■ Philippines
Troops arrest rebels
Philippine troops guarding a group of Japanese film makers shooting a docu-mentary on a southern island have arrested two Muslem Abu Sayyaf rebels, a marines spokesman said yesterday. Captain Rommel Abrau said the two rebels were aboard a motorboat when they were intercepted last weekend by soldiers off Sitangkai island, 1,120km south of Manila. "Our troops seized two automatic rifles and several rounds of ammunition from the captured rebels," Abrau said. "We are still determining if the two were actually spying on the foreigners."
■ Vietnam
Man kills lover for bike
A Hanoi court sentenced a man to death on Monday, after he was convicted of killing his girlfriend in order to steal her motorbike. Nguyen Khac Diep, 22, was convicted of bludgeoning his girlfriend, Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh, 19, to death with a hammer in Hanoi on Oct. 27 this year, a senior official from Hanoi Peoples Court said. After killing the girl at her home, Diep stole her motorbike, mobile phone and a digital camera worth almost US$1,000. "Diep was arrested on Oct. 30, after trying to sell the stolen goods," the official said. Since the beginning of this year, Vietnam has executed 62 prisoners, handed down 60 death penalties and upheld 50 death sentences.
■ China
Drink kills stray roach
How do you remove a stray cockroach jammed in the ear? Get the roach drunk. A doctor in the southeastern Chinese port city of Xiamen plucked a 1.5cm roach from a 12-year-old boy's ear with tweezers four minutes after dousing it with alcohol, the official China Daily news-paper reported on Tuesday. The doctor at the city's Zhongshan Hospital, who wasn't further identified, sees up to two patients each month with similar insect problems, the paper said. "Victims of similar intrusions should seek medical help and not attempt to remove the cockroach themselves as there was a real risk of the eardrum being damaged," the report said.
■ China
Dissident asks Powell's help
The US lawyer representing high-profile dissident Yang Jianli, who has suffered a stroke while in a Chinese jail, said yesterday he had asked US Secretary of State Colin Powell to help in securing medical parole for his client. A letter was sent to Powell just hours after Yang met his brother, sister and nephew in his Beijing jail for his first encounter with relatives since being arrested two-and-a-half years ago, according to lawyer Jared Genser. Yang, who is serving a five-year sentence for espionage, told his family that he had suffered a minor stroke in late July and that he was hospitalized for a week afterwards.
■ China
Search for UFO is on
Thousands of villagers in northwest China's Gansu Province were combing the hills in search of an uniden-tified flying object believed to be large meteorite. The object is thought to have hit the rural suburbs, about 60km from downtown Lanzhou on Sat-urday night, causing a loud explosion recorded by the Gansu Provincial Seismology Bureau, the China Daily said. Elderly people and young children alike in Yuzhong County amassed on Tuesday and scattered themselves in the hills in search of what experts think could be a one tonne object, the Beijing News said. Three large silver-colored unusual looking stones that are believed to be fragments from the meteorite were found.
■ United Kingdom
Nun gives away prize money
An Irish-born nun who won a ?69,000 (US$135,000) prize on Tuesday gave it away on the spot. Sister Kathleen Murphy, 50, of St. Catherine's convent in Edinburgh, won a prize for becoming the 100-millionth passenger to fly with low-cost Irish airline Ryanair. "I felt a huge sense of relief and freedom when I found out I had won, because I knew I wouldn't have to worry how I was going to spend it. I knew it would go to those who needed it," she said. She gave away the award to her convent, who will use it to feed the hungry.
■ France
Tallest bridge inaugurated
President Jacques Chirac dedicated France's newest wonder on Tuesday -- a sleek roadway bridge billed as the world's tallest. Ahead of its public opening on Thursday, the Millau bridge has been celebrated as a work of art combining the strength of cement and steel with the "delicacy of a butterfly." Stretching 2.5km through France's Massif Central mountains, the bridge will enable motorists to take a drive through the sky 270m above the Tarn River valley. The bridge rests on seven pillars -- the tallest measuring 340m, making it 16m taller than the Eiffel Tower.
■ United States
Twins give birth to twins
Two twin sisters are seeing double -- or make that quadruple -- after delivering two sets of twin boys on Tuesday. Twenty-one-year-olds Ashlee Spinks of Indianapolis and Andrea Springer of Conyers, Georgia, delivered their boys by scheduled Caesarean sections about an hour apart at Northside Hospital. The women were six months pregnant when they found out they were both going to have twin boys due on the same date. The two couples said twins run in the families of all four parents, and that they did not use fertility drugs to conceive the babies. Dr Larry Matsumoto said the chances of twin sisters being pregnant with twin boys due on the same date are probably one in a million.
■ Italy
Donkeys replace mowers
An Italian town is setting donkeys to work mowing the grass on the side of its highways in an effort to save money and reduce pollution. Fed up with paying some 100,000 euros (US$132,800) a year to cut the grass on its out-of-town roads with tractor-mowers, the local government of Treviso, near Venice, said on Tuesday it had bought six donkeys to do the work instead. "This purchase will allow us to save cash as well as launch an experimental ecological project," said local government chief Luca Zaia, who paid just over 2,000 euros for the six animals.
■ Italy
Milan to `brand' panettone
Proud Milanese bakers and pastry chefs took a first step on Tuesday toward protecting the city's famous panettone Christmas cake from inferior copies, publishing their request for an official European "brand." If Milan's bakers have their way, from next year the mushroom-shaped panettone cakes that fill the city's food shops could carry a multi-colored logo and a certificate of authenticity -- the food equivalent of the DOC label for wines, and a guarantee of traditional baking methods. Panettone, a sponge-like cake often studded with raisins and candied fruit, is a Christmas treat across Italy, and Italians are expected to spend a total of 360 million euros ($480 million) on them this year alone.
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