■ Australia
Sniffer dogs get soft noses
An "embarrassing administrative bungle" was how a police chief yesterday explained a mix up that for almost six months had sniffer dogs being trained to search Melbourne streets for traces of talc rather than tabs of cocaine. But Paul Evans, deputy commissioner of the Victorian force, conceded to newspaper the Australian that corruption was another possibility, given the cost differential between a bag of talcum powder and one containing cocaine. What is clear is that a bag of cocaine given to the dog squad for training purposes was switched with one containing a less valuable white power -- talc. Training went ahead and since January the seven German shepherds have been honing their skills at tracking down traces of talcum power. "I'm sure our dogs have got very soft nice smelling noses at the moment," Evans said.
■ Thailand
Cricket-eaters hospitalized
More than 100 people have been hospitalized over the past week with food poisoning after eating crickets, a doctor said yesterday. Some 103 villagers in the Ban Phai district of northereastern Khon Kaen province were admitted to hospital suffering from diarrhea, dehydration and low blood pressure, a local doctor said. "Only the villagers who ate crickets immediately after buying them had health problems, but villagers who recooked the crickets had no problems," he said. Traders boiled, dried, bagged and sold 170kg of crickets across the district on May 15 with the first victims hospitalized that night, the doctor said.
■ India
Assassins' child seeks help
The teenaged daughter of the assassins of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is hoping his widow Sonia Gandhi will help her meet her jailed parents, it was reported yesterday. Arithra was born to Nalini and Murugan in jail 13 years ago. Her parents were sentenced to death by India's Supreme Court for the murder of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991. The couple were arrested as key players in the assassination along with five others. Arithra, 13, has petitioned Sonia Gandhi complaining that the Indian high commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka has been refusing her a visa to visit India to meet her parents, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. She last met her parents when she was three.
■ Indonesia
Anti-Suharto protests held
Thousands of protesters marked seven years since the downfall of former dictator Suharto yesterday, burning his portrait and demanding his prosecution on corruption charges in Jakarta and at least seven other cities. The largest protest took place in Makassar, South Sulawesi, where hundreds of students chanting "Put Suharto On Trial" marched to the local parliament. "He must be put on trial because his years of corrupt practices have caused great suffering among the people," said Jaffar Mahmud, one of the student leaders. No arrests were reported.
■ Bangladesh
Strike shuts nation
Thousands of security forces fanned out across the country yesterday, as the main opposition party launched a general strike to protest the killing of one of its members. The strike organized by the Awami League shut down schools and shops and disrupted business and public transportation in more than 60 cities and towns. The dawn-to-dusk strike -- the second such protest this week.
■ Chile
Pinochet plagued by strokes
Former dictator Augusto Pinochet was released from hospital after suffering the latest in a series of slight strokes as lawyers bringing cases against him said they expected more health issues to arise as Pinochet is due in court. Lawyers bringing tax evasion charges against the former strongman told Friday's La Nation daily that they expected Pinochet to take another trip to hospital next week, when a ruling was expected on whether to strip Pinochet of his immunity to face trial on alleged tax evasion involving scores of secret accounts in foreign banks. A hospital visit would have "the aim of putting pressure on the judges regarding the state of his mental health and vascular problems," they said.
■ United States
Woman sat on by camel
A beast of burden turned the tables on a US woman, giving her a load to bear when the camel sat on her and pinned her to the ground. On the bright side -- if there is one to such a situation -- the woman in Bethlehem, West Virginia, had her mobile phone in her hand at the time and called emergency responders to rescue her, Jim Copenhaven with the emergency center in nearby Harrison said Friday. The woman, who authorities declined to identify, was painting the fence of the camel's pen on Wednesday when the nearly 700kg dromedary knocked her down and unceremoniously sat on her. "The dispatcher tried for 12 to 15 minutes to calm the woman down," Copenhaven said.
■ United States
`Yabba-dabba-dooer' dies
Henry Corden, the voice of cartoon caveman Fred Flintstone's "Yabba-dabba-doo!" for more than two decades, has died. He was 85. Corden died of emphysema Thursday night at AMI Encino Hospital, his long time agent Don Pitts said Friday. Corden's wife Angelina, was with him at the time. He took over as the loud-mouth Fred Flintstone when original voice Alan Reed died in 1977. Reed had been doing Flintstone since the character debuted in 1960. Born in Montreal, Corden moved to New York as a child and arrived in Hollywood in the 1940s.
■ United Kingdom
Romans wore socks
Archaeologists claim to have found evidence that the Romans wore socks with open-toed sandals to shield against the cold during their conquest of Britannia, the Guardian reported Friday. While it was known that the Roman warriors lined their hobnailed sandal-boots with socks, the discovery that they wore socks with unwarlike open-toe sandals has excited some historians. Roman ruler Tacitus is known to have recorded that the climate in Britain was "pretty foul, with frequent rain but no extremes of cold."
■ South Africa
Animal-killing workers fired
Kruger National Park dismissed four workers on Friday for beating at least six antelope to death. The four men, who worked in the technical services and laundry departments of the world-famous park, lured the impala into a laundry before beating them to death with blunt instruments and skinning them, a park spokesman told reporters. "The intense cruelty of the incident horrified us," the park's executive director Bandile Mkhize said in the statement after the men were sacked following a three-week disciplinary hearing. The men smuggled the meat through a hole in a fence for storage in their living quarters.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in