■ Japan
Koizumi irate over allegation
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was angered yesterday by the opposition's accusation that he was drunk in parliament. "I didn't have a single drop of alcohol that day," he said of the allegations by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). "The DPJ has become such an irresponsible political party. I am puzzled why they lie," he said. On Friday, opposition members refused to vote on a motion by Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to extend the parliament session on the grounds that ruling party lawmakers were "red-faced" and "intoxicated." After parliament voted to extend the session, the DPJ submitted motions to punish six LDP lawmakers including Koizumi for allegedly being drunk.
■ China
Bus' stop sparks melee
More than 200 people attacked police in Guangdong Province after officers tried to detain a bus driver who broke a traffic law, state media said yesterday. Two police officers stopped a bus on a road near the border of Guangzhou and Foshan cities on Saturday when it waited too long for more passengers, Xinhua news agency said on its Web site. The officers demanded to see the bus license but the driver refused. The ticket collector and driver pushed the police off the bus and drove away. Police stopped the vehicle further down the road after receiving a call from the officers. However the bus operators also called for backup and more than 200 people arrived at the scene. Police reinforcements were then sent. The chaos caused a traffic jam that lasted nearly three hours.
■ Laos
Civil servants told to pedal
The government has called on all civil servants to ride bicycles to work in the capital to save on energy imports, Radio Vientiane said yesterday. The state-run radio station, in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok, appealed to all civil servants to stop driving their cars to work and to switch to pedal power as the country's economic situation was bad due to rising oil prices. Laos has no domestic sources of energy other the hydro-electricity and all petroleum products are imported.
■ Japan
Five temblors rock country
Five moderately strong earthquakes rattled central, northern and eastern Japan yesterday, rocking buildings across a wide swath of the main island. There were no reports of injuries or damage. The first two quakes -- measuring 5.6 and 4.1 on the Richter scale -- struck at 1:19am and 1:34am in Chiba Prefecture, to the east of Tokyo, the Meteorological Agency said. But the depth of the quakes, at about 50km, meant that much of their power was dampened before they were felt above ground. After 1pm, two more temblors hit less than 15 minutes apart in the northern prefecture of Niigata, with a magnitude of 5 and 4.1, and were centered in Niigata Prefecture at a depth of 15km, the Meteorology Agency said. An hour after the Niigata quakes, a 4.5 tremor struck in Gifu Prefecture.
■ Vietnam
Precious dishes off the menu
The Kim Ngan Ngu Thien (Golden Feast) restaurant opened in January offering dishes mixed with gold, which it claimed enhanced the food's nutritional value, the official Vietnam News daily reported yesterday. But the Hanoi eatery was ordered to stop putting gold in its meals until authorities test the metal's purity and consult with experts about potential health risks, the report said. Gold isn't an approved food additive, it said.
■ France
Boy, 11, fatally shot
Police in a tough suburb north of Paris were yesterday hunting for the killer of an 11-year-old boy who was caught in a shoot-out between rival gangs on the weekend. Sidi Ahmed was shot in the heart and the throat during the firefight Sunday in La Courneuve, and died hours later in hospital. He had been in the street to clean his father's car when the shooting started.
■ United States
`Jackass' pranksters charged
A man and a teenager face criminal charges for allegedly staging a fake kidnapping that recreated a scene from a movie that celebrated stunts and gross-out gags. A store clerk reported the apparent kidnapping, saying that while a customer was paying for gasoline a teenager jumped from the trunk of the man's car with his hands bound and his eyes blindfolded. The man chased the teen, caught him, threw him back into the trunk and drove off. However, when officers found Daniel Reedinger and the teen, the pair said they were re-enacting a prank from the 2002 film Jackass: The Movie.
■ United Kingdom
Spud farmers protest phrase
British potato farmers were taking to the streets yesterday to call for the expression "couch potato" to be struck from the dictionary on the grounds that it harms the vegetable's image. The British Potato Council wants the Oxford English Dictionary to replace the expression with the term "couch slouch," with protests planned outside parliament in London and the offices of Oxford University Press. Kathryn Race, head of marketing at the council, which represents some 4,000 growers and processors, said the group had yet to receive a response. "We are trying to get rid of the image that potatoes are bad for you," she said.
■ Germany
Ethnic shopkeepers targeted
Police are looking for two cyclists riding dark-colored bicycles and carrying black backpacks in their hunt for the killers of seven foreign shopkeepers and operators of fast-food outlets. Since September 2000 six Turks and a Greek have been murdered with the same handgun, a Czech-made 7.65mm Ceska pistol, in Nuremberg, Munich, Hamburg and Rostock. In each case the victims were shot in the head. They were a florist, two fruit and vegetable sellers, two Turkish snackbar staff, a locksmith and a tailor. The two cyclists were seen on June 9 in Nuremberg shortly before the killing of the owner of a Turkish snackbar. They were aged between 20 and 30, looked "very much like each other," had short hair and were between 1.85m and 1.95m tall, police said.
■ Egypt
Executive a murder suspect
A French executive in charge of a US$34 million gas depot project was being held in prison yesterday after his wife was stabbed to death in Alexandria. Florence Belhomme, 35, was stabbed repeatedly with a kitchen knife at the luxury seaside villa where she lived with husband Fabrice and their three young sons. Belhomme, 45, frantically told police after the killing that three intruders had broken into the house, demanded the keys to his safe and then attacked his wife in bed, saying he'd fought with the killers. Police arrested Belhomme, saying they had found no signs of a break-in at the villa and that tissue and blood samples were found under his fingernails.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not