■ Thailand
Attacker loses some tongue
bangkok police are looking for a man whose tongue was bitten off by a girl he allegedly tried to rape. a 17-year-old girl turned up at lucksong police station on wednesday with a 2.5cm-long piece of tongue she said belonged to a 19-year-old male friend she knew by the nickname koh. she told police that when koh attempted to rape her, she pretended to consent to his advances and then bit off part of his tongue, a police officer said. "his tongue was partially severed, so i decided to just bite it all off. it was still in my mouth," the girl told reporters. "he yelled at me and got up, kicked me in my neck, and then i ran away."
■ Indonesia
Bali rocked by quake
an earthquake shook parts of bali yesterday, causing people to run from buildings in panic, witnesses said. there were no reports of damage or casualties on the island. the quake had a magnitude 5 and was cen-tered under the sea, about 150km west of the capital of denpasar, the state-run news agency antara reported, citing bali's meteorological office. "it lasted several seconds and we all ran out in panic from our office on the third floor," said a worker at the tele-communication office in denpasar.
■ Australia
Sleep sex causes problems
a woman seduced and had sex with strangers while she slept and later had no recol-lection of her infidelities due to a sleeping disorder, her sydney doctor said yester-day. the middle-aged woman had no idea that she was sneaking from her house at night in search of sex with random strangers until her partner awoke, discovered she was missing from the bedroom, and found her having sex with another man, royal prince alfred hospital sleep medicine physician peter buchanan told the sydney morning herald. her partner was already aware that she was a sleep walker and also had been confounded by condoms he found strewn around the house, buchanan said.
■ Australia
Conservative ally confident
a senate candidate said yesterday he was confident of winning a seat that will give the conservative coali-tion government a historic majority in parliament's upper house. prime minister john howard's government has already claimed half the 76 senate seats following last weekend's election and queensland state candidate barnaby joyce told austra-lian broadcasting corp radio his lead of 3,000 votes "looks slightly more favorable each day." joyce is a member of the rural-based national party, a junior partner in howard's coalition. the tally is expected to be finalized next week. no government has controlled the senate since the late 1970s.
■ New zealand
Robbers target tourists
robbers savagely beat an englishmen and his son in an overnight attack during their trip to decide whether they should emigrate to new zealand, police and the father said yesterday. just hours after paul speakman and his 12-year-old son christian flew in, three robbers smashed the win-dows of their camper van, which was parked near waihi, north island, then broke in and demanded money, speakman said. the robbers beat speakman with a crowbar, forcing him to hand over cameras, suit-cases, money and passports. the family has yet to decide whether new zealand is the place where they want to live.
■ Albania
Stray dogs invade town
A town had to call in police and hunters after a pack of 200 stray mountain dogs attacked at least nine people. Headed by a clearly identifiable leader, the snarling pack overran the main street of the small northern town of Mamurras, its mayor said Wednesday. "Even in the movies I have never seen a horde of 200 stray dogs from the mountains attacking people in the middle of a town," Anton Frroku told reporters by telephone Wednesday. He said the dogs bit at least nine people, aged from 20 to 60, dragging them to the ground and inflicting serious wounds.
■ Israel
Rocket claims retracted
The Israeli army has retracted an accusation that Palestinian militants in Gaza used a UN ambulance to transport a rocket for firing at Israel, officials said on Wednesday. The UNRWA agency said it needed a full public apology to safeguard the security of UN staff operating in the area. Israel raised a stir at the UN last week with its accusation against the Gaza-based UN agency which hinged on a blurry video recorded by a military drone aircraft. An army statement said an inquiry concluded "the nature of the object loaded on the vehicle cannot be determined with certainty. Thus the determination that the object loaded was a Qassam rocket was too unequivocal and made in haste."
■ Italy
Prison leave sparks anger
Italians were outraged on Wednesday to learn that a convicted mobster who has admitted murdering around 100 people, including a leading anti-Mafia magistrate and an 11-year-old boy, has been granted temporary leave from prison. A Rome court ruled more than six months ago that former Mafia boss Giovanni Brusca, who is serving a number of life sentences in a Rome prison, should be allowed out every 45 days as a reward for his good conduct in prison. But the decision was only brought to light in a press release issued by an anti-mafia group. "This is a case of inexplicable niceness towards hardened criminals who should remain in prison," Roberto Centaro, head of parliament's Anti-Mafia commission, was quoted by Wednesday's La Repubblica as saying.
■ South Africa
UK, African tribe reconcile
Britain and a small tribe have made peace more than 100 years after the former colonial power dethroned their king, ruthlessly crushed a rebellion and drove them out of their homeland. In an emotional reconciliation ceremony in South Africa's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province this week, the British government joined the amaHlubi to bury the hatchet and acknowledge historical wrongs. "We are very happy, today is a great day for us," said Prince Langalibalele, the great great-grandson of the amaHlubi king who died in 1889 after being imprisoned for leading a rebellion against colonial rule during the Anglo-Zulu war of the late 1800s.
■ United Kingdom
Plane lands after bomb alert
A bomb alert forced a Virgin Atlantic flight from Hong Kong to London's Heathrow airport to land yesterday at Stansted airport, north of the British capital, as a "precautionary measure," officials said. Virgin Flight VF201 touched down at Stansted at 5:30am, with 214 passengers and 18 crew, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said, adding that police were searching the Airbus 340-600.
■ Canada
Seven die in plane crash
An African-owned cargo jet crashed crashed early yesterday during takeoff from Halifax, Nova Scotia, killing all seven crew on board, police said. Early reports said the MK Airlines crew was from the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Boeing 747 cargo jet was carrying seafood to Spain, Canadian officials said. The airline is Ghana-based. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Joe Taplin told a press conference: "We have recovered some of the remains [of the crew] and I can confirm that there are no survivors." Neither police nor Transportation Safety Board officials would confirm witness reports that the jet's tail apparently hit the runway as it nosed up. The Halifax airport closed immediately after the crash, opening one of its two runways two hours later.
■ United States
Judge nixes Nader
A state court knocked independent candidate Ralph Nader off Pennsylvania's presidential ballot, citing thousands of fradulent signatures including "Mickey Mouse" and "Fred Flintstone." The ruling Wednesday was one of two new setbacks for Nader. Also Wednesday, a federal judge denied the consumer advocate's bid for a spot on Hawaii's ballot. In Pennsylvania, describing Nader's petitions as "rife with forgeries," Commonwealth Court President Judge James Gardner Colins said that fewer than 19,000 of the more than 51,000 signatures Nader's supporters submitted were valid. Nader needed at least 25,697 to be listed on the ballot as an independent candidate. "I am compelled to emphasize that this signature-gathering process was the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court," Colins said in a 15-page ruling.
■ United States
Offel disgusts clean-up crew
Emergency service workers had their stomachs turned when they cleaned up a smelly mess of spilled pig innards that blocked a busy Arkansas intersection for several hours on Tuesday. Police said a truck spilled about 450kg of hog intestines fresh from a packing plant. The mess in the state capital, Little Rock, left several cleanup workers queasy. "It was horrible. Oh, it was bad," said Sargeant Terry Hastings of the Little Rock police department. The truck was carrying the entrails from a rendering plant to a facility where dog food is manufactured when the driver made an abrupt stop. The container was covered only by a tarp, which did not prevent the viscera from sloshing into the crossroads, police said.
■ Mexico
Phone taps bug politicians
Mexican politicians are finding it tough to hold a private conversation. Recordings of telephone calls between leftist political figures were played on Mexican television stations Tuesday night and Wednesday, yet another chapter in a history of clandestine video and audiotapes that have repeatedly rocked Mexican politics. "It's a call for all who speak on the telephone to use a code, a key, to speak in ciphers because the government's apparatus of espionage is at work," Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday. The mayor did not express surprise. Dozens of Mexican politicians have had supposedly private conversations broadcast on radio and television in recent years -- causing scandals but few arrests. "It's an expression of a politically immature society," said sociologist Raul Trejo. Haiti
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