Print

Mail

wiki links

World News Quick Take

■ New Zealand
Healer `applied' potato
A woman has told a court that a Maori tohunga, or healer, who uses traditional indigenous practices to treat patients, sexually violated her with a potato, a newspaper reported yesterday. She told the Hamilton High Court that Christopher Tuaupiki, 64, said the treatment was necessary to remove a curse on her which was responsible for
her son claiming to see apparitions of his father, who killed himself, and his dead grandparents, the Waikato Times reported. The 38-year-old widow said Tuaupiki told her to lie on a bed naked and rubbed a raw potato "in circular motions everywhere."

■ China
Chinese weep for Scorsese
Chinese film fans were disappointed that apparent favorite Martin Scorsese was denied the best director Oscar for his hit The Aviator, domestic press said yesterday. "Many moviegoers in China are dismayed that the Academy Awards have once again snubbed one of the US film industry's most distinguished members," the China Daily said. An opinion column in the Beijing News was more emotional. "Seeing such a great director, who has given American films and audiences worldwide so much, stand on stage uncomfortable and alone like a sad little boy, holding an award that did not belong to him, I almost started crying," the writer said of Scorsese.

■ China
SARS patients snubbed
More than 100 former SARS patients on Monday sent an open letter to the mayor of Beijing, blasting official indifference to their plight nearly two years after the deadly outbreak. The patients complained of continued ailments, including bone degeneration caused by the treatment they received when SARS swept across the Chinese capital, infecting more than 2,500 and killing 193. The letter, signed by 112 SARS victims and addressed to Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan (王岐山), urged the government to take complete charge of their future treatment and provide them with economic aid.

■ Sri Lanka
`Baby 81' heads for US
Celebrated tsunami survivor "Baby 81" yesterday headed to the US to appear on a morning TV program along with his parents, whose weeks-long court battle to reclaim their 4-month-old boy touched audiences internationally. Murugupillai Jeyarajah, his wife, Jenita, and their baby, Abilass, were scheduled to appear on
the ABC network's Good Morning America program this week and were granted expedited visas by the US embassy, US consul-general Marc Williams said. The baby was pulled from his mother's arms by the killer waves of Dec. 26 and the boy was found, caked in mud, hours later by rescuers who brought him to a hospital, where he was dubbed Baby 81 because he was the 81st person admitted that day.

■ Philippines
Child of militiaman killed
The 3-year-old daughter of a government militiaman and two soldiers were killed
in separate attacks by communist rebels in the Philippines, military officials said yesterday. The child was killed when communist rebels attacked a military detachment on Monday evening in Rodriguez town in Rizal province, 45km east of Manila, Major General Efren Orbon said. Two militiamen and the child's mother were also injured in the attack. "The rebels tried to barge into the camp, but our militiamen were able to
repel them," Orbon said. "Unfortunately, the child of a militiaman was killed in the attack."
agencies";
Attribute = (
Snails sent to space
Russia on Monday sent a load of live snails up to the International Space Station for a series of tests on weightlessness, Russia's mission control center said. A Progress M-52 cargo vessel took off from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with more than 2.5 tonnes of supplies, including food, water and fuel. Some 50 snails were also included with the regular cargo on the spacecraft for an experiment that would allow scientists to better investigate the effects of weightlessness. The vessel is expected to reach the space station today. The mollusks are to return to Earth in late April along with the current crew, Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov and US astronaut Leroy Chiao.

■ Bulgaria
Alleged pornographer killed
A group of young Bulgarians murdered a US man accused of paying local children to appear in his pornography film; the killing came in a dispute over money, according to Bulgarian media reports on Monday. Two brothers, aged 17 and 22, and a 22-year old man admitted to killing the man on Feb. 16 and hiding his body in a field northeast of the capital Sofia. They said that the man, 44, was filming child pornography in Sofia and other Bulgarian cities and distributing it over the Internet. He was beaten to death when an argument over money erupted. The American was already under investigation of local police and the FBI, reports said. He was allegedly paying children around 50 leva (US$33) per day for filming sadistic and masochistic pornography.

■ Egypt
Baby learning to breathe
An Egyptian baby who underwent an operation to remove the head of a twin that failed to develop in the womb is gradually being trained to breathe independently, one of the doctors treating her was quoted saying in Cairo on Monday. "The child was placed on a ventilator and it is removed from time to time to train her to breathe naturally, so it can be permanently removed," Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoted doctor Waleed Sharsheerah saying. Ten-month old Manar Maged had been suffering from a very rare birth defect known as craniopagus parasiticus, a problem linked to that of conjoined twins linked at the skull. A 13-hour operation in Benha north of Cairo to remove the head, which could smile and blink but was not capable of independent life, ended on Feb. 19.

■ South Africa
`Brain drain' raises concern
An estimated 20,000 professionals have left Africa every year since 1990, a regional UN conference heard in Cape Town on Monday. Low levels of economic growth and direct foreign investment were to blame for the exodus of skills, South Africa's home affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said at the start of a Global Commission on International Migration's hearing on Africa. "The consequence is `brain drain' from those countries that can least afford to lose these skills, as well as increasing the flow of irregular migrants," she was quoted as saying. "The retention of skilled professionals on the continent is central to the African Renaissance agenda," Mapisa-Nqakula said in Cape Town. International debate on migration seemed characterized by "an emphasis on security at the expense of development," she said.

■ United States
Activists slam Chinese furs
Animal rights activists protesting outside a New York department store on Monday accused clothing makers Tommy Hilfiger and Sean John of using fur from China, where they say animals are skinned alive. Playing video of so-called fur farms in China, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood outside Macy's department store in midtown Manhattan, hoping to catch the attention of passersby at the busy intersection. The activist group cited results of an investigation, released last month, by the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan and Swiss Animal Protection that showed mistreatment of animals in the giant fur-exporting country. The video shows raccoons and foxes being beaten or slammed to the ground and still struggling as their skin is removed.

■ Jamaica
Woman caught with pot
A Japanese woman was in custody on Monday after she was charged with trying to export 10kg of marijuana hidden in her suitcase. Aoi Yamaki, 24, a Tokyo office worker, has been given time to settle on an attorney and will return to court on March 2 for a hearing. Police said Yamaki was at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay on Feb. 22, on her way to London's Heathrow Airport, when security examined the bags she had checked with Air Jamaica. Yamaki was summoned and when her bags were opened, 11 packages of compressed marijuana were found in a hidden compartment, police said. She was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, dealing in marijuana and taking steps to export marijuana.

■ Colombia
Clashes kill 13
A round of bloodletting between rival drug rings has left at least 13 people dead in southwest Colombia in the past few days, authorities said Monday. The military, meanwhile, said it had seized a boat laden with more than a ton of cocaine. The victims were all residents of remote villages in Narino state, a major cocaine-producing center on the Ecuadorean border. The jungles are dotted with rudimentary processing labs and coca fields that provide the main ingredient of cocaine. Hit men gunned down six people on Thursday at a farm there apparently in reprisal for the theft of coca paste and the equivalent US$13,000, said Narino police chief Colonel Luis Martinez. The next day, assailants on motorbikes shot dead three people.

■ United States
Teacher has sex with student
A California high school teacher was arraigned on Monday at a Sacramento court accused of having sex with a student in a car as her two-year child was strapped into the back seat. Margaret De Barraicua, 30, a teacher trainee, was charged with four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, a 16-year-old student. The married woman was caught having sex in the late afternoon last week in what was apparently a consensual agreement, officials said. "We received a call about a suspicious parked vehicle at a school here in Sacramento," said local police spokesman Justin Risley. "They got there and observed two people, windows-steamed-up type of thing. They found them to be partially clothed and engaging in what appeared to be sexual intercourse." Her two-year old son was strapped by a seat belt in the back of the car during the time, he said.

This story has been viewed 2498 times.