■ Indonesia
11 killed in strong quake
At least 11 people were killed and 65 injured when a strong earthquake shook Indonesia's Papua province yesterday, collapsing buildings and starting fires, officials said. A series of aftershocks continued to rattle the coastal town of Nabire, 3,000km northeast of Jakarta, hours after the morning quake, measured at 6.4 on the Richter scale by the National Earthquake Center. "We're still in panic," Jahron, a pilot who lives in Nabire, told Reuters by telephone. "We can still feel the aftershocks, people are now setting up tents outside their houses because they are still afraid to be inside," he said. Earthquakes often occur in Indonesia, an archipelago that lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.
■ Australia
Aborigines go on rampage
Police reinforcements were flown to north Queensland's Palm Island after more than 300 Aborigines went on the rampage yesterday after a local died while in police custody. Palm Island's police station was torched and other buildings damaged. The rioters are believed to have blocked the airstrip with cars to stop police being brought in from nearby Townsville. Palm Island resident Nicky Bull said the riots were worse than those in the Sydney suburb of Redfern earlier this year. The Redfern riots, the worst racial riots in Australia's history, left 50 police officer injured and led to dozens of arrests.
■ India
Ketchup-splashers punished
An Indian army officer was dismissed and another suspended after a court martial found they splashed tomato ketchup on civilians to make them look like dead separatist rebels, officials said yesterday. An army spokesman said Colonel H.S. Kohli took photos of civilians covered with tomato sauce and posing as corpses and gave them to his senior officers as proof of separatist killings in the northeastern state of Assam. "The colonel tried to use the photographs to back his claim for a gallantry award and was subsequently tried and found guilty in a court martial," an army spokesman said.
■ Malaysia
Immigrant roundup gets help
More than half a million civilian volunteers will be given the power to arrest illegal immigrants next year, local media reported yesterday, despite fears that such a move would encourage vigilantism and undermine the law. Home Minister Azmi Khalid said that from January onward some 560,000 members of two neighborhood security watch organizations would help police and immigration officials round up illegal foreign workers, the national news agency Bernama reported. The immigrants, mostly from neighboring Indonesia and other parts of Asia, had ignored an earlier government amnesty offer to leave Malaysia without punishment, Bernama said.
■ United Kingdom
Smelliest cheese picked
Vieux Boulogne, a soft cheese from France, has been certified as the world's smelliest cheese by an team of researchers at Cranfield University in England which used an "electronic nose" to analyze the odor of the cheeses, with a panel of 19 human testers also giving their opinion. Vieux Bou-logne, from Boulogne-sur-Mer, is aged for between seven and nine weeks, and has a rind brushed with beer. In second place was Pont d'Eveque, a cow's milk cheese from Normandy. Down in 10th place was Epoisses de Bourgogne, a cheese so smelly it is reputedly banned from public transport in France. English Cheddar, aged between six and 24 months, was one of the least smelly cheeses tested, along with Parmesan cheese from Italy. They ranked 14th and 11th respectively.
■ Mexico
Nine slain in Cancun
The bodies of nine people, including three police officers, have been found in different parts of the resort city of Cancun, officials said on Thursday. All were shot in the head or body, and one of the dead was handcuffed. Police believe they may have been the victims of drug gangs. The bodies of three Federal Investigation Agency police, a jeweller, and another man were found in a wood near Cancun airport, an official said. The four other dead were found in a burned-out car on waste ground 7km from where the first group were murdered. The three police officers were on an undercover drug mission.
■ Britain
Critics drown `Baywatch'
Baywatch has won the dubious honor of being the worst foreign television series ever seen in Britain, according to a poll of the nation's broadcasting executives published on Thursday. At its height in the 1990s, the series was the world's most popular show, seen by 1 billion viewers in 140 countries. But respon-dents to the poll -- con-ducted by Broadcast, a trade publication -- felt otherwise. "The appeal to a certain demographic of a series about a muscular lifeguard and his crew of pneumatic young helpers with raging hormones was enough to sustain this show through 12 years despite a script of mind-numbing predictability: beachgoer is saved from drowning," Broadcast said. Topping the list of the best offshore TV fare was The Simpsons.
■ Germany
Santa Claus heist foiled
A bank robbery by two gunmen in Santa Claus costumes ended in a shoot-out with police that left one robber dead and the other wounded. The robbers were fleeing from a bank in the Rhineland town of Ratingen when they were spotted by two plainclothes police officers. One of the officers was also wounded. The wounded were reported to be in stable condition at a local hospital.
■ Venezuelan
Bombing suspect slain
Police on Thursday shot to death a second suspect in the killing of a top govern-ment prosecutor, two days after different suspect in the case was killed by police officers in a similar situa-tion, authorities said. Juan Carlos Sanchez, 32, was killed by police after he opened fire on officers when they went knocked on the door of a motel room where he was staying in the town of Barquisimeto, a police official said. Sanchez was suspected of being involved in last week's car bomb murder of Danilo Anderson.
■ Bahamas
Writer Arthur Hailey dies
British-born author Arthur Hailey whose books such as Airport, Hotel and Wheels inspired disaster movies of the 1970s has died at his home in the Bahamas at the age of 84, his family said Thursday. Hailey's books were published in 40 countries and sold more than 170 million copies. Hailey's wife Sheila said the writer died in his sleep on Wednesday night at their home on Providence island in the Bahamas and that doctors believed he had suffered a stroke.
"He had a wonderful life. Writing books was all he wanted and he got enormous pleasure from the pleasure he gave others," she said.
■ Switzerland
Missing war victims sought
The International Red Cross said Thursday that it was still looking for 16,600 people missing from the war in Bosnia, almost a decade after the conflict in the Balkan nation. "The sheer numbers express better than anything else the anxiety of so many who have lived so long in uncertainty," said Werner Kaspar, head of Bosnia operations at the Internation-al Committee of the Red Cross. Since the end of the 1992-95 war, painstaking work by the Red Cross and other organizations has resolved 5,000 cases of missing people. Most have been confirmed dead, often through forensic analysis of bodies, ICRC officials said.
■ Guatemala
Activists protest murders
Hundreds of women's rights activists and female workers marched down the streets of Guatemala City Thursday to demand an end to a senseless wave of violence that has seen 445 Guatemalan women killed this year. "There is no way to stop this and authorities are not paying attention to our calls," said Aida Saravia, a member of the Guatemalan Women's Group who took part in the demonstration to mark the international day to end violence against women. She said police reports indicated that in the last 72 hours, six more women were brutally killed. One woman's body was found Thursday morning dumped at the bottom of a ravine just outside Guatemala City.
■ Canada
Ukranian-Canadians protest
Hundreds of Canadians, many of Ukrainian descent, braved freezing temperatures to protest Thursday what they consider to be the fixed outcome of the Ukrainian presidential election. Busloads of demonstrators travelled from Montreal, Ottawa and the Kitchener area of Ontario to lawns outside the parliament of Canada -- the first nation to recognize Ukraine as an independent state as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Inside the building, the House of Commons passed a resolution rejecting pro-Russia prime minister Victor Yanukovich as the winner of Ukraine's election.
■ Israel
Troops drop pants for paper
Six navy commandos were threatened with dismissal from their elite unit Thursday after their naked picture found its way into the country's top-selling news-paper. The six are shown with their pants down in the snow, cupping their hands in front of their private parts in a centerfold-like photo splashed in a double-page spread in Yediot Aharonot. Their commander told the newspaper his men would be fired for having shamed the prestigious unit but other top brass reportedly deemed the punishment too severe. And their parents expressed outrage that their offspring could be discharged "for a silly boys' prank" when they risk their life daily to defend Israel, the paper said.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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