■ China
Seven die in store fire
A fire at a department store in eastern China yesterday killed seven people, state media said. Eighteen people lived in the five-story building in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, where the fire broke out in the early morning, Xinhua news agency said. "Local firefighters were searching for any possible survivors after they discovered seven bodies," Xinhua said, adding that two people had been rescued. It gave no details of the fate of the other nine.
■ China
Chip smugglers busted
Smugglers dug a tunnel between sewers in mainland China and Hong Kong and used it to smuggle mobile phones and computer chips, reports said yesterday. The narrow tunnel, just wide enough for a person to crawl through, was found by Chinese customs and police officers under the border town of Shenzhen, the official Xinhua news agency said. The South China Morning Post reported that police had also discovered two other tunnels. Seven people, two from Hong Kong and five from China, were arrested after authorities swooped on a Shenzhen flat they had shared during the fortnight it took to dig the 20m tunnel.
■ South Korea
Manga still a no-no
The government isn't ready to lift bans on some forms of Japanese entertainment because of remaining public hostility here toward the peninsula's former colonial ruler, the culture minister said yesterday. South Korea began lifting some of its restrictions on Japanese culture in the late 1990s, such as ending restrictions on films and computer games. However, Japanese animation and TV shows are still banned.
■ Cambodia
French tourist murdered
A French national was fatally stabbed in the seaside resort town of Sihanoukville, police said yesterday. Jean-Pierre Blouin, 63, was found floating in the surf off a popular beach on Tuesday with stab wounds to his neck and head, deputy police chief So Bunnoeun said. The victim's passport, identity card and empty wallet were found nearby, he said. Blouin had entered Cambodia last Friday as a tourist. A French embassy official in Phnom Penh confirmed that a French national had been killed and that the attack was under investigation.
■ Thailand
Police seize burned fetuses
Police on Wednesday seized two burned human fetuses which they said had been used by a Buddhist monk in an occult ritual. Police raided the residence of Prayong Suthito at Pa Photisomphan Temple in the province of Roi-et after receiving a tip off that he had practiced black magic, burning the fetuses to produce a good luck charm, a police spokesman said. Police have yet to file charges against Prayong because they have no legal grounds to do so unless someone files a complaint that their baby was stolen and may have been used in the ritual, he said. Prayong had acknowledged carrying out the ritual two years ago, the spokesman said.
■ India
Polio cases quadruple
A polio outbreak in the state of Uttar Pradesh is undermining the fight against the virus, health officials said yesterday. The government has reported 283 cases so far this year, more than four times the 66 recorded last year. Tens of thousands of children were missed by state health workers over the past year during rounds of immunization, leading to a resurgence of the virus, they said.
■ United States
Sex `bomb' case dropped
Prosecutors dropped all charges against a man who said an airport security guard misunderstood him when she thought he said a sexual device in his backpack was really a bomb. Mardin Amin, who appeared in a Cook County circuit court on Wednesday morning, has said he actually told the female security guard at O'Hare International Airport last month that the small, black object was a "pump" -- as in a penis pump. Amin's attorney, Eileen O'Neill-Burke, had said earlier that her client was embarrassed to explain the object to the security guard in front of his mother, who was traveling with him -- so he whispered.
RSS