■ Philippines
Clerk arrested for extortion
An appeals court clerk in the Philippines has been sacked after she attempted to extort money from a litigant in return for a favorable decision, it was revealed yesterday. Elvira Apao lost her job -- as well as her pension -- -- after Manila's Supreme Court found her guilty of "gross misconduct." She had demanded 1 million pesos (US$18,315) from defendant Zaldy Nuez in exchange for a favourable ruling on his case pending before the appellate court. The case was also the first in Philippines' legal history to admit mobile phone text messages -- or SMS -- as evidence.
■ Sri Lanka
Suspected rebels kill official
Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels shot dead a senior government official in eastern Sri Lanka Friday ahead of a visit to the region by a Norwegian peace envoy, the defense ministry said. T. Thavarajah, the main civil servant in the town of Tirrukkovil, was shot as he returned home, defense ministry spokesman Daya Ratnayake said, adding that he was believed to have been killed by Tiger rebels. The guerrillas gave no immediate reaction to the shooting, which came two days ahead of a visit to the eastern province by Norwegian envoy Erik Solheim.
■ New Zealand
`Breakfast bonks' increasing
There is more than coffee and toast on the breakfast menu in New Zealand's staid South Island city of Christchurch. Sex with a prostitute is an increasingly popular way to start the day, the local newspaper reported yesterday. "A lot of men these days like to stop for a quickie on the way to the office," a prostitute told The Press, reporting an increase in morning rush hour business after prostitution was legalised last year. "They wake up with a need and if it's not met they can now find someone to satisfy it before they start work for the day." The woman said there had always been prostitutes servicing the "breakfast bonk" market, but with the prostitution now legal they did not have to hide.
■ Australia
Tsunami drew pedophiles
About 20 convicted Australian pedophiles unsuccessfully tried to travel to Indonesia and Thailand immediately after the Dec. 26 tsunami to prey on vulnerable children, a newspaper reported yesterday. The pedophiles were recorded on a new Australian child sex offender register which requires them to tell police where and when they intend to relocate or travel, The Weekend Australian newspaper said. Police alerted Indonesian and Thai authorities that the men intended to visit early this year and those governments denied them visas, Western Australia state police Detective Sergeant Martin Voyez told the newspaper.
■ Vietnam
Leader admits war horrors
An influential former leader has, for the first time, acknowledged the pain caused to millions of people by the defeat of the South Vietnamese regime to communist forces from the North 30 years ago. The remarks of former prime minister Vo Van Kiet were reported in Tuoi Tre newspaper. "Our victory was great, but we had to pay for that victory with our pain and losses," said Kiet, who was among those in charge of taking over Saigon, after the communists overran the US-backed South Vietnamese forces in the city on April 30, 1975.
■ South Africa
Smoking chimp should quit
A zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit. Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday. "Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.
■ Germany
Birth to go on exhibit
An artist has invited 30 people to attend the birth of his first child in an art gallery in Berlin as part of an exhibition entitled "Birth," the DNA gallery said Friday. The spectators, who registered for the exhibition via the Internet, will participate in "an exceptional experience," said the artist Winfried Witt for who "man, because he is unique, is an existential object of art." The artist wants to "show living people, perceived at the same time as object and subject through a kind of magnifying glass and to expose man in the situations of his personal life." The exhibition, which opens Wednesday, is planned to continue until May 4, the due date for the artist's wife.
■ Lebanon
Israeli `spy' dog detained
Authorities have captured two dogs that crossed the border from Israel and were checking whether they were booby-trapped or carried electronic implants that could be used for spying, Lebanese security officials said Friday. The two dogs "infiltrated" Lebanon on Thursday through an opening in the barbed wire fence that separates the Kfar Kila village in southern Lebanon from the northern Israeli town of Metulla. The dogs wore collars with Hebrew writing on them, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They were being kept at a local police station while authorities figure out what to do with them.
■ United Kingdom
Fox hunters defying ban
As hunting rituals go, the welcome was less fortifying than the traditional stirrup cup. The mouthful of abuse directed by one hunt follower at monitors from the League Against Cruel Sports expressed the rancor and suspicion stirred up by the new Hunting Act. "Either you fuck off now," threatened the irate rider of a quad motorbike, "or you have 20 minutes and then you piss off." Such greetings, it seems, are becoming more common. Two months since the ban on hunting with dogs was introduced, there have been no prosecutions of hunt members and animal rights activists are beginning to suspect the law may prove more difficult to enforce than expected. According to the Countryside Alliance, about 800 foxes were killed in the five weeks after the introduction of the ban.
■ Greece
Stolen motorcycles found
Police said Friday they found 50 motorbikes -- originally stolen in Japan -- following a raid in central Greece. Three Greeks and one Japanese national were arrested and charged with theft and forgery of documents, after the motorcycles were discovered in Trikala, 328km from Athens. The suspects' names were not released. Police said the gang had set up a company based in Trikala to sell the bikes -- most of them high-power models that were stolen from the Japanese capital, Tokyo.
■ Canada
Seal hunt closely watched
After twice being delayed by bad weather, the last leg of Canada's contentious seal hunt got under way Friday with little protest on the ice floes off northwestern Newfoundland. Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, complained that his ship had been escorted for four days by a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker. It was confirmed that a Coast Guard vessel was keeping an eye on the Farley Mowat "to make sure they knew where it was." Police are still investigating complaints from seal hunt opponents who said they were assaulted as they tried to observe the first hunt earlier this month.
■ United States
Boy faces murder charge
A 13-year-old US schoolboy appeared in court on charges that he murdered a 15-year-old acquaintance who allegedly teased him about his team losing a youth baseball game. The boy is accused of killing teenager Jeremy Rourke with a blow to the head with an aluminum baseball bat on Tuesday after a row broke out in a snack bar line at a baseball field near Los Angeles. If convicted in a juvenile court, the boy could be sentenced to anything between probation to youth incarceration until he is 25.
■ United States
Geffen allows beach access
Colorful movie and music mogul David Geffen has given up a years-long battle to bar the public from the beach in front of his multi-million-dollar compound in the ritzy enclave of Malibu. Ending a three-year dispute with local residents over access to public beaches, the founder of DreamWorks SKG studios handed over the key to locked wooden gates next to his home. California Coastal Commissioner Sara Wan said, "The public will be able to go to the beach in a couple of days. I don't think he had a choice." The case was brought against the billionaire Hollywood mogul by the group Access for All. Geffen has forked over a total US$300,000 dollars in attorneys' fees and in fines.
■ United States
Asian cops file lawsuit
Asian police officers working for Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have been subjected to racial slurs and denied promotions, a federal lawsuit charged. The lawsuit, filed by an Asian police society, accused non-Asian officers in the Port Authority of making derogatory references to Asian food and mocking Asian accents over police radio. "The derogatory remarks and racial slurs against Asian police officers create a hostile work environment and perpetuate prejudice, disparate treatment and employment discrimination against Asian police officers," the lawsuit said. It said anyone who complained was either ignored or faced retaliation. It said no Asian officers were promoted to sergeant from 1996 to January 2001, even though more than a dozen were eligible.
■ Mexico
Human remains unearthed
Construction workers digging a ditch outside a home in an exclusive Ciudad Juarez neighborhood found a skull and a femur and alerted authorities. Police were sent to the scene to determine whether there are remains of other people buried there. The house was uninhabited at least since September when it was put up for sale. Juarez has been plagued by a string of unsolved slayings against women. About 100 killings follow an eerily similar pattern in which young women were sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the desert outside the city.
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
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