■ Hong Kong
Foreign maids lose appeal
Filipino, Indonesian and Thai maids lost a legal appeal yesterday against what they claim is an illegal tax and pay cut. The case was being brought by five members of the the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body on behalf of more than 200,000 live-in domestic helpers in the city of 6.8 million. The minimum wage of foreign maids was cut by US$50 a month in 2003 and a levy of the same amount was imposed on employers of foreign maids to try to encourage local women to take up jobs as maids.
■ Australia
Women leaving countryside
Farmers hit by the lowest rainfall in years are facing an even more serious drought as women leave the sun-baked countryside for the city, a newspaper reported yesterday. Jock Laurie, president of the New South Wales Farmers Association, said the drought afflicting 94 percent of the state was driving females from rural communities. "There really isn't many females in some country towns," he told the association's annual conference in Sydney, warning that farmers would not stay in areas where there was a shortage of women.
■ China
Tracking Olympic veggies
As if China didn't have its hands full keeping tabs on its 1.3 billion people, the country will now begin tracking its vegetables. In an attempt to ensure food safety during the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is to give every cabbage, carrot and pea pod its own identity number and file, the Beijing News reported yesterday. If there is a "safety incident" the vegetable's file can be immediately checked and its origins traced, the newspaper said.
■ Malaysia
Randy husbands face jail
Men may face a jail term of up to five years if found guilty of inflicting mental stress on their wives in bids to have sex, official news reports said yesterday. The new legal provisions, which come into effect immediately, would mean that wives who claim to have suffered from stress or "mental injury" following their husbands' requests for sex would be able to charge their husband in court, Home Affairs minister Mohamad Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said. The victim need not even be forced to perform sex before she can lodge a report, he said. "The provision emphasizes injury suffered by the wife inflicted by the husband's act," he said.
■ Australia
Driver plays dead
A driver stranded on a remote stretch of highway near Esperance, about 725km southeast of Perth, tried to summon help yesterday by playing dead in the middle of the road, a police officer said. A woman who was driving with her two children spotted the man and had to swerve to avoid hitting him, said Doug Backhouse, a detective with the state police. "She drove around the body -- which didn't move at all -- and got to the nearest phone," Backhouse said. Local police arrived with an ambulance and found the man alive and well. "The best way he thought to get a vehicle to stop was to lay down in the middle of the road and pretend to be dead," Backhouse said.
■ Thailand
Backhoe crushes tourists
An eight-wheel backhoe crushed two tourists as they attempted to cross a busy street in Bangkok waving safety flags above their heads, media reports said yesterday. British tourist Gary Thomas Chamber, 28, and his Norwegian girlfriend Hanne Karlsen, 20, were run over by a city excavator on Tuesday at a zebra crossing in Bangkok's Pomprap Sattruphai district, police said. Both tourists were waving "safety flags," provided at pedestrian crossings as part of a municipal road-safety program, but the driver of the backhoe was unable to stop his vehicle from running over them, the Bangkok Post said.
■ China
Internet use up
The country's population of Internet users, already the world's second-biggest after the US, has jumped by nearly 20 percent over the past year to 123 million, with broadband access soaring, the government said yesterday. The US has some 204 million Internet users. The number of Web sites in the country rose by more than 110,000 to a total of 788,400, the official China Internet Network Information Center said in an annual survey. The communist government encourages Internet use for business and education and has invested heavily in broadband service, but tries to bar access to material considered subversive.
■ Japan
Woman confesses to killing
A woman who had persuaded police to probe her daughter's "murder" was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly killing the girl. In a case that made headlines across Japan, police announced the arrest of Suzuka Hatakeyama, 33, for allegedly throwing her nine-year-old daughter to her death off a bridge in northern Akita Prefecture. "I took her to watch the fish. When I tried to get her to go home, she whined and I became impatient and pushed her off," the mother told police, as quoted by public broadcaster NHK. The body of her daughter, Ayaka, was found in the river in April and police had ruled the case an accident.
■ Croatia
Speeder caught online
A Croatian motorcyclist who posted on the Internet footage of a breakneck ride risks a large fine and possible confiscation of his machine, police said on Tuesday. The 28-year-old man, identified only as D.M., installed a camera on his Yamaha 600 and filmed his wild drive through several villages in Hrvatsko Zagorje, near Zagreb, a police spokesman said. He put links to the compromising 11-minute footage, in which the speedometer and other details of the motorcycle and the road were clearly seen, on a local Internet site on July 9. But police were among those who saw the footage and identified the author three days later.
■ Russia
Basayev's body hard to ID
Russian investigators have failed to identify the body thought to be that of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, because they do not have his fingerprints on file. Basayev died in an explosion on July 10 which was claimed by the Kremlin as a special operation. Experts have managed to take five fingerprints from his mangled corpse at a morgue in Vladikavkaz. However, it turned out that police had nothing on record to compare them with, sources close to the investigation told the Kommersant newspaper. A DNA match with a family member cannot be organized because all of Basayev's close relatives are dead or in hiding.
■ Belgium
World powers press Sudan
World powers pressed the Sudanese government to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur Province to replace overstretched African Union (AU) troops who have struggled to protect civilians from rebels and pro-government militias. Delegates from more than 70 nations at a conference on Sudan were united in calling for the UN force, which the Sudanese government is refusing to allow in to replace AU peacekeepers, and a halt to violence in the region. The daylong conference raised US$200 million in fresh donations to support the 7,300-member AU force in Darfur -- about half what the AU says it needs to keep the mission running until the end of the year, when the UN hopes to take over peacekeeping.
■ Colombia
Hundreds flee fighting
Intense fighting between the army and leftist guerrillas in western Colombia has forced at least 1,300 civilians from their homes and trapped Indian communities who are unable to reach safety, the UN said on Tuesday. In Narino Province, near the southern border with Ecuador, more than 1,300 mostly Indian people have fled since fighting broke out a week ago between the army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest rebel group. "With combat ongoing, thousands more people could be at risk of forced displacement in the next few days," the UN High Commission for Refugees said in a statement.
■ Guatemala
More women being killed
The number of women murdered in the country is rising and the government has failed to investigate most of the cases, which often involve rape and torture, Amnesty International said in a report released on Tuesday. The number women slain jumped from 163 in 2002 to as many as 665 last year, Amnesty said. "In 2002, women made up around 5 percent of the total murdered each year, today that number is about 13 percent," said Sebastian Elgueta, Amnesty's Guatemala researcher.
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
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
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not