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World News Quick Take

■ Hong Kong
Father busted for child abuse
A Hong Kong man was convicted on Tuesday for forcing his nine-year-old son to walk naked in the streets as punishment for failing to finish his homework, a judiciary spokeswoman said. Chan Kwok-yim (陳國炎), 45, was charged with ill-treatment of his son and bound over for the sum of HK$1,000 (US$128) for two years on good behavior with conditions. Local media said that the magistrate gave Chan a light sentence because she believed he had good intentions and loved his son, although he was hot-tempered and used the wrong method to teach him.

■ Philippines
Crocs stored in the luggage
A Filipino flying home from Cambodia said he was carrying live fish in his carry-on luggage, until a check of his bag at Manila airport revealed three half-meter crocodiles, officials said yesterday. The crocodiles are on an endangered species list and their importation is prohibited. Charges are being readied against the man. The man had earlier sought a permit to import the animals but his application was denied. Airport authorities had been on a lookout for him since last week, when the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau alerted them that he might try to sneak in the crocodiles.

■ India
Camel ice cream a big sell
Selling low-calorie camel's milk ice cream is part of a plan to help Rajasthan's camel breeders. A two-year project aims to revive the industry by marketing camel milk to hotels and tourists visiting historic palaces and desert towns. "The response to camel milk as a health drink and to an ice cream made from the milk has been very encouraging," the project coordinator said, with hotels already signing up for the products. The ice cream is being made in saffron-pistachio and strawberry-vanilla. The Food and Agriculture Organization says camel milk is very nutritious and has a vitamin C content three times higher than cow milk.

■ Malaysia
Police charged with murder
Two police officers were charged yesterday with the murder of a Mongolian model. Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar were charged in Kuala Lumpur with the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu. Police have not given details of her death but local media say she was shot dead and her body destroyed with explosives. Interest in the case has been heightened by the fact that a leading political analyst has also been detained by police for questioning. Last week, the prime minister called for a thorough investigation, saying no one was above the law. Shaariibuu had gone to Malaysia to seek financial assistance from her lover to help her sick child.

■ Singapore
Don't say the `B' word
A 65-year-old Australian man was fined S$10,000 (US$6,423) for uttering the word "bomb" on a flight to Indonesia, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Riccardo Paulin, a retiree, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to having asked a flight attendant "Where do you keep the bomb?" on a flight operated by SilkAir from Singapore to the Indonesian city of Surabaya, the newspaper said. He made the remark after trying to find space in the overhead lockers. Paulin was charged under the UN anti-terrorism regulations, which carry a maximum fine of S$100,000 or up to five years in jail or both. He apologized to the court for his remark, saying it was meant as a joke.

■ Germany
Huge haul of fakes seized
Customs officers have seized what they said could be the world's largest haul of counterfeit goods, including nearly 1 million pairs of knockoff Nike sneakers. The customs department in the northern port of Hamburg said it had confiscated a total of 117 shipping containers filled with fake goods since the end of August. The equivalent amount of genuine branded goods would be worth about 383 million euros (US$490 million), it said in a statement.

■ South Africa
Gay unions legalized
South Africa became the first country on the continent to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples when lawmakers gave their final approval to controversial legislation on Tuesday. A total of 230 lawmakers voted for the civil union bill after a stormy debate at the parliament in Cape Town while another 41 opposed the measure. There were three abstentions. The bill, which allows for civil unions to be solemnized by way of either a marriage or a civil partnership, has been widely opposed by religious groups, conservatives and traditionalists. The government has said the new legislation forms part of a wider commitment to battle discrimination.

■ United Kingdom
Addict inmates win case
Nearly 200 drug addicts who were forced into "cold turkey" drug withdrawal when they were sent to prison won a damages settlement worth several thousand dollars each from the British government on Tuesday. The decision came after 197 prisoners sued the Home Office, seeking compensation for pain endured during a rapid detoxification treatment in prison, lawyers for the petitioners said. Rather than contest the case, the Home Office agreed to pay about ?740,000 (US$1.4 million) in compensation to the prisoners -- all of whom were addicted to heroin or other opiates.

■ Spain
Migrants prop up Latinos
Money sent home to poor relatives by migrants who have fled Latin America's struggling economies is increasingly propping up the region as billions of dollars and euros reach the continent's most far-flung corners. Recent migration into Spain has added to the growth in money sent back to the region's poorer countries from both the US and Europe, which reached at least US$53 billion last year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. "Call it the case of the missing billions," the bank said in a recent report. "The region is the largest remittance market in the world."

■ Germany
Merkel no Schumacher
Chancellor Angela Merkel says she's a bad driver who paid her instructor to speed up the process of getting a license. Merkel told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that as a 26-year-old student driver in East Germany she needed two to three times as many lessons as the average person before her instructor would let her take the driving test. In the end she paid her tutor to speed up the process. "In other words, I'm the incarnation of all those cliches," the chancellor was quoted as saying in the newspaper in comments confirmed by a government spokesman. She said she acted on advice from a friend who said she should offer her instructor cash "tips" to speed up the process. "I got my license after that right away," Merkel said.

■ United States
O.J. milks notoriety
Fox plans to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which the former football star discusses "how he would have committed" the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, for which he was acquitted in a widely-watched trial, the network said. The two-part interview, titled O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, will air on Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, the TV network said. Simpson has agreed to an "unrestricted" interview with book publisher Judith Regan, Fox said. "O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes," the network said in a statement.

■ United States
Turner gives advice
It's good to give, says one of the planet's biggest philanthropists, but don't forget to keep a tidy sum for that rainy day. "Keep a few hundred million at least, because you never know," CNN founder Ted Turner told a conference on philanthropy this week in Little Rock, Arkansas. "Things could get really tough," he said. "I've got to be careful I don't give everything and be a poor, destitute old man, which would be really sad," he added. Turner is ranked the world's 382nd richest person with a fortune estimated at US$2 billion, the latest Forbes list of billionaires says.

■ United States
Goya painting stolen
A van transporting a 228 year-old painting by Spanish master Francisco de Goya to Manhattan's Guggenheim museum was intercepted as it traveled from the Goya's home in the Toledo museum of art in Ohio to an exhibition in New York last week. The art thieves presumably knew precisely what they were targeting and why, as the operation was meticulously planned and had the benefit of pinpoint accurate intelligence. The grab is likely to have been a made-to-order job, as any attempt to sell such a well-known painting would be instantly thwarted by Interpol, which sends out global alerts when such thefts occur.

■ Canada
Professors get weed rights
The use of medical marijuana has given two Toronto professors the right to something that many students could only dream of -- access to specially ventilated rooms where they can indulge in peace. The two, at the esteemed University of Toronto and at York University, suffer from chronic medical conditions that some doctors say can be eased by smoking marijuana. They are among nearly 1,500 Canadians who have won the right to use the drug for health reasons. Using human rights legislation, the two petitioned their employers for the right to light up in the workplace. They faced a legal struggle, but the universities eventually agreed.

■ Cuba
Dengue vaccine tested
Havana is accelerating its efforts to develop a vaccine against dengue fever, an illness endemic to tropical countries that kills thousands each year. The director of the country's biotechnology institute said on Tuesday that researchers have begun testing a genetically engineered vaccine in monkeys, but remain five years away from an effective vaccine that could safely be used in humans. "The most effective thing would be to have a preventative vaccine," said Gerardo Guillen, director of biomedical research at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. "It will be a very important result."

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