World News Quick Take

■ Australia
Man prostitutes wife
A man has been charged with forcing his Egyptian wife to work as a prostitute in a Sydney brothel, police said yesterday. Police have not released the identities of the 37-year-old man or his former wife. He faces up to 25 years' imprisonment if convicted under sex slavery laws. The couple came together in an arranged marriage in Egypt in early 2000, New South Wales state police said in a statement. "The couple flew to Australia in mid-2000 and a fortnight later, the man allegedly told his 25-year-old wife she would be required to work in order to pay for her Australian visa," the statement said. He allegedly forced his wife to work in a brothel for two years.

■ China
Beijing bans ships
China issued a ban on ships entering an area of the East China Sea near a disputed maritime border with Japan while it works on an offshore gas field, Japanese media reported. Citing an unidentified Web site of the Chinese maritime authorities, Kyodo news agency said China would ban ships from the area while it laid pipelines and cables on the sea floor as part of an expansion of the Pinghu gas field. The work will last until Sept. 30, it said. The area straddles the disputed median line separating the two countries' 370km exclusive economic zones and covers some waters Japan regards as in its exclusive area, Kyodo said late yesterday.

■ India
Royal girlfriend to wed
Nepal's Devyani Rana, once the girlfriend of crown prince Dipendra who shot dead nine members of his family and himself in a spectacular regicide in 2001, will marry into an Indian political dynasty, reports said yesterday. Rana, who also has links with India's aristocratic Scindia family, fled Nepal soon after the bloodbath in which a drunken Dipendra shot his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, and seven other members of the royal family before killing himself. Unofficial reports said the crown prince's shooting spree was probably triggered by his parents' opposition to his plans to marry Rana, whose family had been at odds with the kingdom's monarchy.

■ Thailand
Turtle populations dwindling
"Tsunami walls" built along the Andaman Coast after the 2004 disaster are leading some species of turtles to the brink of extinction, a report said yesterday. In some areas where the leatherback turtle was once abundant, marine biologists have counted fewer than five, while the numbers of hawksbill and olive ridley turtles are less than 100 each, the Nation newspaper reported. Turtle populations in the southwestern province of Phang Nga are particularly threatened by a 1m-high, 2.5km-long concrete wall.

■ Hong Kong
Same-sex unions blocked
Hong Kong, home to hundreds of thousands of British nationals, has blocked local residents from entering into same-sex civil unions at the British consulate, a consulate spokeswoman said yesterday. Hong Kong's Home Affairs Bureau told the British consulate on Tuesday that the Chinese territory wouldn't allow same-sex couples to marry on the mission's premises, Consulate-General spokeswoman Vanessa Gould said. British law allows British nationals to enter civil unions with non-British nationals of the same gender at British diplomatic offices worldwide, so long as the local government doesn't object.

■ United Kingdom
Cheap Chinese fur floods EU
Cheap including the pelts of cats and dogs, is flooding into the EU from China, an animal welfare charity warned on Saturday. The British-based Care for the Wild International (CWI) said the growth of anonymous online shopping had led to a sharp increase in the availability of fur from Asia on the Internet. CWI chief executive Barbara Maas said the charity had found household pet skins available online, with a dog pelt costing less than £10 (US$17.50). "We were also offered skins of domestic cats for less than £2.60," she said. "Our research shows how even the skins of domestic animals can be easily and cheaply bought and delivered directly to your doorstep." CWI urged the British government to outlaw importing cat and dog fur.

■ United Kingdom
Ex-oil tycoon assaulted
Oil Mikhail Khodorkovsky, would not file charges against a fellow inmate who allegedly slashed his face, his lawyer was quoted as saying yesterday. "My client has refused to launch criminal action against the man who attacked him and we will abide by his decision," lawyer Natalya Terekhova said, Interfax news agency reported. According to Khodorkovsky's press service he was slashed in the face with a handmade knife as he sleep in his Siberian prison cell on Thursday. Prison officials, however, said that Khodorkovsy received no more than "a scratch on the nose" when a cellmate hit him during an argument.

■ Ireland
Ahern honors rebels
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern laid a memorial wreath yesterday in honor of 15 executed leaders of the Easter 1916 rebellion against British rule. The somber wreath-laying ceremony inside Dublin's Kilmainham Jail, where the 15 men were shot by firing squad in the weeks after British forces routed the rebels, was to precede a 2,500-strong military parade down O'Connell Street, past the General Post Office -- which still bears bullet scars from its time as headquarters for the Easter Rising. Yesterday's events were the first major commemoration of the Rising since 1966.

■ Serbia
Prisoner stays tight-lipped
A prisoner using needle, thread and safety pins stitched his lips and tongue together to avoid a court hearing in his robbery case, the Blic newspaper reported on Saturday. Zoran Raskovic, 27, in custody at Belgrade's central prison, is one of six people charged with a 2003 bank heist. A prison guard discovered Raskovic on Friday morning after he had apparently sewed his mouth together overnight. The needle and the safety pins were likely smuggled into the prison, Blic said. A surgeon removed the stitches, but Raskovic, who had lost some blood, was later too weak to appear in court on Friday.

■ Russia
`Pig Olympics' begin
Hundreds for the first day of the annual "pig Olympics" on Saturday, cheering a field of 12 piglets who competed in three events: pig-racing, pig-swimming and "pigball." Muscovites laid bets on challengers such as Mykola from Ukraine, Nelson -- representing South Africa -- and home favorite, Kostik Russisch Schwein. Alexei Sharshkov, vice-president of the Sport-Pig Federation said all the competitors would "go on to produce a new generation of sport pigs. They don't get eaten."

■ Mexico
Cops nab bird smuggler
A German man suffered an apparent heart attack after police arrested him at the Mexico City airport for carrying a suitcase holding 95 live birds, authorities said on Saturday. In a news release, police said the 55-year-old man acknowledged he did not have any permits for the birds, which were packed in cardboard boxes punched with air holes. Shortly after he was arrested, the man suffered an apparent heart attack and was taken to a hospital, where he was under police guard, the release stated. Police later found a duffel bag left in the airport terminal with another 40 birds in the same kind of cardboard boxes.

■ Guatemala
Police die saving beauties
Two officers died, one was missing and another was injured after a navy boat carrying beauty queens capsized off the coast of Guatemala and Mexico, officials said on Saturday. The boat -- carrying around 30 people, most of them contestants in the Miss Pacific beauty pageant -- capsized after being battered by a wave some 270km southwest of Guatemala City. Army and police personnel were also on board to ensure the contestants' safety a spokesman said. "The police [successfully] helped rescue the passengers, but they appeared to succumb to fatigue, because in the end, they did not have the strength to save themselves," police spokesman Carlos Calju said.

■ United States
Proof suspect arraigned
The suspect in the shooting death of rapper Proof has been arraigned in Detroit, Michigan, on a pair of weapons charges. Mario Etheridge, 28, is charged in the shooting with carrying a concealed weapon and discharge of a firearm in a building. His lawyer entered not guilty pleas on his behalf at the hearing on Saturday. Etheridge remained jailed on Saturday night on a US$70,000 bond, with a preliminary hearing in the case scheduled for April 26. He has been in custody since surrendering on Wednesday; his lawyer has said the shooting was in self-defense.

■ United States
Iowa City streets re-open
Iowa City streets showed signs of returning to normal on Saturday in the aftermath of a tornado that carved a 5.5km path of destruction through the heart of downtown. Meanwhile tornadoes ripped through Nebraska, damaging farm buildings and downing power lines. The strong storms dumped heavy rain and hail and produced winds of up to 97kph, but no injuries were reported. In Iowa City, crews opened streets that had been blocked off since Thursday's tornado and restored power to the 6,500 customers cut off by downed utility lines.

■ Israel
Prisoner swap mooted
Authorities release a jailed Palestinian uprising leader if Washington grants clemency to Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy analyst convicted of spying for the Jewish state, Israel's Army Radio said yesterday. It said Israel plans to propose the swap after Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert forms a government. Israel would hope to convince the US that freeing Marwan Barghouthi, a senior figure in the Fatah movement, would undermine the new Palestinian rule of Islamist group Hamas, Army Radio said. Barghouthi is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for masterminding Palestinian militant attacks. In public, Israeli officials have ruled out his release. US administrations have been similarly firm on Pollard serving out a life term handed down in the 1980s for treason.