■ Hong Kong
Stabbing suspects arrested
Six suspects allegedly involved in the stabbing of a 7-year-old boy, including his stepmother, were arrested by police yesterday in a case that has shocked the territory. Four men and two women aged 16 to 48 were taken into custody. The victim, identified in media reports as Shum Ho-yin, was stabbed in the right arm repeatedly a week ago while his grandmother was held at knifepoint. "We've arrested Yin's stepmother and another four men and a woman. The suspects arrested include the mastermind, the attacker, a taxi driver and other accomplices," police said. Shum's stabbing sparked an outpouring of sympathy, with celebrities donating money to the boy's family.
■ Australia
Fish smuggler charged
A 50-year-old woman has been charged with a quarantine offense for allegedly smuggling three tiny fish in a face cream jar from Taiwan. The woman, an Australian resident of Taiwanese descent, faces a maximum prison term of 10 years and a A$110,000 (US$82,889) fine on a charge for smuggling wildlife -- juvenile fish each less than 1cm long, Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service spokesman Carson Creagh said. "It does mystify us why she would bring such tiny fish in such a strange way," Creagh said. The fish had not yet been identified, Creagh said. They will eventually be destroyed. The woman was also carrying aquarium weed, leading officials to suspect she wanted to keep the fish as pets. "Quarantine officers couldn't be certain they were free from diseases or parasites that could have devastated our native wildlife," Quarantine and Inspection Service spokesman Carson Creagh said.
■ United States
Nazi past catches up to man
Authorities have moved to revoke the US citizenship of a Chicago man implicated in the Nazi destruction of the Jewish ghetto in Lviv, Ukraine, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday. Osyp Firishchak, 86, "was on the front lines enforcing Hitler's brutal methods against the Jews of Lviv," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter said in a statement. Firishchak, who entered the US in 1949 and acquired citizenship in 1954, was found to have concealed his service in the Nazi-sponsored Ukraine Auxiliary Police from 1941-1944.
■ Russia
Beslan marks school tragedy
Bells tolled here yesterday one year to the minute after gunmen seized Beslan's School Number One and took more than 1,100 people inside it hostage as Russia marked the first anniversary of a tragedy that still reverberates through the country. The bells rang at precisely 9:15am and were succeeded by the music of Mozart's Requiem played quietly at the site of the attack where hundreds of people, victims' families and others, placed flowers in the ruins of the school's gymnasium where most of the victims died. Streets in the area around the destroyed school were cordoned off by police and pedestrians were required to pass through metal detectors to enter the school grounds.
■ Tanzania
Man escapes lion attack
A Tanzanian man survived a mauling by a lion which sprang at him from the bushes on his way to his farm, the local Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. Omari Waziri Mtonga was with two relatives when the beast hauled him to the ground, clawing and biting him repeatedly in the coastal district of Kisarawe, the paper said. "I somehow managed to muster the strength to battle with it," the 50-year-old said from his hospital bed. "I was in a state of shock, but kept fighting it with all my strength. I refused to lie down and be killed by the animal."
■ Italy
Pope grants writer a visit
Oriana Fallaci, the controversial Italian author who is awaiting trial on charges of vilifying Islam, has been granted a secret audience with Pope Benedict XVI. Fallaci's diatribes against Muslims have turned her into a hate figure for the Italian left and a heroine for the anti-immigrant right. The Pope's decision to grant her the privilege of a private meeting came after he appeared to reach out to Muslims on his first trip abroad since becoming pontiff. Vatican sources reacted with embarrassment to the disclosure of the Pope's meeting with Fallaci.
■ Poland
Solidarity's launch marked
World leaders paid tribute to Solidarity, saying the movement launched 25 years ago in the Gdansk shipyards was a catalyst for some of the most profound changes Europe has seen in recent decades: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. The movement's leader, Lech Walesa, has often credited John Paul with inspiring the birth of the movement with his historic 1979 visit to his homeland, during which he celebrated Masses that subtly criticized the communist regime. A year after that, on Aug. 31, 1980, 18 days of strikes began at the Lenin Shipyards of Gdansk and elsewhere that culminated with the communist regime making unprecedented concessions to the workers, including allowing the Soviet bloc's first free trade union.
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