■ Japan
Panties trigger bomb alert
Two bags with a note warning they would blow up if opened triggered a bomb alert at a Japanese university -- before explosives experts found they contained women's underwear and a chocolate cake. Police evacuated Kyushu University's pharmacology department yesterday and called in the bomb squad after a staff member found a white paper bag with a note that said "To Yoko, if you open this it will explode" and a pink plastic bag marked "This one too." Two female students had meant the parcels as a birthday present for a friend, and thought the note would stop anyone from touching the bags.
■ China
Nine nabbed in cocaine bust
Chinese and US agents yesterday announced the arrests of nine people in the country's largest ever seizure of smuggled cocaine. Those held included two Colombian nationals arrested in Hong Kong, along with suspects from Hong Kong and China, officials of China's customs agency and the US Drug Enforcement Administration said at a news conference. Officers confiscated 142.7kg of cocaine smuggled from Colombia, an official said.
■ China
Beijing wants Uighurs back
Beijing yesterday demanded the return of five Chinese Muslims released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center, blasting a US decision to allow them to seek asylum in Albania. "The five people accepted by the Albanian side are by no means refugees but terrorist suspects," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) said. The US freed the five Uighurs after concluding they posed no threat to the US but might face persecution if they returned to China.
■ India
Varansi bomb suspect killed
Indian soldiers in Kashmir yesterday shot dead a suspected Muslim militant, who police said was behind bomb blasts in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in March that killed 15 people and wounded dozens. "On specific information, Zubair was killed in a fierce encounter in Handwara," said Nitish Kumar, a police official, adding the man was considered to have played a leading role in the Varanasi attacks. Kumar said Zubair, who has one name, came from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and was attempting to flee to Pakistan.
■ Hong Kong
ISPs must identify pirates
Hong Kong's movie industry won a court order demanding that four local Internet service providers identify users who downloaded pirated copies of movies using the file-sharing software BitTorrent, a broadcaster reported yesterday. The four companies have three weeks to comply, Hong Kong TV station Cable TV reported. An earlier court document identified the plaintiffs as One Hundred Years of Film Co, Hero China International Ltd and Applause Pictures Ltd, co-founded by Hong Kong director Peter Chan (陳可辛).
■ Pakistan
Elders' order causes death
An 11-year-old boy was strangled by relatives who killed him rather than obey an order from tribal elders for them to marry one of their womenfolk to the child, police in Karachi said on Monday. The marriage had been ordered in compensation for the kidnapping of the boy's sister. Mohammed Asif was killed on Sunday, five months after his 15-year-old sister was abducted from their home. The children's father, Saeed Akbar, a rickshaw driver, appealed to a tribal council for justice after the kidnap.
■ Japan
Recluse dies of `shock'
Police arrested a director and members of a nonprofit organization on Monday for allegedly killing a 26-year-old hikikomori social recluse from Tokyo after forcibly taking him out of his apartment, a news report said. Shoko Sugiura, director of Ai Mental School in the city of Nagoya, and four staff members allegedly forced the the reclusive man out of his apartment in Tokyo in the middle of last month and took him to a school dormitory. The man was classified as a hikikomori, a term that has been coined to describe young shut-ins who refuse to go out of their rooms for work or school. In the name of treatment, the man was chained to a pillar, even during meals, in the school's dormitory for four days before he was taken to a nearby hospital. He died from traumatic shock, the daily paper quoted the police as saying. His parents had requested the school to take their son but were never aware of physical restraint or confinement.
■ New Zealand
Rolling Stone has surgery
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was recovering in a New Zealand hospital yesterday after surgery to relieve pressure on his brain following a fall in Fiji, his spokesman said. The 62-year-old underwent the operation in Auckland's Ascot Hospital after complaining of headaches on Sunday, the spokesman for the veteran British rocker said in London. Richards' spokesman told Britain's domestic Press Association news agency that the procedure, which involved drilling a hole in the guitarist's skull to drain blood from the brain, was a "complete success."
■ United Kingdom
Vicars offer home blessings
Homeowners wanting to liven up their sex lives, ward off bathroom germs or calm kitchen rows can now call on his ministers for help. A new service is being offered by vicars in the north of England who give blessings to people moving to a new home. They will say prayers for each room, calling on divine assistance to protect the home and the health of those in it. Reverend Chris Painter, a vicar in the diocese of Manchester, said the initiative was designed to tempt new people into the church. "For a large part of the church's history, people have come into the church building," he said. "Nowadays people tend not to come into church so we need to find new ways to meet people."
■ United States
Kidman still loves Cruise
Nicole Kidman says her divorce from Tom Cruise was a "major shock" -- and she still loves him. "That was a major shock," the 38-year-old actress says in an interview in next month's issue of Ladies' Home Journal, on newsstands yesterday. "He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him," she tells the magazine. Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001. The divorce was finalized later that year.
■ Germany
Cannibal gets life
A man who admitted killing and eating an acquaintance he met on the Internet was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison yesterday, following his retrial in a case that engrossed and appalled Germany. Armin Meiwes, a 44-year-old computer technician, was also convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead. His lawyers had argued that the Frankfurt state court should instead convict him of the lesser offense of "killing on demand," on the grounds that he was only following his victim's wishes. The retrial of Meiwes opened in January. It was held after a federal appeals court overturned his initial manslaughter conviction to allow prosecutors to seek a tougher sentence.
■ Germany
Holocaust list updated
The Federal Archives published on Monday a new register of names of all known German Jews killed in the Holocaust, issuing a second edition of a register that was first published 20 years ago listing only victims from former West Germany. The four-volume book, containing 150,000 names in alphabetical order along with vital data and dates of detention, now includes Jews who had lived in eastern Germany and parts of modern-day Poland, which were in German hands before World War II. The Nazis invaded much of Europe, killing an estimated 6 million European Jews. The new memorial register corrects the inevitable errors in the first, 1986 edition that was deposited in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
■ Gaza Strip
Nine wounded in clashes
Nine Palestinians were wounded early yesterday in renewed clashes between militants from the Hamas and Fatah movements in downtown Gaza City, witnesses and paramedics say. The clashes erupted after Hamas gunmen arrived at the home of a top Fatah official and opened fire at Fatah activists inside, witnesses said. The Fatah gunmen returned fire and nine were injured in the exchange, including five schoolchildren, hospital officials said. At least one of the wounded was a Hamas gunmen, officials said.
■ United States
Spy case charges toughened
US prosecutors said on Monday that they plan to seek harsher charges against an engineer and two kin accused of plotting to steal sensitive US Navy warship technology and trying to smuggle it to China. The plans to beef up charges against Chinese-born engineer Mak Chi, 65, who worked for a US defense contractor, his wife, Rebecca Chiu Lai-wah, 62; and Mak's brother, former TV director Mak Tai-wing, 56, came at a pre-trial hearing in Los Angeles.
■ Canada
Killer mom to be deported
Authorities were to start deportation proceedings on Monday against a Japanese woman who let her two infant children die in an apartment while she went away for 10 days to see a boyfriend, officials said. Rie Fujii, deemed to be suffering from mental problems, is set to be released from jail in Alberta on Monday after serving more than five years of an eight-year sentence for manslaughter. After breaking up with the father of her 15-month-old son and three-month-old daughter, Fujii left the two alone in her Calgary apartment in June 2001 to visit her new boyfriend in another town. Both children died of starvation and dehydration.
■ South Africa
`I'm back,' Zuma claims
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma yesterday re-launched his bid for the presidency a day after he was acquitted for rape, apologizing to the nation for not using a condom and declaring: "I'm back." He told SABC radio that "I should have been more cautious and more responsible," referring to the case in which he admitted to having consensual but unprotected sex with a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman. "I erred on this issue and on this, I apologize," Zuma said. "The case is over. And therefore, I'm back." The "not guilty" verdict for the rape has put Zuma back into the political fray, but analysts said it remained an open question as to whether he would succeed in reclaiming his position as the frontrunner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki.
■ United Kingdom
Exposure to BSE possible
Patients in the UK undergoing routine dental treatments for root canal problems may have been exposed to infection by the human form of BSE because instruments have been used on patients unwittingly carrying the incurable disease, scientific advisers said on Monday. About 3 million such treatments are conducted every year in England and Wales alone. The scientists have told health ministers to consider banning the reuse of the equipment needed because of "hypothetical but plausible scenarios" which suggest that person-to person cases of variant CJD might follow the shrinking number of animal-to-human cases. The first wave of cases caused by infected food has so far struck only 190 people, mostly Britons since 1996.
■ United States
Fundraising drive halted
A nonprofit foundation has stopped trying to raise money to build the World Trade Center memorial until it can be sure how much it will cost and what it will look like, officials have said. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation suspended fundraising several weeks ago after discussing the soaring price of the memorial, now budgeted at close to US$1 billion, and its orders to cut the costs in half. "It's only fair to donors to be able to expressly say how their money will be used and how much the project will cost,"foundation board member Tom Johnson said on Monday.
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry. A decade-long project to clean and restore the largest of the four Raphael Rooms uncovered a novel mural painting technique that Renaissance painter and architect Raphael began, but never completed. He used oil paint directly on the wall, and arranged a grid of nails embedded in the walls to hold in place the resin surface onto which he painted. Vatican Museums officials
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