■ China
Suicide bomber kills official
A Chinese local government official was killed in a suicide bombing by a villager apparently dissatisfied with the compensation he received for his appropriated land, state media reported yesterday. The bombing on Wednesday in a private office in Sichuan Province killed official Ge Junming and villager Zhang Mingchun, the Xinhua news agency reported. Ge was also the chairman of a corporation called Mingda, which appropriated a sand quarry owned by Zhang to build a road to a power station. The villager was apparently not satisfied with the compensation the corporation offered for his land and took 2kg of explosives and a detonator to Ge's office at Mingda and blew them up.
■ Japan
Human cloning ban lifted
The government's top science council has voted to adopt policy recommendations that would permit limited cloning of human embryos for scientific research in Japan. Japan banned human cloning in 2001, but has permitted researchers to use human embryos that aren't produced by cloning. The recommen-dations, approved on Friday, would let researchers produce and use cloned human embryos, but only for basic research, said Tomohiko Arai, an official at the Cabinet's Council for Science and Technology Policy. The cloning won't be allowed for use in treating human patients.
■ Cambodia
Lovesick son goes berserk
A son whose parents insisted he could not marry his sweetheart and should become a Buddhist monk instead went berserk and torched his parents' motorbike after his father refused the son's demands to behead him with a cleaver, police said yesterday. "Khon Sokna is a good son but he was heartbroken when his parents refused to let him take a wife. He went to the shop to drink rice wine, and then he came back home and demanded his father kill him with a cleaver before setting his parents' motorbike on fire," said Kim Sokun, deputy police chief of Ang Snoul district, Kandal province, about 20km outside Phnom Penh.
■ Australia
Opposition leader inhaled
Australian opposition leader Mark Latham yesterday admitted smoking marijuana in his youth, saying he went further than former US president Bill Clinton and inhaled the drug. On the campaign trail in the southern city of Melbourne, Latham was asked if he had ever dabbled with marijuana. "Yes I did and, I have got to own up, I did inhale. So there you go. How about that?" he told reporters. Latham refused to elaborate on his experience when pressed by a journalist. Latham, 43, has been pitched by his Labor Party as offering a generational change in leadership as he attempts to oust conservative Prime Minister John Howard, 64.
■ Hong Kong
Laziness HK's leading killer
Laziness has become Hong Kong's number one killer and is shortening the lifespan of one in five people, a news report said yesterday. The study found one in five people aged over 35 was more likely to die of causes linked to physical inactivity than other causes, according to the Hong Kong Standard. More than 24,000 deaths were analyzed by the University of Hong Kong for the study. Researchers found 50 per cent of the people who died were physically inactive, meaning they not been involved in physical activity for longer than 30 minutes a month.
■ United States
NATO hosts Olympics troops
US forces on standby in case of terrorist attacks during the Olympics may be based in Greece despite the host's insistence that no foreign troops be deployed on its soil, NATO diplomats said on Friday. NATO agreed to take command of 400 US special forces personnel during the Aug. 13-29 games. But the 26-nation alliance's "decision sheet," its formal agree-ment, deliberately avoided specifying where they would be based. Greek Public Order Minister George Voulgarakis said on Thursday that the NATO-led troops would be on alert "in some third country." A New York Times report that the NATO-commanded troops would be deployed to protect US athletes and dignitaries during the games provoked a furor in Athens this week. Diplomats said protection for US citizens in Greece was essentially a job for bodyguards.
■ Russia
Summer camp teaches theft
Police in Russia's Pacific island of Sakhalin have discovered a mob-run summer camp teaching youngsters how to become thieves, a police spokesman said on Friday. The 30 teenagers were living in what at first looked like a perfectly ordinary summer camps, complete with tents and a field kitchen, but they were supervised by two criminals on probation. In addition to the fine art of stealing, the youngsters were taught the hierarchy of the underworld, and how to react in case they were arrested. Investigators were trying to find out who stood behind the camp.
■ Germany
Women like male-free life
More than 80 percent of single German women are perfectly happy living without a man and say they have more freedom to do what they want, according to a Stern magazine survey. Coming amid mounting political alarm about Germany's low birthrate and aging population, the survey of 1,003 women showed only 2 percent did not enjoy their solitary lifestyle and 36 percent said they opted to stay single because it was more fun. Thirty-six percent said that with no resident man they didn't have to endure watching TV sports.
■ Netherlands
Bird blasted for vandalism
A bird with a penchant for 17th-century Dutch art has paid the ultimate price for flying into a museum gallery and pecking a hole in a masterpiece. "We tried everything to catch the pigeon and called in experts to grab it, but in the end they had to shoot it out of the air," a museum official said. The other victim, Thomas de Keyser's 1633 painting of a civic guard gathering, was restored and put back on display on Thursday. "It's one of the more important civic guard pieces," said the official, referring to the city watchmen depicted in the work. "Luckily the hole was in a shadowy part of the painting and not in one of the guards' faces."
■ Canada
Postmen snap at dog treats
Dogs chomping on mail carrier-shaped treats is no laughing matter for Canada Post. The agency convinced Pet Valu stores to stop carrying dog biscuits that come shaped like cats and letter carriers. "This is not in any way, shape, or form funny for us, and to make light of that ... I don't see that as funny at all," said Canada Post spokesman John Caines. The store chain, which has 292 outlets in Canada, withdrew the treats after it received a protest from Canada Post.
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