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World News Quick Take

■ China
Cooking-oil thugs punished
A court handed down suspended death sentences and jail terms to 12 members of a cooking oil smuggling ring that bribed customs officials and evaded US$300 million in tariffs, state media said yesterday. Yang Gaiqing, 50, a Hong Kong resident, and co-defendant Liu Hao were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for coordinating a ring that smuggled 827,500 tonnes of edible oil and paid 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) in bribes over 20 years, Xinhua news agency said. Ten others were jailed for three to 10 years after six years of investigations and litigation.

■ China
Dam frowns on umbrellas
The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, opened again to tourists this week -- on the condition that they don't bring canned drinks, video cameras or, bizarrely, umbrellas. The dam in Hubei Province opened to tourists for the first time last year from July to September. The security checks are as strict as those at airports and ensured zero accidents during last year's season when the dam hosted 100,000 tourists, Xinhua said. But it did not explain the ban on video cameras and drinks, let alone the umbrellas.

■ China
Advertising a little too hot
Shanghai thinks some of its advertisements are a little too racy, and a new citizen's committee will decide which ones need to cover up. Subway stations in particular are plastered with ads showing models in ladies' underwear. Yet some may have gone too far. Plans to more strictly vet ads were prompted by complaints over a billboard for a skin care product that featured a Hong Kong starlet flashing her bare thigh, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.

■ Singapore
Maid-molester jailed
A marine engineer has been jailed for 12 months after grabbing the breast of an Indian maid employed by his family, media reports said yesterday. District Judge Tan Boon Gin found Veloo Ganesan, 50, guilty of molesting the 27-year-old woman in December 2004, the Straits Times said. He was freed on Wednesday on S$20,000 (US$12,345) bail pending his appeal against the conviction and sentence. The judge cleared Veloo of molesting a second maid, 32, also from India.

■ Singapore
Repentant man forgiven
A Japanese man who fled over a decade ago to escape prosecution in Singapore over the accidental death of a teenage girl has avoided jail after returning to show remorse, a report said yesterday. Although Yoshinari Tanimura's offense of causing death through negligence could have gotten him a two-year jail term, a district judge fined him S$6,000 (US$3,726), saying he deserved mercy, the Straits Times said. Tanimura, then a 27-year-old company manager working in Singapore, was driving his car on October 8, 1994 when he hit motorcyclist Chua Cher Yong, 19, and a pillion rider Lian Hong Geok, 16. Chua was injured while Lian died four days later. Tanimura fled to Japan, which has no extradition treaty with Singapore, to escape prosecution.

■ Hong Kong
Father commits suicide
A father strangled his wife, then jumped 14 storeys to his death in front of his young daughters, police said yesterday. The incident is the latest of a series of family tragedies in the former British colony that has raised concerns about the level of support offered to troubled families in the city of 6.8 million. Tsui Chi-shing, 43, strangled his wife and left her for dead in the family's high-rise apartment before leaping to his death from the corridor outside watched by his daughters, aged nine and 10. The girls sought help from neighbors who alerted police after the incident on Wednesday afternoon. Tsui's wife, Lau Sam-kau, dazed and badly injured, regained consciousness before police arrived.

■ Japan
Man cut up about reprimand
An elderly man returned to a convenience store and threatened staff with a chainsaw after being told to leave for reading magazines for hours, police said yesterday. Yasumasa Matsuzaki, 70, would visit the 7-Eleven in Ibaraki prefecture northeast of Tokyo every day. Staff finally lost patience when he spent three hours browsing through magazines on Wednesday. When the manager told him not to read magazines without buying them, Matsuzaki left and then returned with a chainsaw, police said. "I'll cut you to pieces!" Matsuzaki said, gunning the motor in a threatening manner, a police official said. Matsuzaki then left the chainsaw with the motor still running at the front entrance -- and went back to reading magazines, police said. "He was still reading magazines even after I called police," the manager, 44, told a local newspaper. Matsuzaki was arrested at the store.

■ Japan
Pirates hit freighter
Pirates attacked a Japanese-skippered freighter in the Malacca Strait off Indonesia's Sumatra island, stealing cash and equipment, the Japan Coast Guard said yesterday. It was the latest attack in the region reported by Japan, which has stepped up aid to fight piracy in Southeast Asia as nearly all of the oil powering its economy comes through the strait.

■ United Kingdom
Man held over punk song
British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said on Wednesday. Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport in northern England, and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off. Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem London Calling, which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down," while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected." Mann told the Daily Mirror: "He didn't like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don't think there was any need to tell the police."

■ Denmark
Guards busted for stealing
A Danish security firm said on Tuesday it had fired three of its guards for stealing toys and DVDs from critically ill children at Copenhagen's main hospital. The guards were caught on video tape after managers became suspicious when toys intended for the children -- many of whom have cancer or need heart transplants -- started to disappear. "I feel terrible, and we are deeply sorry about this," said Peter Boye Larsen, Falck Securitas' managing director.

■ Czech Republic
Man eats frogs to survive
A Czech man ate frogs and other small animals for four days after he was trapped on an island cut off by flooding, the daily Pravo reported on Wednesday. Zdenek Bucek, 30, was taking a short-cut through the woods near the southeastern town of Breclav when a flood wave trapped him on a small patch of high ground. To survive, he caught frogs and drank the floodwater until he flagged down an emergency crew passing by on a boat four days later. "I had no idea a flood was coming. I had not even noticed that the forests were declared off limits," he said. Pravo said Bucek had matches, but did not elaborate on how he preferred his frogs.

■ Spain
Kids locked up in pig pens
Swiss teenagers sent to a center for problem children based at a remote Spanish farmhouse were allegedly locked up in pig pens and kept on a diet of milk and muesli if they misbehaved, police said. The case came to light after some of the children ran away and one was found at a nearby railway station. Police in the northeastern town of Sant Llorenc de la Muga arrested three people who had been running the center and accused them of illegally detaining children and using physical and psychological violence against them. "Those in charge of the center allegedly mistreated the children daily, shutting them up for days on end in pig pens if they did not want to work or worked poorly," a police statement said.

■ United Kingdom
Swan had H5N1: TV report
A wild swan found dead in Scotland had the H5N1 strain of bird flu that is fatal to humans, Sky News television reported yesterday, quoting unnamed sources in London. The EU's bird flu laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, southeast England, was expected to confirm later yesterday whether the bird -- found in the Cellardyke area of Fife -- was carrying the H5N1 strain. Official confirmation that the swan had H5N1 would make Britain the 13th country in the EU to find the virus in wild birds, the European Commission has said. It would also trigger measures to prevent its spread amongst poultry.

■ United States
Fake sheik sentenced
A man who posed as a member of the Saudi royal family in order to sell a forged Rembrandt painting was sentenced to five months in federal prison and another five months of home confinement. Majed Ihmoud, of St. Charles, Missouri, pleaded guilty in October to conspiring to commit mail fraud for his role in the fake Rembrandt caper. Ihmoud dressed as a sheik and took a forgery of The Man With the Golden Helmet, long believed to have been painted by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn, to a St. Louis hotel on Aug. 12, 2004. He expected to sell it for US$2.8 million. The buyer was actually an undercover FBI agent.

■ United States
Did Jesus walk on ice?
The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation -- he walked on a floating piece of ice. Professor Doron Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, used records of the Mediterranean Sea's surface temperatures and statistical models to examine the dynamics of the Sea of Galilee. The study found that a period of cooler temperatures in the area between 1,500 and 2,600 years ago could have included the decades in which Jesus lived.

■ Peru
Fujimori weds in prison
Former president Alberto Fujimori, now under arrest in Chile, married his Japanese hotel magnate girlfriend by filing legal documents in Japan, she confirmed yesterday. Satomi Kataoka told reporters that she had filed a marriage registration in Tokyo before boarding a plane to Peru yesterday to support pro-Fujimori candidates ahead of Sunday's national election -- among them her new stepdaughter, Keiko Fujimori, who is running for Congress. Couples can be wed under Japanese law by submitting a written report of the marriage to a local municipal office. "Today is the happiest day of my life," Fujimori said in a statement, according to Japan's Kyodo News agency.

■ United States
Ministers shun academy
The defense ministers of Argentina and Uruguay have decided to stop sending soldiers to train at a controversial military academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, according to a statement by a Washington-based human-rights organization. The institute, which is attended by between 700 and 1,000 students annually, was known School of the Americas (SOA) until the year 2000. SOA became notorious after some of its graduates went on to become brutal military leaders in Latin America's "dirty wars" using SOA manuals. Graduates included the late Salvadoran rightwing militia leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his interrogation methods and Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian leader now serving 40 years for drugs offences in the US.

■ United States
Gene Pitney dies
Gene Pitney, who had a string of hits, including 24 Hours from Tulsa, was found dead in his hotel room on Wednesday after a concert. Pitney, 65, apparently died in his room in Cardiff, Wales of natural causes, police said. During a long career, Pitney had hits as a singer -- Town Without Pity, (The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance -- and as a writer, penning Hello Mary Lou for Ricky Nelson and Rubber Ball for Bobby Vee. ``We don't have a cause of death at the moment but looks like it was a very peaceful passing,'' said Pitney's manager, James Kelly.

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