■ China
Women's dress blamed
Ninety percent of respondents to an online survey of more than 4,000 professionals believe that women who dress "provocatively" are to blame for the widespread sexual harassment that occurs against them in the workplace. The survey, which was conducted by a job-hunting company, also indicates that 43 percent of the respondents think sexual harassment is "widespread" and 54 percent say it happens occasionally. About 45 percent believe perpetrators tend to be bosses.
■ China
Beijing unfit for mentally ill
Tens of thousands of mentally ill people in Beijing have no access to treatment or free medicine, a situation which poses a potential threat to social stability. Seventy percent of the 130,000 severely psychotic patients currently registered in the city get no free medicine and 60 percent never see a doctor, a report says. The head of the Beijing Health Bureau said the number of patients who do not receive the necessary medicine has spun out of control because of a lack of funding and personnel.
■ China
Crash caused by icing
The crash of a Chinese military plane that killed all 40 people on board was caused by the loss of control due to icing, state media reported yesterday. The June 3 crash of what was believed to be a prototype early warning aircraft was the People's Liberation Army Air Force's single worst-known accident. In a brief dispatch, the Xinhua news agency said the plane suffered icing on its surface after flying through frigid air, causing it to lose control and crash and burst into flame in a remote mountain area in Anhui Province.
■ Philippines
Bomb joke backfires
A Philippine national was removed from a domestic flight after making a joke about a bomb to a flight attendant, but was allowed on a next plane after apologizing, a security official said yesterday. The woman was seated on a Cebu Pacific plane on Wednesday when a flight attendant asked her to store her plastic bag in an overhead bin, said the Manila airport assistant general manager for security, Angel Atutubo. He said the woman responded saying, "What do you think? I have a bomb in the bag?" The attendant alerted security personnel and she was removed from the plane, Atutubo said.
■ Sri Lanka
Navy rescues Bangladeshis
The navy rescued 34 Bangladesh nationals yesterday who were aboard a crippled merchant vessel that sank off the island's southern coast, officials said. The cargo carrier, MV Amnet Sha, was being towed by a tugboat when it sank in rough weather off the coast of Koggala, said an official at the Colombo Radio rescue coordinating center. A navy spokesman said the vessel ran into difficulty and was being towed to the port of Galle, 112km south of here, when its hull broke. "We have taken on board 34 Bangladeshi nationals, including two children and two women," the navy spokesman said.
■ Indonesia
Islamic militants sentenced
Judges sentenced two Islamic militants yesterday for involvement in the terrorist attacks on Bali last year, saying they helped make explosives used in the blasts and videotaped confessions of the suicide bombers. Mohammad Cholili and Dwi Widiarto were among four men charged in the attacks on the Indonesian resort island, which killed 20 people and wounded nearly 200 others. The Denpasar District Court sentenced Cholili to 18 years in prison, while Widiarto received eight years.
■ Australia
Irwin to have private funeral
Wildlife TV star Steve Irwin will be given a private funeral attended only by family and close friends, with a public memorial service held later, his father said yesterday. "The family has decided to decline the generous offer from the federal government for a state funeral for Steve," Bob Irwin told reporters. "A private service will be held in the next seven days for family members and close friends only." Because of the outpouring of public grief, however, a full memorial service would be held within two weeks at a venue still to be decided, he said. Irwin, 44, daredevil star of the popular Crocodile Hunter program, was killed on Monday by a stingray while diving.
■ Armenia
Tax official dies in bombing
A senior tax official was killed on Wednesday by a bomb that detonated as he was getting into a car, police said. Shagen Ovasepian, head of the operations department of the State Tax Service, died of blood loss after the blast, which occurred around 9:30am as he sat down in his car, Yerevan city police said in a statement. His driver suffered light shrapnel wounds. In a separate incident, the editor of an opposition newspaper said he was attacked and beaten by unknown assailants near his home on Wednesday. Ovannes Galadzhyan, of the newspaper Iravunk, said he received a phone call a few days earlier from people warning that they would break his legs.
■ United Kingdom
Bombing speeder jailed
A 28-year-old man who blew up a speed camera, hoping to destroy evidence of his speeding, was sentenced to prison for four months on Wednesday. Craig Moore, 28, from Doncaster, said he had seen a flash of light from the camera, indicating that it had detected him speeding on Aug. 14 last year. So, he employed thermite, used in his work as a welder, to destroy it. But images of his speeding survived the explosion, and so did images of him returning to attack the camera. If he hadn't blown up the the device, he may have escaped prosecution altogether. Tameside Council confirmed that the Watchman camera was designed to deter speeders, and that it flashed only as a warning. However, the Watchman does contain cameras which monitor the area, and that's what caught Moore.
■ Iraq
`Terrorist' rapists executed
Authorities said they executed 27 "terrorists" in Baghdad on Wednesday after they were convicted of murder and rape. The convicts came from a number of the nation's 18 provinces, the government said in a brief statement issued late in the day. "The death penalty was carried out on 27 terrorists in Baghdad, they were executed after the criminals were convicted in Iraqi courts for carrying out acts of murder and rape," the statement said.
■ Iraq
Speaker's nephew abducted
The nephew of Sunni parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani has been kidnapped by unknown gunmen, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul Karim Khalaf told reporters yesterday. "Gunmen abducted Ahmed Mashhadani last night from the western Hurriyah neighborhood," Khalaf said, adding the reasons for his kidnapping were unknown. The nation's dominant Shiite community and the minority Kurds had recently demanded Mashhadani's resignation after he strongly criticized the idea of breaking up the country into rival federal regions.
■ Russia
Submariners perish in fire
Two submariners have been killed in a fire aboard a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea belonging to Russia's northern fleet, but the incident posed no risk of radioactive contamination, Russian news agencies said yesterday. The submarine, the Daniil Moskovsky, was on the surface of the sea north of the Rybachy peninsula in the Barents Sea at the time of the fire late on Wednesday. "The fire broke out ... due to a short-circuit in the energy supply system in one of the nose sections," according to a fleet spokesman quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency.
■ Canada
Speeder cites lack of goats
A Swiss driver caught speeding in eastern Ontario explained that he had been taking advantage of the ability to drive fast without hitting a goat, police said on Wednesday. The driver was caught traveling 161kph in a 100kph zone on Sunday. Police said it was the first time they had ever heard of such an excuse. "I've never been to Switzerland but obviously they must have a problem with that there," said police spokesman Joel Doiron, adding that in his 20 years of service he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario.
■ United States
Couple charged with murder
The foster parents of a three-year-old disabled Ohio boy who died after being wrapped in a blanket and packing tape for two days have been indicted on murder and kidnapping charges in Batavia. Liz and David Carroll Jr. are accused of wrapping Marcus Fiesel in the blanket and tape and leaving him in a closet while they went to a family reunion in Kentucky last month. The boy was dead when the Carrolls returned two days later, officials said. The grand jury on Wednesday also indicted the Carrolls on charges of involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and endangering children. David Carroll also was charged with gross abuse of a corpse. Authorities have said the Carrolls took in Fiesel to reap the payments for his foster care.
■ United States
Courier indicted for theft
A former nuclear materials courier with top secret clearance was indicted in Amarillo, Texas, on charges that he used his position to obtain restricted items and sell them over the Internet. Joe Allen Sizemore, 41, was charged with wire fraud, theft of government property and possession of unregistered firearms, US Attorney Richard Roper announced on Wednesday in a news release. Sizemore worked as a nuclear materials courier for the Office of Secure Transportation under the Department of Energy and was assigned to the Pantex Plant, a nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility near Amarillo. Couriers transport nuclear weapons and obtain body armor, night scopes and weaponry restricted to government and law-enforcement officials.
■ United States
Alleged killer kills himself
A California man fatally hacked his mother and two-year-old nephew with an ax before apparently committing suicide by stepping into highway traffic, officials said. Michael Allen Carriker, 37, was killed Monday on Interstate 5, said San Joaquin County sheriff's spokesman Les Garcia. When officials went to Carriker's home in Thornton to notify family members, they found an ax next to the bodies of Janet Jensen, 55, and nephew Keoni Willis. Carriker, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was distraught over the death of his father, who was killed in May, a relative said.
■ United States
Horse on the House menu
The House of Representatives is once again confronting the slaughter of horses for meat. Congress voted last year to stop horse slaughter. But they didn't ban it outright -- they just yanked the salaries of federal inspectors who monitored such slaughter. So the administration started charging slaughter plants for inspections. A vote was planned for yesterday on whether to put an end to horse slaughter. Critics call the industry un-American. US horse meat is sold mostly to Europe and Asia as well as some US zoos.
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