■ New Zealand
Frustrated bomber held
Police arrested a man yesterday after he threatened to blow himself up in the city of Tauranga. A 57-year-old Slovakian man was arrested and a fake bomb was found after police entered the Devonport Towers hotel. The man entered the hotel late Thursday morning threatening to blow himself up. Staff said he wanted to speak to Prime Minister Helen Clark. A former room mate of the man said he was frustrated because immigration authorities would not renew his visa to stay in New Zealand.
■ Australia
Static man shocks staff
A man who favoured polyester clothes built up enough static electricity in his body to burn holes in the carpet he walked on, news reports said yesterday. Frank Clewer generated an estimated 30,000 volts of static electricity just in a shopping trip in the city of Warrnambool, it was reported. The first Clewer knew of it was when cracks started coming from his jacket. He left behind burn holes the size of coins. The local fire brigade was called and the building was evacuated.
■ China
Fireworks staff killed
An explosion at a fireworks factory killed 13 people and injured four others in Hunan Province, state media said yesterday. The explosion destroyed seven workshops at the Jiangnan fireworks plant in Yiyang city late Thursday afternoon, the Xinhua news agency said. "This is the most serious fireworks production accident so far this year in the province's fireworks industry," provincial safety official Wu Guanbao said. One of the four injured remained in serious condition.
■ India
Mob attacks golf course
One person was killed and 18 others injured Thursday when 150 villagers demanding jobs staged an armed assault on a golf course in the New Delhi suburbs, police said. A security guard was killed when the mob opened fire. Villagers, guards and some club members were hurt in the clashes as the protesters vandalised the Japypee Golf Club. The villagers say the club's management promised to employ people on whose land the nine-hole course was built, but later reneged on its promise.
■ China
Shanghai hikes subway fares
Managers of Shanghai's heavily overcrowded subway system have hiked fares in hopes of persuading more people to take the bus, the city government said yesterday. About 1.3 million people use the subway every day in Shanghai, a city of about 20 million people, well beyond the three lines' intended capacity. Train cars are usually jam-packed, ensuring long rush hour waits to board. Fares calculated on distance ridden rose by 1 yuan (US$0.12) on Thursday, bringing the cost of the cheapest ride to 3 yuan, the city government said in a notice posted on its Web site.
■ Myanmar
Landslide buries school
A landslide triggered by torrential rain engulfed a primary school in southeastern Myanmar and up to 30 people, most of them children, are feared dead, the Red Cross said yesterday. "So far as we heard, a primary school building was buried under a mountain of earth," a Red Cross official in Yangon, capital of the former Burma, told reporters. "Ten bodies have been found and about 20 are still missing while about 30 were injured. Most of them are young pupils," said the official, who did not want to be identified. State-owned media in military-ruled Myanmar have not reported the incident, which occurred on Wednesday in Kyaung Kaw, a village around 630km southeast of Yangon.
■ Japan
Elderly pickpocket busted
Some 81-year-olds might prefer to putter in the garden or play with their grandchildren. But Japanese police have accused an elderly man of a different past-time: picking pockets. A man identifying himself as Hiroshi Abe, 81, was arrested on Thursday in western Japan and accused of lifting a wallet from a man's pocket, police said. "There aren't many 80-year-old criminals. He's the oldest to have been arrested this year in our precinct," said a police official in Osaka, 408km west of Tokyo. The man, who had no fixed address and was carrying no identification papers, told police that he had been arrested and imprisoned before, the official said on customary condition of anonymity.
■ United Kingdom
Rapist filmed in the act
A "sadistic" rapist who used his mobile phone to film an attack on a young woman was jailed for 14 years by a British court on Thursday. Jon Leaver, 23, from Lancashire in northern England, recorded the rape to send the images to his friends. But he was unaware that he was being filmed himself on closed circuit television (CCTV). During the attack he punched his 19-year-old victim so hard that he broke her jaw in two places, as well as breaking two of her fingers. Leaver, who has a large tattoo on his stomach featuring the face of a disfigured woman, was convicted at Liverpool Crown Court of rape and causing grievous bodily harm after the jury watched the attack on CCTV.
■ Russia
Baby delivered on Aeroflot
A Russian woman gave birth on an Aeroflot plane flying to the US, Russia's flag carrier said on Thursday. Lyudmila Yalinus delivered the baby boy with the help of several flight attendants, after two doctors who were on board refused to help for unspecified reasons, said Viktor Sokolov, an Aeroflot spokesman. The delivery went well and Yalinus was able to disembark the plane on her own carrying the baby and was greeted by the infant's father, Sokolov said. "It is amazing that she was able to get off the plane herself. That speaks to the strength of women's bodies," Sokolov said.
■ Germany
`Shields' to thwart attacks
The government has reached a secret agreement with the country's nuclear power plant operators to erect electronic anti-terror "shields" to jam aircraft navigational equipment, according to a report yesterday. The federal Environment Ministry views the measure as a means of preventing a Sept. 11-style attack on nuclear facilities by terrorists using planes as bombs, the report in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung said. The radio transmitters would jam satellite navigational equipment aboard incoming aircraft, effectively making nuclear facilities "invisible" to pilots who were not within visual distance.
■ United States
Soldier jailed for trafficking
A US soldier who was stationed in Colombia to help fight drug trafficking was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty for his role in smuggling cocaine into the US using military planes. Army Staff Sergeant Kelvin Irizarry-Melendez pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy, wrongful importation of cocaine and a charge related to taking money to Colombia. Irizarry-Melendez apologized to his family, the court and the Army in a brief statement. He said he joined in the drug ring in part to pay for medical treatments to help correct his daughter's debilitating foot problem.
■ Italy
Crime boss nabbed
Police have arrested the suspected leader of a Naples criminal clan involved in a vicious turf war that sparked dozens of murders last year, officials said yesterday. Paolo Di Lauro, considered the head of one of the feuding factions in the Camorra crime syndicate, was arrested overnight in Secondigliano, a suburb of Naples, Carabinieri paramilitary police said. A turf war between the Di Lauro clan and a splinter group that began in November claimed at least 130 lives, according to authorities, triggering a string of police crackdowns.
■ Denmark
Rembrandt portrait found
Police have recovered a self-portrait of 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt that was stolen in a daring raid on Sweden's National Museum in 2000, a police spokesman said yesterday. Danish news agency Ritzau said the police caught the four men while they were displaying the US$40 million painting to a potential buyer at a Copenhagen hotel on Thursday evening. A police spokesman said two Iraqi men, a Gambian man and a Swede have been arrested. The painting was stolen alongside two masterworks by Renoir in December 2000. One of the Renoirs was recovered in Sweden in 2001.
■ Germany
`No smiles,' ministry says
The Interior Ministry wants people to stop smiling when they have their photograph taken for the new biometric passports. Passport photos should be taken "face on, the head uncovered, and with the most neutral expression possible," the ministry said on Thursday, six weeks before the introduction of the new identity documents on Nov. 1. "However pleasant a big smile might be, it cannot be accepted" if the biometric recognition technology was to work, the ministry said.
■ United States
Ophelia heads out to sea
Ophelia crawled north toward New England and Canada yesterday after pounding the US east coast for two days and drenching parts of North Carolina. It was also downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm. Coastal residents in North Carolina, where the storm's gusty wind ripped apart businesses and damaged homes, were hit hardest. North Carolina Governor Mike Easley said gauging the scope of the damage was difficult because of the storm's slow path. "It's almost like working three different storms," he said.
■ United States
Gonzales vows pledge fight
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the Justice Department will fight to overturn a federal court ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance can't be recited in public schools because it contains a reference to God. Gonzales said on Thursday that the pledge is one of several expressions of national identity and patriotism that mention God but don't violate the Constitution's ban on state-sponsored religion. Meanwhile, the Senate voted late Thursday to condemn Wednesday's ruling by US District Judge Lawrence Karlton in San Francisco.
■ United States
Film director Wise dies
Robert Wise, who won four Oscars as producer and director of the classic 1960s musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music, has died at age 91. Wise died on Wednesday of heart failure after falling ill and being rushed to a Los Angeles hospital, a family friend said. Wise celebrated his 91st birthday on Saturday. He was nominated for seven Oscars during a career of more than 50 years and directed 39 films in all.
■ Canada
`Prince of pot' faces hearing
One of the world's leading cannabis legalization campaigners faced an extradition hearing yesterday in Vancouver as US drugs agencies seek to put him on trial in the US. Marc Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture, faces charges of trafficking in marijuana seeds and money laundering. His supporters demonstrated outside Canadian embassies in more than 30 countries during the past week to urge Ottowa not to yield to pressure from the US.
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