■ Cambodia
Police in wild buffalo chase
Police have been ordered to capture dozens of buffalo and cows roaming in the Angkor Wat heritage zone because of the dung they are leaving among the ruins, an officer said yesterday. Colonel Tan Chay, commissioner of police for the World Heritage-listed area, complained that at least 30 buffalo and 10 cows have been regularly meandering through the ruins seeking food and leaving a mess behind. He said that half a dozen police had spent around six hours yesterday trying to catch buffalo bathing at Sras Srang, or the pool of ablutions, but only managed to seize one.
■ Hong Kong
Live fast, die with hair
Hong Kong men would rather die younger than lose their hair, with almost 60 per cent saying they would exchange two years of life to avoid going bald, a news report said yesterday. Ninety percent of men interviewed said they believed thicker, fuller hair would make them more attractive and more confident at work, the South China Morning Post reported.
■ New Zealand
A real pain in the neck
A five-year-old boy spent two days with a 12cm-long plastic tube in his throat, which doctors had forgotten to remove after an operation to extract several teeth, the child's mother said yesterday. Kurtis Matthews emerged severely distressed from the hour-long dental operation on Friday, his mother said. For two days, the boy suffered coughing fits and was unable to speak, eat or drink properly, but his mother thought the discomfort was part of side-effects from a general anesthetic he received during the operation. She finally brought him to a local medical center, where a doctor spotted the end of the tube in the boy's throat. The boy was rushed to a hospital where the tube was extracted.
■ Malaysia
Free drugs for addicts?
The government yesterday said it is considering a proposal to supply drugs to addicts for free in a guarded environment where authorities can monitor them in an effort to tackle the country's escalating drug problem. The addiction rate continues to rise despite Malaysia's tough drugs laws which impose mandatory death by hanging for drug traffickers, said Baharum Mohamed, a senior member of parliament. He suggested the government should supply free drugs to addicts on a remote island so that those who need their supply can be closely monitored by authorities.
■ Malaysia
Web site in hot water
The government plans to penalize an independent news Web site for an April Fool's prank in which it reported that three ministers were being prosecuted for corruption, news reports said yesterday. The Cabinet has decided that Malaysiakini.com should be punished, Parliamentary Affairs spokesman Nazri Aziz was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper. "You cannot just relay news which is not accurate," Nazri was quoted as saying. "It is irresponsible and tantamount to slandering the government."
■ China
24 die in bus plunge
At least 24 people died after a passenger bus plunged over a 170m-high cliff in Sichuan Province, state media reported yesterday. The bus was carrying 37 people when it left a section of highway on Mount Balang, in the traditionally Tibetan Aba region of Sichuan, on Tuesday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said.
■ United States
Wife's lover lived in closet
A man was beaten to death, allegedly by his wife's lover, whom the husband had just discovered was living in a closet in his home. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey Freeman over the weekend. Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom house for about a month without her husband's knowledge. Her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him. Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk. Martha Freeman said that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.
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