■ Hong Kong
Complaints over morgues
Families expressed concerns after allegations that staff at Hong Kong's public morgues mishandled corpses due to a lack of space. The Ming Pao Daily on Tuesday printed pictures and said it had video footage provided by an unnamed employee of a mortuary showing uncovered bodies piled on top of each other. Health department data shows three public mortuaries in the territory have storage space for 300 corpses, but handled nearly 6,500 bodies last year.
■ China
Illiterate man runs scam
An illiterate Chinese man who spent just 20 days in school passed himself off as top government leaders on the phone and swindled his partner out of nearly 14 million yuan (US$1.7 million). Xiao Hanming, 39, from Shantou, Guangdong Province, counterfeited government files and posed as the general manager of projects with direct investment from the central government, the China News Service reported. Xiao attracted a business partner with the scam, a Mr. Guo. When Guo became suspicious, he received a phone call from two central government leaders. The man at the end of the phone, however, was Xiao and Guo lost a total 13,908,900 yuan.
■ Japan
Elderly sailor found dead
An 81-year-old man who was attempting to sail solo from Japan to the US has been found dead aboard his drifting yacht, the Japanese Coast Guard said yesterday. Sakae Hatashita, a Japanese-American, had set off for home on June 15 after completing a seven-month voyage to Japan last year to bury his wife's ashes. A fisherman reported the yacht adrift in the Pacific off northeast Japan. "We have almost definitely identified the body as Mr Hatashita," a coast guard spokesman said.
■ United Kingdom
Sleepwalker climbs crane
A teenage sleepwalker was rescued after being found fast asleep 40m up on the arm of a crane, police said yesterday. Emergency services were called to a building site in London after a passer-by spotted the 15-year-old girl curled up on top of a concrete counterweight high above the ground. The teenager, who has not been named, had climbed up the crane and walked across a narrow metal beam while fast asleep during the incident, which happened on June 25. It is believed the teenager had walked out unnoticed from her home near the site in Dulwich, southeast London. She was brought down in a hydraulic lift after a two-hour rescue operation.
■ Cypress
UK ex-speaker donates bra
Britain's first woman speaker of the House of Commons is aiding a bra collection on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus with her own "tarty" offering to raise breast-cancer awareness. British women on the island plan to make the world's longest chain of bras to heighten breast-cancer awareness and raise funds for research. Labour peer Baroness Betty Boothroyd, a former dancer who was Britain's first woman speaker in parliament and is now a member of the House of Lords, has given to the cause. "In her own words it is a rather tarty red one," the Cyprus Mail daily reported. Organizers are trying to collect at least 90,000 bras, which hooked together, could be more than 60km long.
■ Jordan
Al-Zarqawi's mentor arrested
Jordanian authorities have arrested the spiritual mentor of Iraq's al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Jazeera television said. The Arabic channel quoted its correspondent as saying authorities arrested Issam Barqawi, better known as Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, as the television was broadcasting an interview with him. Islamist and security sources have said the 43-year-old Muslim cleric -- who moulded the militant Islamic views of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- was released on June 28 after a six-month detention at intelligence headquarters following his acquittal at a trial of Jordanian and Saudi sympathizers of al-Qaeda.
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