■ Thailand
Kickboxing apes to go home
More than 50 orangutans which were smuggled into the country to perform in kickboxing matches may finally return to their home countries two years after the government seized them, an official said on Tuesday. Talks are to be held with Malaysia and Indonesia later this week to determine where they should go, the deputy chief of Thai national parks said. "During the meeting we will finally decide which country the 54 orangutans will return to," Chawann Tunhikorn said. The orangutans were trained to fight each other in kickboxing matches for spectators at a zoo. The government seized the 57 and took them to the Khao Pratap Chang wildlife preserve.
■ Hong Kong
Expats in exodus
The expatriate population has slumped by 14 percent with a particularly sharp drop in the number of Britons living in the former colony, a news report said yesterday. The number of US, British, Canadian and Australian expatriates in the city of 6.8 million fell from 93,000 to 79,190 last year, according to the South China Morning Post. The biggest decline was among British expatriates, whose numbers fell by 24 percent from 17,780 in 2004 to 13,490. The figures do not include permanent residents, who have settled in Hong Kong after living in the city for seven years or more. The figures follow surveys indicating that Hong Kong is becoming less attractive as a destination for expatriates because of its worsening air pollution and a general decline in overseas pay packages in recent years.
■ Pakistan
Cleric, driver killed in attack
Unidentified gunmen ambushed a car carrying a minority Shiite Muslim cleric in eastern Pakistan, killing him along with his driver before fleeing, police said yesterday. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack late on Tuesday on the cleric, Fazal Alvi, in Faisalabad, an industrial city about 300km east of Multan, and police said they had launched an investigation. "So far we only know that two terrorists shot and killed Fazal Alvi and his driver when he was going to his home," said Nisar Waqar, an area police chief. The cleric's car caught fire after the attack and police found only two charred bodies inside, he said.
■ China
Human bird flu case reported
China has reported its 17th human case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu since November in a 21-year-old security guard from the central city of Wuhan, according to the WHO. The man was confirmed on Tuesday to have the virus, but the source of his exposure is still under investigation, said Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, a spokeswoman for the WHO's Beijing office. He became sick on April 1 and was hospitalized in critical condition with a high fever, she said. Eleven people in China have died from the disease.
■ New Zealand
Two charged over killing
Two Chinese men appeared in court yesterday charged in the death of a Chinese student whose body was found last week stuffed in a suitcase and floating in Auckland harbor. The body of 19-year-old Wan Biao, from Yiwu in China's Zhejiang Province, was found last Friday with multiple injuries. He was believed to have been dead for about 24 hours. A 21-year-old student appeared in Auckland District Court charged with Wan's kidnap and murder. An unemployed 21-year-old man also appeared, charged with being an accessory to murder for allegedly tampering with evidence.
■ Belgium
Testosterone retards reason
A glimpse of an alluring woman is all it takes to ruin a man's decision-making skills and the more testosterone coursing through his veins, the worse the problem gets, researchers claimed yesterday. Bram van den Bergh and Siegfried Dewitte at the University of Leuven in Belgium set 44 student volunteers aged 18 to 28 a financial game to test how they reacted to fair play. Men exposed to what the researchers call "sexual cues" accepted unfair play far more than men who were not, they reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "If there are no cues around, they behave normally, but if they see sexual images they become impulsive," Dewitte said.
■ Ireland
Ice cream offends Irish
Ben & Jerry's, the socially aware ice-cream maker, has apologized to Irish consumers for launching a new flavor evoking the worst days of British military oppression. Tubs of Black and Tan ice-cream went on sale this month, prompting complaints that the phrase is not just the name for mixing stout with pale ale. "Black and Tans," irate customers explained, was the term for an irregular force of British ex-servicemen recruited during the Irish war of independence and renowned for their brutality. The new flavor is only available in the US at present. Lee Holden, a US spokesman for Ben & Jerry's said: "We have had a small amount of contacts from people letting us know how Black and Tan originated. We were not aware of that."
■ United Kingdom
Burglars love Nottingham
Nottingham is the most burglary-prone city in the UK, according to a survey published on Tuesday. The city's residents are more than twice as likely as the national average to make a claim for household theft, the figures from insurance company Endsleigh showed. Hull and Leeds are the next worst affected areas, with the risk of burglaries 89 percent and 66 percent, respectively. However, the company said the most burglary-prone cities had shown above average improvements in crime rates. Guildford, Coventry and Edinburgh came in as least likely to be hit, with claims more than 40 percent below the UK average.
■ Ireland
Rugby threatens Limerick
An exodus of rugby fans from Limerick in Ireland threatens its status as a city, and the European funding that goes with it, when a population census is taken on Sunday. Diarmuid Scully, mayor of Limerick in western Ireland, said as many as 20,000 fans could follow the regional team Munster to Dublin on Sunday for the Heineken Cup semi-final against Leinster. Many could stay on to celebrate -- or to drown their sorrows -- knocking Limerick's population of 54,000 below a crucial threshold of 50,000, he added.
■ Cyprus
Easter fires irk green party
The Cypriot tradition of cutting down trees at Easter to make bonfires for effigies of Judas Iscariot was attacked by the country's Environmentalists Party, which says it damages the environment. The party urged authorities to intervene on Tuesday after getting reports trees were being felled for firewood at celebrations after Orthodox Easter mass celebrated on April 23. This year people cut down two 200-year-old terebinths, or turpentines, and cypress trees on an estate belonging to Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, the party said.
■ United States
NY police in gondola rescue
New York City police conducted an all-night rescue operation yesterday for scores of passengers stranded for hours on two commuter tramcars stalled high above the city. The gondolas -- one suspended over Manhattan with 22 riders and another hovering over the East River with 47 people -- came to a stop at 5:22pm on Tuesday, police said, due to mechanical problems or electrical outage. By early yesterday, most of the passengers from the gondola above the East River had been rescued by police using a metal cage hoisted alongside the tramcar. The tram runs between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island and is noted for its spectacular views 75m above the East River.
■ Honduras
Gangs kill two prisoners
Members of the feared Mara 18 street gang attacked prisoners from the general inmate population at a penitentiary 120km northeast of the capital Tegucigalpa, killing two and injuring two others. More than 100 police officers from two nearby towns stormed the La Paz facility to quell the violence late on Tuesday, police inspector Miguel Martinez said by telephone. "Things are peaceful inside the prison now, but police still haven't entered the gang members' lockup," he said, adding that gang members have threatened to kill police if they attempt to retake the rest of the prison.
■ United States
Plague case confirmed in LA
A woman was hospitalized earlier this month with bubonic plague, the first confirmed human case in Los Angeles County in more than two decades, health officials said. The woman was admitted on April 13 with a fever, swollen lymph nodes and other symptoms. A blood test confirmed she had contracted the bacterial disease, officials announced on Tuesday. The woman was placed on antibiotics and is in stable condition, officials said. Bubonic plague is not contagious, but if left untreated it can morph into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person. Bubonic plague is usually transmitted to humans from the bites of fleas infected by dead rodents.
■ United States
Perv-proof archives urged
It seems that online dermatological images, intended as a reference for doctors, are sometimes being used pruriently. The idea that a searchable archive of clinical photographs was being misused occurred to the site's curators when they noticed a marked jump in queries for images of genital areas. Christoph Lehmann and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, emphasize in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology that "anonymous misuse of collaborative archives must be anticipated, addressed and prevented to preserve their integrity."
■ Kuwait
US probes drugs charges
The US Army is investigating allegations that three American civilians allegedly used the military postal service to smuggle marijuana into Kuwait, an army spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The trio, who worked as contractors for the military, were arrested by the Kuwaiti authorities on Sunday, the spokeswoman said in a statement which did not identify the men.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in