said.
■ Brazil
Gang terrorizes town
A heavily armed gang shot up a northeastern town and held dozens of people hostage while they robbed a bank Thursday, police said. Ten men armed with AK-47 assault rifles, shotguns and pistols fired on a bank in Colinas, about 2,000km north of Rio de Janeiro. Gunfire shattered windows and one woman was grazed by a bullet. The bandits held dozens of people hostage and used customers and bank workers as human shields. After about 45 minutes, they fled in a stolen van with four hostages and 700,000 reals (US$233,300) in cash, police said.
■ United States
Drug kingpins charged
Nine leaders of a violent Colombian drug cartel have been charged under racketeering statutes with smuggling more than 36,000kgs of cocaine worth US$10 billion into the United States. Officials described the cartel as the most powerful in Colombia and said it used a paramilitary organization to protect distribution routes, laboratories and cartel members and to kill when it believed necessary. Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference that the cartel was responsible for "30 to 60 percent" of the cocaine coming into the US.
■ United States
Home zoo thrives on roadkill
A woman kept about 200 creatures -- including alligators, scorpions and carnivorous beetles -- in an apartment in suburban Milwaukee. Authorities found the menagerie after neighbors complained about a foul smell. "The smell was just unbelievable," said William Mitchell, a state conservation warden who found about 70 ducks cramped in a basement pen with droppings covering the floor. "It was really stinking. ... It made my eyes water." Authorities said the woman fed the animals roadkill. Animal carcasses were in a freezer and decaying carcasses were in an adjacent garage. Among the dead animals were raccoons, rabbits, opossums and squirrels.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number