■ Afghanistan
Militants killed in ambush
US warplanes killed five suspected militants near the Pakistani border, after guerrillas launched an overnight attack on US and Afghan military positions. The planes were scrambled after insurgents fired 13 rockets at two US bases in the southeastern province of Khost and turned rockets and guns against three border posts late Tuesday, the US military said. "Coalition aircraft killed five insurgents," the statement said, adding that US troops also responded with artillery fire from their bases near Khost city.
■ Japan
Pundit turns pervert
A famous Japanese economist and TV pundit was fined Wednesday for trying to peak underneath a 15-year-old girl's skirt on the escalator of a Tokyo train station. The professor, Kazuhide Uekusa, 44, was caught red-handed as he placed a mirror under the girl's skirt in April last year in a bid to get a look at her underwear. Uekusa, who denied the allegation, was fined ¥500,000 (US$4,750). Uekusa was a well-known professor at Waseda University's graduate school, one of the top schools in Japan, and chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute. The university fired Uekusa after the case emerged.
■ Singapore
Kitten defenestrator jailed
A woman who threw a box containing two kittens from her ninth-floor Singapore flat was jailed for two months, news reports said Tuesday. Victorie Marie-Madeleine Hyde Coupland, 42, told the court she originally planned to care for the abandoned kittens, but their conditions deteriorated, the Straits Times said. One of the cats had already died and the second had fallen into a semiconscious state, she told the court Monday. Coupland put the animals into a box and threw it out of her window on January 23. A neighbor called the police. The woman was not accused of cruelty to animals, but was charged with committing a rash act by tossing the kittens out in the box, which endangered the personal safety of others.
■ New Zealand
Shar-pei in tissue shocker
A New Zealand mother demanded that a local toilet roll manufacturer stop using a cuddly-looking dog to advertise its product after her 4-year-old son was mauled by a dog of the same breed, a newspaper reported yesterday. Racheal Stark of Christchurch said that her boy, Jacob, had surgery Sunday after a friend's shar-pei dog attacked him when he went to pet it. She said she had complained to Purex "because the way I see it, it's almost false advertising," she told the paper. "They were originally Chinese fighting dogs, and they're not the cuddly things you think," she said.
■ Australia
Sheep protest approved
Australian woolgrowers failed Tuesday in a legal bid to stop a high-profile animal rights group organizing a boycott of their products to protest at alleged industry cruelty towards sheep. Australian Wool Innovation had been seeking damages which could have totalled millions of dollars from the US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) over its campaign for a global boycott of Australian wool until the practice of "mulesing" is stamped out. Woolgrowers acknowedge the procedure, which involves cutting away strips of the sheep's hindquarters, is painful but argue it is necessary to spare sheep a painful death from fly-strike -- an infestation of the flesh by maggots from blowflies.
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