■ Hong Kong
Thief nabs gourmet crabs
A thief has pinched 70 hairy crabs from a Hong Kong shop, police said yesterday. The top-quality crabs -- a seasonal delicacy hugely popular among local residents -- were worth about US$1,280. More than 600 cheaper crabs were left untouched. "The thief only stole the expensive crabs. He had good taste," the shop's owner was quoted as saying by Ming Pao Daily. The burglary was discovered early on Saturday when a police officer found that the shop's gate was pried open, Yue said.
■ India
Rice handout ends in tragedy
A stampede at a flood relief camp in rain-battered southern India yesterday killed at least six people and injured four others. The stampede in the Vyasar Padi neighborhood of Madras occurred as hundreds of flood victims jostled to grab rice and money offered by the government. Heavy rains and a storm battered India's southern coast last month, killing at least 100 people and leaving thousands of people homeless. The government of Tamil Nadu state said it would provide aid consisting of 10kg of rice and 2,000 rupees (US$45) in cash to each flood-affected family.
■ Thailand
Army prepares for unrest
The army will send sniffer dogs to Bangkok's skytrain stations and subways amid concern that violence in the country's Muslim-majority south could spread to the capital. The army plans to buy 12 German Shepherd dogs for bomb search operations to prevent attacks on Bangkok's popular skytrain and subway systems, the English-language daily Bangkok Post said, quoting an army source. The plan was due to concern that "southern separatist attacks will spread to Bangkok," the daily said, adding Thailand's Mass Rapid Transit Authority workers would receive four weeks of training in bomb search operations.
■ INdonesia
Prisoners jailed for drugs
Almost half of Indonesia's prison population have been jailed on drug offenses, a report said yesterday quoting Justice Minister Hamid Awaluddin. "Around 40 percent of the inhabitants of jails are drug case prisoners," Awaluddin said. A justice ministry official said last week that Indonesia currently hosts 100,611 convicts and detainees in jails across the country. Officials have said that Indonesia is no longer a mere transit point on the drug distribution path between mainland Asia and Australia but has become a market of its own. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said that around 3.2 million Indonesians or almost 1.5 percent of the population were drug users, with about 78 percent of them were youths aged in their 20s.
■ Cambodia
Man in naked rampage
A naked rampage by a German national through the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, which featured two escapes from hospital and a midnight visit to the city's namesake temple, ended when he was captured and handed over to his embassy, police said yesterday. Wat Phnom district police chief Sun Bun Lay said that a 26-year-old man identified as Adolf Chisttine had begun his rampage on Saturday night after he was found sleeping in front of a local supermarket and taken to hospital by a concerned local. "He woke up, took his clothes off and ran out of the hospital screaming. We brought him back but he escaped again and we found him still naked at the Wat Phnom temple trying to join a troupe of local monkeys, so the hospital called the German embassy," Bun Lay said.
■ Germany
Sensitive devices exported
Berlin has warned German industry that missile-builders in Iran and Syria are obtaining sophisticated German equipment via criminal, Moscow-based companies, news magazine Focus reported on Saturday. The equipment was initially being legally exported to Moscow, where the middlemen, posing as legitimate Russian industrial companies and research institutions, were sending it straight to Iran and Syria. Focus said Iran was obtaining measuring devices, propulsion systems and guidance systems to enhance its Shahab 3 medium-range missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and could hit targets in Europe.
■ United Kingdom
Clooney gets into brawl
US actor George Clooney got into a brawl with a security guard at a bar in London's West End, a British newspaper reported on Friday. The Evening Standard said Clooney, 44, had gotten into a pushing fight with the guard at Meza in the early hours of Friday morning, after using the bar's rear entrance in an effort to avoid paparazzi photographers. It was unclear why the actor had become involved in the alleged scuffle at the bar, where a reception was being held to mark a screening of Clooney's latest film, Good Night and Good Luck.
■ Austria
Man lived with dead wife
A pensioner from Traiskirchen near Vienna lived next to the corpse of his wife for at least six months without any of their neighbors noticing. Police found the badly decomposed body of the woman in the bedroom of the couple's flat as they responded to a request by the town's welfare office to find the woman. The 66-year-old confused man did not initially want to allow the officers into his flat and said that his wife, also 66, was sick and could not be disturbed. The childless couple had very little contact with their neighbors and lived a "very distanced and reclusive" life, police said. The man was taken to a psychiatric institution. Initial examinations indicated that the woman died of natural causes.
■ United Kingdom
Five jailed for `hate' mag
Five men were jailed for publishing and distributing race-hate material in an extreme right-wing magazine which a judge described as "offensive, shocking and explicit." The men were sentenced to a total of 15 years in jail for promoting the magazine Stormer, which featured anti-Semitic articles, advocated the firebombing of synagogues and offered a guide to making bombs. All five were members of the Racial Volunteer Force, a white supremacist group. They all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to publish or distribute material intending to stir up racial hatred.
■ United Kingdom
Gay bishop makes address
The first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, addressed a crowd of about 150 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in London on Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of Changing Attitude, a British-based group that promotes the ordination of openly gay clergy. Robinson said, "It never occurs to [other dioceses] that the church might be a better place and a more godly place with our full inclusion, Robinson said. Robinson said he has hope for the gay clergy of the future. "This is going to end with our full inclusion," he said. "We won't live to see it, but it's going to happen."
■ Mexico
Reef ruined by hurricane
A fragile coral reef off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula could take more than a century to recover from a thrashing by Hurricane Wilma last month, the government said on Friday. The National Protected Natural Areas Commission, known as Conanp, said the storm's three-day rampage across the eastern region late last month damaged a 40km stretch of delicate reefs off the island of Cozumel. "The area was hit hard by the storm and it could take at least 100 years for the reef to recover," Conanp regional director Alfredo Arellano said in a telephone interview from the resort city of Cancun.
■ Israel
Biblical church discovered
Archaeologists on Saturday said they have discovered what may be the oldest Christian church in the Holy Land on the grounds of a prison near the biblical site of Armageddon. Authorities said the ruins are believed to date back to the third or fourth centuries. The dig took place at the Megiddo prison in northern Israel. Scholars believe Megiddo to be the New Testament's Armageddon, the site of a final war between good and evil. They said the discovery could shed new light on an important period of Christianity, which was banned by the Romans until the fourth century.
■ Cuba
No to jet offer
The government on Friday said it had no need for F-16 fighter jets offered this week as a gift by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. "We do not need the planes, and he [Chavez] has not made a formal offer," said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Chavez said on Tuesday his government may give its U.S.-made F-16 fighters to Cuba or China after accusing Washington of blocking purchases of spare parts. Chavez has become the closest ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose air force is equipped with Soviet-built MiGs. Washington sold Venezuela 24 F-16 fighter aircraft in the 1980s when Caracas was seen as an ally.
■ Iraq
Prisoner dies in jail
A 65-year-old man being held at the US-run prison in southern Iraq died on Saturday, the US military reported yesterday. The inmate at Camp Bucca, located near the Kuwait border, "complained of chest pains" and was rushed to the camp hospital, where he "went into cardiac arrest ... and died after efforts failed to resuscitate him" the military said. The man's body "will be transferred to the family after an autopsy," the statement read. Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib are the two main US-run prisons. Camp Bucca, the largest US-run prison in Iraq, has capacity for some 6,500 detainees.
■ Italy
Minister condemns Iran
The foreign minister said the international community must help guarantee Israel's security and condemned Iran's president for saying the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map," in an interview published on Saturday. "Ahmadinejad's words help those who are working to make sure the Middle East never stabilizes, and fuels ... the fire that fuels terrorism," Fini was quoted as saying by Milan daily Corriere della Sera. Fini skipped a pro-Israel rally on Thursday outside Iran's embassy in Rome saying he feared Tehran might retaliate against Italian interests. During a visit to Israel earlier this week, Fini said Italy wants Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the