■ Malaysia
No human bird flu cases
Three Malaysians who were hospitalized with possible bird flu symptoms were cleared of the disease yesterday, an official said. The government announced Thursday that the lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza had been discovered in chickens in a village near the Thai border where eight people have already died from bird flu this year. Officers culled all 103 chickens reared as pets and livestock in the village and are monitoring the health of villagers and those living in surrounding areas. The Malaysian government has assured the public that chicken sold in the market was safe for consumption.
■ Singapore
Nigerians swindle locals
Dozens of Singaporeans have been duped by a Nigerian syndicate which told them they had won a six-figure sum in the El Gordo lottery, the Sunday Straits Times reported. Spanish police are investigating the case and more than 100 illegal immigrants, mostly Nigerians, have been arrested for running the scams, the report said. Some victims have lost as much as S$70,000 each to the syndicate which sends out letters with instructions to transfer money into a Spanish account for tax and back charges in order to claim the so-called prize, the report said.
■ China
Gay revenge killer executed
China has executed a 25-year-old university dropout for killing six men, four of whom had raped him after getting him drunk, the Beijing Youth Daily said yesterday. Li Yijiang cut off the penises of his victims, aged between 20 and 30, after killing them, but the newspaper did not say how he murdered them. He was put to death in Beijing on Friday for the murders in 2002 and 2003. Four of his victims, whom he had met through the Violet Boy Web site, got him drunk and raped him, the daily said. Li later lured them out one by one and got his revenge. The report did not say why Li had killed the other two men. Li reportedly came from a violent home, where his father often beat up his mentally ill mother.
■ Thailand
Gambler immolates woman
A man has confessed to drugging and then burning his girlfriend in order to sell her belongings to pay a gambling debt, The Nation newspaper said yesterday. Chaicharoen Tang, 33, admitted to police that he had given his girlfriend Nonnapa Insee, 31, a drug cocktail on August 18, then put her body in a petrol-soaked blanket and set her and her condominium on fire, police said. An autopsy revealed that Insee died from third-degree burns and smoke inhalation. Police have charged Tang with murder, arson and theft.
■ Malaysia
Scorpion cage stunt starts
A woman is trying to reclaim the world record for the longest stay in a room full of scorpions, news reports said yesterday. Nur Malena Hassan, 27, moved Saturday into a locked glass box where she plans to live for 36 days with more than 6,000 of the poisonous arachnids in a shopping mall, Mingguan Malaysia newspaper reported. Scores of people watched as she stood fearlessly in a red sweater and jeans with scorpions crawling on her head, chest and legs in Kuantan, 350 km east of Kuala Lumpur. She set a world record in 2001 by living for 30 days with 2,700 scorpions. She was stung seven times, fell unconscious and almost gave up the attempt.
■ Zimbabwe
Extradition request rejected
President Robert Mugabe has rejected an extradition request for 70 alleged mercenaries accused of plotting a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, a state newspaper reported. Mugabe and home affairs minister Kembo Mohadi met with two envoys sent by Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of the oil-rich West African nation, The Herald reported Saturday. "They wanted the extradition of the suspected mercenaries to Equatorial Guinea, where we said it is not possible, since it will be against international laws," Mohadi was quoted as saying after talks at Mugabe's official residence.
■ Norway
`Scream' stolen ... again
Armed robbers stole masterpieces by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch from a museum in Oslo on Sunday and national radio said a version of The Scream was part of the haul. Norwegian national radio NRK said the paintings stolen from the Munch Museum included a version of the famous portrait of modern angst, and a version of another key work, Madonna. Police declined to comment and the museum would not say which paintings were taken. Another and perhaps better-known version of The Scream, a painting of a waiflike figure on a bridge, was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in a break-in on February 1994, on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Munch, who lived from 1863 to 1944 and who was a pioneer of modern expressionism, made several copies of his key works, including The Scream.
■ Spain
Bombs hit resort town
Two small bombs have exploded in resort towns in northwestern Spain after newspapers received warnings from callers who claimed to represent Basque separatist group ETA, a government official said. One person was slightly injured Saturday when an explosive device went off at a marina in Sanxenxo, said Manuel Ameijeiras, the Spanish government's representative in the Galicia region. Another small bomb exploded at the same time in Baiona, about 90km south of Sanxenxo, he told reporters by telephone.
■ United Kingdom
Refugee numbers fall
The number of people seeking asylum in Britain has fallen to levels last seen when Prime Minister Tony Blair took office in 1997, the Observer reported. The news is likely to deflate opposition efforts to cast Labour rule as easy on immigration and harmful to British workers, and recasts one of the fieriest ongoing political debates. When Blair came to power in May 1997, the Observer said, there were 2,590 asylum applications per month, excluding their families. The numbers climbed through 2002, hitting a peak in October with 8,900 applicants. By early this year the numbers were down to 2,980, edging toward the 1997 numbers.
■ United Kingdom
Pigeons taste to be altered
Pigeon fanciers in Britain, tired of having their prize racing birds snatched away by predators, have a plan to save them -- make them taste too nasty for other birds to eat. Many nature lovers in Britain have been delighted that populations of predator birds such as peregrine falcons, once seen as threatened, are growing. But not the country's 55,000 pigeon racers, some of whom spend thousands on prize birds. So the group is looking at spraying its pigeons with nasty-tasting chemicals, or feeding them special diets that will make them unpleasant to eat.
■ United States
Booze inhaler on the market
A Greensboro, North Carolina, company is selling what it calls a "low-calorie, low-carbohydrate way to consume alcohol" that allows a person to consume spirits and truthfully say he has not been drinking. Alcohol Without Liquid (AWOL) is a bulky, costly machine that vaporizes a mixture of liquor and oxygen and pumps it through a tube to a hand-held medical-style inhaler which the user puts in his or her mouth and breaths in a mist of scotch, vodka, or any other type of hard liquor. "Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the lungs rather than the stomach," said Kevin Morse, president of Spirit Partners Inc, the US manufacturer-distributor.
■ United States
Kerry's war record defended
The Vietnam War continued Saturday to haunt the US election campaign, as an editor at a major US newspaper stepped out to defend Democratic challenger John Kerry's military record. William Rood, an editor on the Chicago Tribune's metropolitan desk who commanded a swift boat in the 1969 Vietnam incident, has written an account quoted in his newspaper's Sunday edition that maintains Kerry defied enemy bullets to rescue a fellow sailor who had fallen overboard during a battle. Over the past weeks, a pro-Bush group of veterans, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have launched several advertisements charging that Kerry has lied about the incident.
■ United States
Two jailed for dog attacks
A couple face at least three years in prison for disciplining their young children by letting their part-pit bull dog attack them. Joyce Hoskins, 47, and David Hoskins, 46, pleaded guilty Friday to three counts each of assault and were being held without bail. Investigators said the couple disciplined their 8-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son by allowing their dog Nigel -- a mix of pit bull terrier, Doberman pinscher, German shepherd and Labrador retriever -- to attack them. The attacks took place over two years and both children suffered bites that required treatment, investigators said. The children are now in foster homes and the dog has been euthanized.
■ Brazil
Tourists hide from gunmen
Police on Saturday found a Dutch couple who were lost for more than 24 hours in the Amazon jungle, where they had fled to escape gunmen who had held up their hotel in northern Brazil, media reports said. "The tourists were found this morning and they are fine," Amazonas state police chief Francisco Ferreira da Silva told the Agencia Folha news agency. "They were tired and hungry after spending so much time in the jungle." He did not reveal the name of the two tourists. Late Thursday night, four heavily armed men burst into the Amazonat Jungle Lodge, about 2,500km northwest of Sao Paulo, demanding money.
■ France
Fire guts Jewish center
A Jewish social center in central Paris was destroyed by fire overnight in an anti-Semitic arson attack, city authorities said Sunday. French President Jacques Chirac was swift to condemn the attack and voice his total solidarity with France's Jewish community, in a statement issued by the Elysee. The premises, around 100 square meters on the ground floor of a block, were set on fire around 4:00am yesterday. The fire was rapidly put out and the building was not evacuated, police said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing