■ Singapore
Policeman shoots himself
A police officer shot himself in the head and died playing Russian roulette with his service revolver, a state coroner's report said yesterday. Corporal Arvin Rangoonathan, 20, had an "unusual dangerous tendency to play with his revolver," the Straits Times quoted coroner Tan Boon Heng as saying. Arvin was fascinated with his Taurus revolver and enjoyed taking pictures of himself in various poses with his camera phone, the coroner's court heard in testimony. The pictures were recovered from his cellphone at home after Arvin's colleagues found his body lying on the gymnasium mat on the fourth floor of a neighborhood police center where he worked, said Assistant Superintendent David Ang.
■ China
H5N1 mystery deepens
A woman who died last week from H5N1 avian influenza had no known contact with poultry and seldom ate poultry meat, Chinese state media said yesterday. The 41-year-old factory worker, known only by her surname, Zhou, died on Dec. 21 in the southeastern city of Sanming, Fujian Province, an urban area where China has reported no outbreaks of the virus among birds or other animals. The case was not reported until Dec. 29 "because experts could not explain how she caught the virus," an unidentified health ministry official said. All poultry raised within 3km of Zhou's home had been vaccinated by Dec. 5. Investigators tested and culled 230 birds near Zhou's home after the infection was confirmed, but found no infections. Tests on people who had close contact with Zhou also proved negative, the official said.
■ India
Mom throws baby into well
A woman in eastern Jharkhand state threw her six-month-old baby into a well to appease her husband who suspected the child was illegitimate, a news agency reported on Friday. Police in state capital Ranchi said the woman Rani Thakur admitted to having thrown her baby into a well to prove her "chastity" to her husband Gangesh Kumar, the IANS news agency reported. Kumar did not believe that the six-month male baby was his child. "Gangesh never touched his son and it was disturbing Rani. So she decided to dump the boy into a well," senior superintendent of police Anil Palta was quoted as saying.
■ Japan
Gas causes evacuation
Residents close to a Japanese hot spring where a family of four was killed by poisonous fumes were urged to evacuate yesterday after hydrogen sulfide gas was detected, a local official said. Sixteen people near the Doroyu hot spring in Yuzawa city, about 450km north of Tokyo, were advised to leave after officials detected hydrogen sulfide levels at more than 10 parts per million, according to city spokesman Atsuo Kondo. While the levels were not dangerous, residents were asked to evacuate as a precaution, Kondo said.
■ Thailand
Graft group geared up
A newly formed anti-corruption group is gearing up to expose the "rotten innards" of the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, which has come under withering criticism for graft and cronyism, local media said yesterday. The "Corruption Watch" group includes Auditor-General Jaruvan Maintaka, who some government politicians attempted to oust after she dug up corruption schemes involving public funds. "The government has done so little to stop corruption," a group member, Senator Nirun Phitakwatchara, was quoted as saying by the Nation newspaper. Rampant corruption has been a key factor in the declining popularity of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party.
■ Singapore
Randy cobbler sentenced
A 64-year-old man, who came up with a scam to have sex with Vietnamese women looking for Singaporean husbands, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, news reports said yesterday. Cobbler Fan Kiet Teng duped marriage agencies into releasing Vietnamese brides to him by giving them dud cheques for S$10,000 (US$6,100). He pleaded guilty to charges of cheating a 21-year-old Vietnamese woman into having sex with him. District Judge Jasvender Kaur described the scam as "despicable," the Straits Times said.
■ Pakistan
Militants kill two
A rocket attack, a shootout, a bombing and an ambush left two government soldiers and an attacker dead, officials said. The attacks were in Baluchistan province, where ethnic militants often target government buildings, railway tracks and paramilitary forces as part of a campaign to get more royalty payments for resources extracted in their areas. Tension has been on the rise in Baluchistan since security forces dismantled alleged rebel hide-outs in Kolhu, east of the provincial capital, earlier this month. Tribal elders say the raids left dozens dead, including women and children, a charge authorities deny. In the latest attacks, assailants killed two soldiers as they drove through Khuzdar, a town 300km southeast of Quetta on Friday, said Rahmat Ullah Hasni, a local police official.
■ United Kingdom
Town tries to lighten up
First they tried posters, then portable toilets, then police on horseback. But now council chiefs in Wrexham, north Wales, have unveiled a radical alternative to quell drink-fueled violence in their town center: mood lighting. A 300m stretch in Wrexham's late-night drinking hotspot has been adorned with 115 pastel-colored lights on stainless steel-plated street lamps. A Wrexham police spokeswoman said officers supported the calm-inducing lighting, but it was too soon to know whether it actually worked. "So far all we've noticed is that they've brightened everything up a bit," she said.
■ United Kingdom
Animal stories most weird
Dogs went woof over a Brazilian puppy love motel, an Australian trained mice to surf and an Indian village married off toads in bid for rain. In the world of the weird and wacky, the animal kingdom was the big winner last year. A love motel for dogs in Sao Paulo proved a big hit with amorous Brazilian pooches, offering a heart-shaped mirror on the ceiling and headboards resembling doggy bones. Shane Willmott trained his three mice to enjoy Australia's favorite sport with special mouse-size surf boards. He even dyed their fur so he could spot them among the crashing white waves.
■ Germany
Thieves leave a trail
German police on Thursday captured two men suspected of stealing from 15 cars and two garden sheds by following their footprints in the snow for several kilometers. Policemen were checking up on a car whose alarm had been set off just after midnight in the town of Hoentrop when they found a smashed window and two sets of footprints which they followed more than 10 streets. The two sets of footprints led them directly to the entrance of a flat where the burglars not only stored their booty but also left their shoes and gloves to dry.
■ Egypt
25 refugees killed
The death toll among Sudanese refugees during violent clashes with Egyptian police has risen to 25, judicial sources said yesterday. The refugees died after several thousand riot police wielding batons and water cannon on Friday forcibly removed hundreds of Sudanese who had been staging a protest outside UN offices in Cairo for three months. A judicial inquiry has been opened into the violence. Investigators went to a Cairo morgue where they found the bodies of 25 victims from the clashes, judicial sources said.
■ United States
Allergies bad for sex
Symptoms of itchy, tearing eyes and nasal congestion due to seasonal allergies interfere with individuals' ability to enjoy sex, results of a study conducted in Turkey suggest. However, treatment with an antihistamine can help. Seasonal allergies are known to interfere with work, school and social life. Cengiz Kirmaz and colleagues at the Celal Bayar University Hospital in Manisa surveyed 27 women and 16 men with seasonal allergies and 40 healthy adults. They observed that women with untreated seasonal allergies had reduced sexual desire, arousal, ability to reach orgasm and intercourse satisfaction compared with healthy control subjects. Allergies affected men's erectile function, intercourse satisfaction, sexual desire and overall satisfaction with sex.
■ United States
Pack of chihuahuas attacks
A pack of angry chihuahuas in Fremont, California, attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop, authorities said. The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy's home and rushed the officer in the doorway, detective Bill Veteran said. The teenager had been detained after the traffic incident, Veteran said. It was the second bizarre incident in as many hours for the Fremont Police Department. Two hours earlier, a homeowner in Niles reported that an intruder broke into her home and added pornography to her computer.
■ United States
Hinckley gets leave
A federal judge loosened restrictions on John Hinckley Jr, the man who shot former US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, to allow him his first overnight visits outside the Washington area in almost a quarter-century. He was given tentative permission to spend 25 nights in separate visits with his parents at their home 320km away in Williamsburg, Virginia. US District Judge Paul Friedman said Hinckley, 50, "is not permitted to leave one or both parents' supervision at any time during the course of the conditional release" except when specified under a hospital-administered treatment plan -- and then the separation may be no longer than 90 minutes.
■ United States
Violin theft was a hoax
A San Francisco music student faked the theft of a precious 18th century Italian violin in a case that drew international attention this week, police said on Friday. "She confessed," police sergeant Neville Gittens said of 23-year-old Sabina Nakajima. "We are still clarifying what her motive was." A hunt was launched after Nakajima told police a violin crafted by Nicolo Gagliano in 1761 and valued at US$175,000 dollars was gone from her car when she fetched it from a tow yard on Wednesday. It was found on the steps of a church on Friday and handed over to police by church workers, according to Gittens.
■ United States
People love `crappy' coffee
Coffee lovers are paying up to US$175 for a pound of coffee beans which have passed through the backside of an Indonesian furry mammal. Kopi Luwak beans from Indonesia are rare and expensive, thanks to a unique taste and aroma enhanced by the digestive system of palm civets, nocturnal tree-climbing creatures about the size of a large house cat. "People like coffee. And when they want to treat themselves, they order the Kopi Luwak," said Isaac Jones, director of sales for Tastes of The World, an online supplier of gourmet coffee, tea and cocoa. Despite being carnivorous, civets eat ripe coffee cherries for treats. The coffee beans, which are found inside of the cherries, remain intact after passing through the animal.
■ United States
Sex offenders sought
Governors in states that accepted Hurricane Katrina evacuees are being urged to find about 2,000 registered sex offenders who fled the Gulf region during the hurricane's mayhem and may have vanished from legally required tracking. The Administration for Children and Families estimated that about 30 states are affected. In November, agency officials matched the names of sex offender registries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with the names of evacuees who applied for disaster assistance.
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
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
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