■ Hong Kong
Man swallows heroin
A drug smuggler arrested in Hong Kong had swallowed 80 condoms filled with heroin, customs officials said yesterday. The 33-year-old man from Sierra Leone swallowed 1.5kg of heroin worth US$550,000 in 80 condoms, each containing 20g of the drug. He is believed to have been paid around US$3,000 to smuggle the drugs and was waiting for a flight to China when he was arrested Wednesday, a customs spokesman said. The haul, discovered after a tip-off, is the biggest ever internally concealed quantity of drugs discovered by customs officers in Hong Kong. The tip-off and intelligence was provided by UK customs officials, the spokesman added.
■ China
Men get death for smuggling
China has sentenced two Hong Kong men to death for smuggling 36 million yuan (US$4.3 million) worth of VCD player components into southeast Xiamen city, state media said yesterday. The defendants Fang Canshen and Wang Rurong were among 15 people sentenced, including three customs department officials, in Xiamen city, Fujian province Thursday, the China News Service said. Fang was sentenced to death while Wang was given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, which is often reduced to life imprisonment. A Xiamen customs official was jailed for life while the other 12 were imprisoned for up to 13 years.
■ Hong Kong
Priest goes free
A former Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in the 1970s in Hong Kong walked free yesterday after a judge dropped the case, saying it would be impossible to have a fair trial over the decades-old matter. Government prosecutor Steve Chui said the victim, now 42, was very disappointed with the ruling. "He was very emotional and was crying," Chui said, adding that the Department of Justice will study the ruling before considering whether to appeal.
■ China
Bridge to Hainan planned
China is considering building a 22.5km long bridge linking tropical Hainan island in its south to China, state media reported Friday. Hainan is planning to initiate a feasibility study with a firm proposal to be handed to the Ministry of Communications for review no later than mid-next year, the China Daily said.When another cross-sea bridge is built to connect China's Zhuhai Special Economic Zone with Hong Kong, it would take only three hours for vehicles from Hainan to Hong Kong, the newspaper said. The Zhuhai-Hong Kong bridge is now in its final stage of feasibility studies. Construction of the project is expected to start in two years.
■ United Kingdom
BBC staffers get door advice
Staff at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have been given instructions on how to walk through a door, a tabloid newspaper reported yesterday. The Sun, Britain's biggest selling daily newspaper, reported that workers at the global broadcaster's offices in Birmingham, central England, had been issued with a memo advising them on how to get through a revolving door. An email, sent to 800 staff -- complete with matchstick man diagrams for ease of understanding -- comes after one worker trapped her foot in the new doors at the BBC's offices in Britain's second city, cracking a toenail, The Sun said.
■ United Kingdom
British worst at languages
Britons are the worst in Europe when it comes to speaking a foreign language, and fewer people from Britain can speak another language than any other country in Europe. Britain comes bottom of the pile of 28 countries surveyed in European Union data, in which 1,000 people from each country were interviewed and the percentages able to speak a particular foreign language added together. Britain scored a ranking of just 34, behind Hungary (35) and neighboring Ireland (39). Luxembourg performed best with 244 ranking points, followed by the Netherlands (159) and Denmark (154).
■ United Kingdom
Stabber was mentally ill
A man who went on the rampage through the streets of London, randomly stabbing one man to death and leaving five other people seriously injured, has a history of mental illness, police said Thursday. The man drove across 15.5km2 area of north London at the height of the morning rush hour, stopping and stabbing victims at random in six locations. The hour-long series of attacks left one 58-year-old man dead and three others people needing surgery after suffering life-threatening wounds. The attacks ended only after police traced the suspect from the registered address of the car he was using.
■ United States
Bush mulls Sudan sanctions
US President George W. Bush signed legislation into law on Thursday that urges him to freeze the assets of Sudanese officials and government-run businesses to protest the violence in Darfur. The administration said it was considering whether to act on the proposed sanctions. Relief convoys are being attacked in Sudan's western Darfur region and peace talks stalled while 1.8 million people have been forced to leave their homes. The Africa Union is deploying monitors and troops but is still far short of the 3,300 personnel expected.
■ United Kingdom
Queen's cousin banned
Britain's Duke of Gloucester, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, has his presidency of a motoring organization on the line after being banned for speeding, a daily newspaper reported yesterday. Membership of the Institute of Advanced Motorists is automatically revoked if members lose their driving licence, The Times said. The duke was handed a six-month driving ban and fined ?60 pounds (US$115) with ?35 in costs by a court in Ely, eastern England, after being caught by a speed camera driving at 113kph in a 97kph zone. "I don't recall the offence so I don't really know what the circumstances were," said the duke.
■ United States
Kuwaiti freed from prison
US authorities are releasing one of 11 Kuwaiti detainees held at a military detention center for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a group of family members and a lawyer. Nasser al-Mutairi is a 26-year-old employee of the Kuwaiti Education Ministry whose family says he was teaching English in Afghanistan when he was captured three years ago. He is expected home soon aboard a special plane sent by the Kuwaiti government, said Kalid al-Odha, the father of another Kuwaiti detainee. US. military officials declined to comment, citing Defense Department policy that requires a detainee to no longer be in US custody before his or her case can be discussed.
■ United States
Ship found partially sunk
Days after violent storms forced cleanup crews to leave a freighter that split apart, a salvage team returned to find the bow section had sunk, likely spilling another 666,200 liters of oil near an environ-mentally sensitive area of Unalaska Island. Crews still plan to unload more than 302,800 liters of fuel from tanks in the stern of the Selendang Ayu. But the three biggest tanks -- totaling 1.2 million liters of oil -- are believed to be ruptured and the fuel inside lost, Coast Guard Petty Officer Sara Francis said Thursday. The ship was split in two after running aground Dec. 8 in the Aleutian chain. The 225m freighter was carrying soybeans, 1.6 million liters of fuel oil and 68,135 liters of diesel.
■ United states
Asbestos bosses convicted
A father and son were sentenced Thursday to long prison terms after being convicted of running a statewide asbestos-removal operation that prosecutors said exposed countless people, especially their employees, to potentially fatal lung diseases. Alexander Salvagno, 38, received 25 years in federal prison. His father, Raul Salvagno, 72, who worked as a partner at their corporation, AAR Contractors of Albany, received a sentence of 19 years and seven months. Craig Benedict, the assistant US attorney who prosecuted the case, said the sentences were the longest ever handed down for an environmental crime. The Salvagnos were also ordered to pay more than US$23 million to victims.
■ United kingdom
Brit to write for `Simpsons'
Springfield, the garish home of the American cartoon family The Simpsons, is a long way from Slough, west of London. But the two towns will be linked next year in the form of Ricky Gervais, aka David Brent of the hit TV comedy The Office, who said Thursday he had been asked to write for the American series. Matt Groening, a fan of British comedy in general and The Office in particular, asked Gervais to write an episode after meeting him in Los Angeles last year when the British comedy won two Golden Globe awards.
■ United states
FDA warns against painkiller
The Food and Drug Administration recommended Thursday that doctors limit prescriptions for the popular pain pills Celebrex and Bextra because recent studies have suggested that they may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. The agency's advisory did not ban prescriptions of the drugs for any group of patients, instead simply telling doctors to use their best judgment in light of those studies. Indeed, it said patients who were at high risk of gastrointestinal bleeding or had done poorly on other pain pills "may be appropriate candidates" for Celebrex and Bextra.
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