■ Australia
Cyber date goes badly
Lonely heart Chris Barker hooked up with "Sally 69" on an Internet dating site and arranged for her to visit his Sydney home. "We had discussed the fact that she was into bondage and that she would like to tie a guy up," Barker, 31, told police in a statement read out to a court. Katie "Sally 69" Broomhall tied Barker to the bed with plastic ties she had brought with her. She then complained of a headache and went out to her car for some pills. She returned with a man wearing a hood. When Barker freed himself, the pair were gone, along with his TV, video recorder, DVD player, digital camera, computer, printer, mobile phone and watch. Broomhall is contesting the charge that she held Barker hostage but pleading guilty to aggravated break and enter.
■ China
Gas blast traps over 50
A gas blast has trapped more than 50 coal miners in the latest accident to hit the world's deadliest mining industry. The accident happened early on yesterday in the Nuanerhe colliery in Chengde County, Hebei Province. The condition of the trapped miners was unknown. The local mining regulator had ordered the pit to suspend production three times after an explosion in January 2002 that killed 27 miners.
■ Australia
Massive iceberg adrift
An iceberg 50km long has drifted into a bay near Australia's Casey station in Antarctica. Called B15G, it is part of a huge iceberg -- B15 -- that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in the 1990s. Station leader Jeremy Smith said B15G is clearly visible on the horizon. "As the Antarctic winter closes in, B15G appears as a grey line occupying ninety degrees of arc and defining half our horizon," Smith said. "But often it is sulking in shadow and difficult to distinguish from the sky in the background." Smith said the iceberg contains more than 220km3 of ice, or enough for 15,000,000,000,000,000 ice cubes.
■ Malaysia
Alcohol leak covers beach
A massive leak of alcohol from a palm oil factory blanketed a beach in a popular resort area with a white, ice-like substance, prompting an emergency clean up operation. Thousands of people heading to work at the Bayan Lepas Industrial Area stopped to look at the faux icy beach. The spill occurred after one of the 15 transfer pipes at the Palmco Oil Mill inside the Penang port leaked fatty alcohol into the sea. The polluted water washed ashore to the adjacent beach, encrusting the sand with crystalized white waste material, which factory officials said was not hazardous. Nearly 100 mill employees, environmental officials and fishermen worked to clean up the spill.
■ India
Murder sentence commuted
A court yesterday cancelled the death sentence handed to a Hindu extremist for the killing of an Australian missionary and his two sons six years ago, and instead ordered life imprisonment. The high court in the eastern state of Orissa also acquitted 11 people sentenced to a life term by a lower court for burning alive Graham Staines and his two children in a remote village in the state. Judges gave no reason for commuting the death sentence on Dara Singh and the acquittal of the others. A mob attacked Staines and his sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, as they slept in their jeep in a remote village in Orissa. They torched the vehicle and killed all three.
■ Venezuela
Government wants bomber
Prosecutors pressed their demand Wednesday for the US to extradite a Cuban exile accused in the 1976 bombing of an airliner, and said a negative response would show US hypocrisy in its war on terror. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the US government would be accused of having a double-standard if it refuses to turn over Luis Posada Carriles. Since escaping from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, Posada -- who at one point was on the CIA payroll -- has spent most of the time moving stealthily from country to country, thereby avoiding being tried for masterminding the bombing. US officials have said they would not hand over those suspected of crimes to any country that would then turn them over to Cuban President Fidel Castro's government.
■ Zimbabwe
Police arrest vendors
Police have arrested up to 550 people in Harare in a massive operation aimed at ridding the city streets of unlicensed vendors and touts, the state-controlled Herald newspaper said yesterday. Large quantities of goods were confiscated in the raids on Wednesday and more than 60 vehicles impounded in the operation, codenamed "Restore Order," the newspaper said. Among those detained were homeless people, who police say make the streets unsafe. "These are the very same people who commit crimes and we will deal with them in accordance with the law. They must go where they belong. No one in Zimbabwe comes from nowhere. Everybody belongs somewhere," a senior policeman told the paper.
■ United States
Murder caught on camera
A woman on her way to work was shot in the back of the head by a man who followed her from a bus stop, a killing recorded by post office surveillance cameras. Police on Wednesday released grainy images of the crime in hopes that someone will come forward with more information. Patricia McDermott, 48, of Elkins Park, commuted daily to her job as an X-ray technician at Pennsylvania Hospital. She was shot in the head shortly before daybreak on Tuesday, steps from where she got off the bus. Police have not established a motive. McDermott had no known enemies or problems at work and was well-liked by those who knew her, Ross said.
■ United Kingdom
Japanese make better clock
Japanese scientists say they have made a technical breakthrough in the quest to perfect the world's most accurate clock, a timepiece that would lose only one-quintillionth (a million-million-millionth) of a second per day. University of Tokyo researcher Hidetoshi Katori and colleagues devised a "pendulum" of strontium atoms that ride on the crest of highly stable laser-generated lightwaves, according to their study, which appears in yesterday's edition of Nature, the weekly British science journal. The Japanese work is the latest step in an international race to develop a laser-powered atomic clock.
■ United States
Bob Denver recuperating
Bob Denver, star of the 1960s television show Gilligan's Island, is recuperating from quadruple heart bypass surgery, his agent said on Wednesday. Denver, 70, had the surgery recently after a checkup revealed problems, said his Los Angeles-based agent, Mike Eisenstadt. He is recuperating at his West Virginia home.
■ Switerland
WHO warns of bird-flu threat
Bird flu may be capable of human-to-human transmis-sion, raising fears of a global pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday. Investigations in Vietnam earlier this year concluded that "the viruses are continuing to evolve and pose a continuing and potentially growing pandemic threat," the agency said. "There is no evidence in any direction, but there are concerns," said Dr. Klaus Stohr, WHO's influenza chief. "There are elements that are worrisome." The H5N1 strain of bird flu in Southeast Asia has so far only jumped from animals to humans, but not from person to person. It has killed 36 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four from Cambodia.
■ Georgia
Bush grenade was live
A grenade thrown toward US President George W. Bush during a visit to Tbilisi last week only failed to explode because of a malfunction, the FBI said on Wednesday. The FBI said the grenade, thrown while Bush made a speech in Tbilisi's Freedom Square on May 10, had been live and landed within 30m of him. "This hand grenade appears to be a live device that simply failed to function due to a light strike on the blasting cap induced by a slow deployment of the spoon activation device," an FBI official said.
■ Switerland
Russia wants ex-official
Russia has made an official request that Bern extradite former Russian atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov, who is being held in a Swiss prison on a US warrant, authorities in Bern said yesterday. The request was received earlier this week, the Justice Ministry said in a statement. Adamov was arrested earlier this month in Bern after US justice officials accused him of diverting up to US$9 million from funds intended to improve Russian nuclear security. The US has until June 30 to file an official request for Adamov's extradition. He has been indicted by a US federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on conspiracy to transfer stolen money and securities, conspiracy to defraud the US, money laundering and tax evasion.
■ Angola
Marburg warning issued
Marburg fever has killed more than 300 people in Angola, mainly through exposure to the deadly virus at home and at funerals, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in Geneva. The agency said Angolan health officials had reported 337 cases since late last year, 311 of them fatal. The vast majority of cases have been in the northern province of Uige, epicenter of the world's worst outbreak of the Ebola-like disease. Despite better infection control at Uige hospital and collection of unsafe syringes in homes, "public understanding of the disease still needs to be improved," WHO said.
■ Finland
Doctor's forgetfulness fatal
A doctor was fined after he forgot to restart his patient's pacemaker following a routine check-up and the man later died, a court official said. The man went to see his doctor in the town of Kuopio in September 2002. But after the meeting the doctor forgot to turn on the pacemaker's heartbeat regulating mechanism, and the man died in August 2003 aged 43, the official said yesterday, citing a Kuopio regional court decision from May 17. The doctor, who called the oversight an accident, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and breach of duty, and fined 2,120 euros (US$2,723).
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