■ Singapore
Nanny kills baby then self
An Indonesian maid jumped off a high-rise apartment after throwing a baby boy under her care down 23 stories. A spokesman for the police said yesterday they were investigating the deaths of the 21-year-old maid, identified in the report as Sulastri, and five-month-old Yap Soon Heng. Witnesses said they had seen the maid sitting on the window ledge with the crying toddler on her lap. "She was sitting there for about five minutes and kept turning her head back as if she was talking to someone inside the room," businessman John Chua said. "Suddenly, she just extended her arms out and let the baby slip from her hands."
■ New Zealand
Santas turn naughty
Police were called when 30 men and women wearing Santa Claus suits and beards began fighting in an Auckland car park, Radio New Zealand reported yesterday. Police said the group had been drinking when the brawl broke out on Saturday. A man was charged with disorderly behavior, threatening and resisting arrest while a woman faces a charge of disorderly behavior.
■ Australia
Tourist's prank causes alarm
An Italian tourist aboard a flight from Sydney to Vienna caused a security alert when he sent a prank text message to his wife claiming his plane had been hijacked by terrorists, the Australian government and a news report said yesterday. Antonio Casale, 35, sent the cell-phone message to his wife from Kuala Lumpur last Sunday during a refueling stop on the Lauda Austrian Airlines flight, Sydney's Sunday Telegraph reported. Casale claimed terrorists were in control of the plane and were taking the passengers to an unknown destination. His distressed wife contacted Italian police, who immediately alerted the Italian Embassy in Canberra, who relayed the message to Australian police.
■ Malaysia
PM's remarks draw ire
Malaysian leaders reacted angrily yesterday to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's claim that Islamic separatists were using Malaysia as a training base to destabilize southern Thailand, expressing "shock" and calling the remarks "irresponsible." Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said "We question Thaksin's motive for making the statement. I am shocked at such a statement." Lim Kit Siang, Malaysia's opposition leader, said the comment was ``unbecoming of a Thai prime minister and most irresponsible.'' Thaksin's government has been criticized internationally and at home for using heavy-handed tactics in handling the smoldering insurgency, which has killed more than 550 people this year.
■ Australia
Agency fined for deception
A real estate agency who sold a luxury Sydney house to a Chinese couple without telling them it was the location of a grisly triple murder were given a stiff fine yesterday for deceptive conduct in a landmark ruling. The agency took a five-figure deposit on the mansion without telling the prospective buyers that 20-year-old Sef Gonzales had stabbed and strangled his mother, father and sister there in 2000. The agency initially refused to refund the deposit but did so after being roundly criticized by other property agents. The couple, devout Buddhists, said they would sooner lose the deposit than move into what they said was a haunted house. The Office of Fair Trading investigated and fined the agency A$20,900 (US$15,675) for deceptive conduct.
■ Sweden
PM slammed over EU move
Prime Minister Goeran Persson faced criticism in parliament on Saturday for his support for a possible lifting of an EU arms embargo on China. Lawmakers were unhappy that the country was abandoning its traditional firm stance regarding respect for human rights in China. "What means of pressure remain?" asked opposition Centrist lawmaker Asa Torstensson from the right-leaning Centrist party, quoted by Swedish news agency TT. Persson said he had called the leader of the Conservatives, the largest opposition party to ask him his view on the issue."We agreed it would not be an intelligent policy," Persson said.
■ France
McDonalds hit by octopi
Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town on Saturday pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood. Between 300 and 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself. Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.
■ United Kingdom
Bra ignorance addressed
Starting next year, British school-leavers are to be offered studies in bra-fitting. The ultimate in educational uplift -- Level 2 BTEC Short Course Award in Lingerie Fitting -- is being put forward by Edexcel, one of the largest exam boards in the country. The new subject follows requests from high street retailers concerned that women did not know how to buy the right bra and staff did not know how to help them. To gain a qualification, students will have to undergo 30 hours of "guided learning," practical training and exams. Trainees will be taught how to "deal with body odor and customers' negative perception of size in relation to reality."
■ Lebanon
Syria pulls back troops
The Syrian army announced Saturday another limited pullback of troops in Lebanon, amid mounting international pressure on Damascus to pull out all of its forces and end interference in its smaller neighbor. Syrian army intelligence troops pulled out of their positions at Beirut airport, the southern suburbs of the capital and in the northern coastal town of Batrun, a Lebanese army source told reporters on condition of anonymity late Saturday.
■ France
Drifters nabbed for murders
Police questioned four alcoholic drifters over a gory double murder in a French mental hospital Saturday in which a female nurse was beheaded and another savagely stabbed, officials said. Prosecutor Eric Maurel said the men were detained at an apartment in the city after calls to police indicated that one or several of them had participated in or been witness to a scene of violence. By the light of torches, police followed a trail of blood down a 20m corridor into a recreation room at the clinic where they found the nurse's decapitated head propped on a TV set. The body of her colleague was splayed lifeless in another room "in a sea of blood," one officer said. "It was atrocious. Worse than a horror movie," one health worker told reporters.
■ United Kingdom
Thames boat prison mooted
The London police are holding discussions about possibly mooring a prison ship on the River Thames in a bid to ease pressure on the spiralling inmate population, a police spokesman said on Saturday. He said a decision should be expected at the end of the year after it had been assessed for suitability and possible locations for mooring had been checked. Britain's first prison ship, HMP Weare, is currently berthed at Portland in Dorset. Last month, the ship was condemned as "merely an expensive container -- and in the wrong place" by Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers. She said the ship should be closed down unless a massive amount of cash was spent on refurbishment.
■ Saudi Arabia
Al-Qaeda urges attacks
The Saudi branch of the Al-Qaeda network called on its fighters to attack foreign targets and oil sites in the world's top crude exporting nation, according to a statement posted on an Islamist Internet sit yesterday. The message, whose authenticity could not be verified, appeared after Al-Qaeda chef Osama bin Laden issued a call to his fighters to strike oil targets in Iraq and the Gulf, according to an audiotape purportedly from him broadcast last week. "We call on all the mujahidin to target the sources of oil which do not serve the Islamic nation but serve the enemies of the nation," said the Web site statement attributed to the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula and dated Saturday.
■ Spain
Bomb suspects in Madrid
Four suspected Islamic militants arrested in the Canary Islands arrived in Madrid on Saturday under heavy guard, an official said. One of the four suspects -- Hassan al Haski, 41 -- is believed to have played a role in the March 11 Madrid train bombings, an attack that killed 191 people, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. The four suspects are Moroccans. They were flown Saturday to a Spanish air force base on a plane with more than 50 guards, an anti-terrorism police spokesman said.
■ United States
Gold coins puzzle charity
Salvation Army officials don't know who has been dropping gold coins into their holiday kettles over the past 20 years, but they hope the mysterious donations continue. More than 300 gold coins have been collected since the early 1980s, with an average value of about US$200 each, said Cliff Marshall, spokesman for the charity in Chicago, where the tradition began. Chicago bell-ringers have brought in 10 gold coins so far this year. They aren't the only ones. In Kirksville, Missouri, someone donated a gold coin that was minted 20 years before the Civil War, worth nearly US$1,000, and a US$400 South African Kruggerand was dropped in a kettle in Bloomington, Indiana.
■ United States
Book says Lincoln was gay
Was Abraham Lincoln, founder of the party now seeking a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in America, actually gay himself? A new book, published next month, thinks so. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp produces evidence that one of the US' greatest presidents had a long-term relationship with a friend, Joshua Speed, and shared his bed with David Derickson, captain of his bodyguards. Tripp's book breaks new ground in its portrayal of many of Lincoln's possible gay lovers, including one man who said Lincoln's thighs "were as perfect as a human being could be."
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese