■ Bangladesh
Bombs strike movie theaters
Two near-simultaneous bomb explosions outside movie theaters killed a 13-year-old boy and injured seven other people in a northeastern Bangladeshi city, and police said yesterday they were questioning six men
about the attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts Thursday night in Sylhet city, 190km northeast of the capital Dhaka, and police gave no word on a possible motive. The unidentified boy was killed instantly by a bomb outside Rangmahal cinema, said Ali Imam Chowdhury, a senior police official in the area. A second bomb injured at least seven people outside Monika, another movie theater in the same city, Chowdhury said.
■ Japan
Possible West Nile case
A Japanese woman who recently returned from a trip to the US is suspected of having West Nile virus in what would be Japan's first case of the mosquito-borne illness, an official said yesterday. Pre-liminary results from blood tests and a spinal tap on the 42-year-old women, from Japan's southernmost island of Okinawa, were positive for the disease but more precise tests were being carried out at an institute in Tokyo, Health Ministry official Tatsuhiro Isogai said. Test results are expected as early as Monday, he said. Japanese media reported there was a possi-bility that the woman has Japanese encephalitis, which also is spread by mosquitos. Isogai said Japan has had no cases of West Nile, and that even if the woman had the virus, an outbreak here would be very unlikely because
the disease is normally transmitted to humans by mosquitos that have fed on infected birds. "It's very likely that she became infected in the US, not on the plane or in Japan," he said.
■ Vietnam
Fish bomber killed
A man was killed on Tuesday while using explosives to fish in northern Vietnam, a police officer said yesterday. Nguyen Ngoc Hien, 30, and two of his relatives were fishing by throwing homemade mines into a stream near their home, said Dinh Van Chuc, chief of Dan Ha commune police. The 300g mine exploded in Hien's hand when he was about to throw it into the water, the police official from Hoa Binh province, 80km west of Hanoi said. Hien lost his right arm and suffered severe head and chest injuries. He was rushed to hospital by his relatives but died 36 hours later.
■ New Zealand
Drugs in lava lamps
Customs officers discovered crystal methamphetamine with a street value of US$5.75 million in five lava lamps imported from China, the New Zealand Herald Web site reported yesterday. Police said it was thought to be the biggest seizure of illegal drugs ever made in New Zealand. About 9kg of illicit drugs were suspended in the liquid inside the lamps. Police arrested and jailed a 23-year-old Chinese student at the Auckland address the lamps were consigned to.
■ Indonesia
Model banned from prison
An Indonesian model has been banned from visiting the son of former president Suharto in a maximum-security prison after a recent visit turned into a three-day stay, news reports said yesterday. Officials ordered the prison to blacklist Sandy Harun from visiting former billionaire playboy Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy, the Jakarta Post said. Tommy is serving a 15-year sentence in an island prison off Java for graft and arranging the killing of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of corruption in a land deal.
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