■ Hong Kong
Piglet buyers conned
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said pet lovers who had bought piglets in hopes of some Year of the Pig luck may have been conned by shop owners who actually sold them rodents instead. The group said on Wednesday that it had been contacted by people asking for care tips for what they described as mini-piglets. "But when we went to the shops we couldn't find any such piglets for sale," said SPCA spokeswoman Rebecca Ngan. "We think that what they bought instead was a type of hairless rodent that looks like a pig." The South China Morning Post cited shops that were selling mini-pigs for up to HK$15,000 (US$1,920).
■ Afghanistan
Bird flu outbreak reported
Authorities were culling poultry after an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in chicken in an eastern city, a UN official said Wednesday. Bird flu was reported in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar, said Serge Verniau, the country representative of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Samples of chicken in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad were found to have the H5N1 strain, while the exact type of the outbreak in Kunar has yet to be confirmed, Verniau said.
■ Japan
Woman guilty of dog theft
A woman was convicted on Wednesday of stealing a prized dog and then throwing the pet to its death from her sixth-floor balcony when she was caught. The woman was given a one-year prison sentence, but it was suspended for three years because she voiced remorse and has a child to care for. According to the ruling, Akemi Takami, 39, stole the French bulldog after spotting it tied on a leash in a parking area as the dog's owner was shopping in the northern city of Sapporo. Takami stole the dog because she could not afford to buy one, the Sapporo District Court said.
■ New Zealand
Begging study released
People will not give money if they are thanked in advance or presented with an empty donation box, but will dig deep if they see banknotes, according to a study by academics released on Wednesday in Welllington. The research by Victoria University of Wellington's economics department showed that how much is already in a donation box, the mix of coins and notes, and what sorts of signs are present will influence how generous the public will be. The behavior of people faced with a clear donation box at the entrance to the city's art gallery was filmed by a hidden camera. "The most important thing is to never leave the box empty," senior lecturer John Randal
said.
■ Australia
Author makes comparison
Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee has compared the modern treatment and slaughter of animals to the Nazis' mass murder of Jews. The South African-born author, who is now an Australian citizen, made the comparison in a speech prepared for delivery at the opening in Sydney yesterday of an art exhibition entitled "Voiceless: I feel therefore I am." The Holocaust was a "warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind," Coetzee said, in an extract published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
■ Colombia
Clowns gunned down
Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern town of Cucuta, police said on Wednesday. The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali on Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told reporters. One of the clowns was killed instantly and the second died the next day in hospital. Circo del Sol de Cali pitched its tents in Cucuta earlier this month. "The clowns came out to give their show and then this guy came out shooting them," one audience member told local television.
■ United States
Armed man `saves' woman
A sword-wielding Wisconsin man who rushed to the aid of a woman he thought was being raped in the apartment upstairs was carted off to jail after police discovered his neighbor was just watching porn. The cries for help pouring through the floorboards sounded far too real to James Van Iveren, who told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he was just acting on instinct. "It was a woman screaming," he said in an interview published on Wednesday. Van Iveren, 39, was listening to music in his apartment when he heard repeated cries for help. He grabbed his 1m long cavalry sword, a family heirloom, rushed up the stairs and broke the door down.
■ Serbia
Surgeons abandon patient
A routine appendix operation in Belgrade went badly wrong when two surgeons started fighting and stormed from the operating theater to settle their dispute outside, the daily Politika reported on Wednesday. Surgeon Spasoje Radulovic was operating when his colleague Dragan Vukanic entered and made a remark that started a quarrel, said the anesthesiologist on duty. "At one moment Vukanic pulled the ear of the operating doctor, slapped him in the face and walked out," she said. Radulovic followed and an all-out fight ensued, resulting in bruises, a split lip, loose teeth and a fractured finger.
■ South Africa
Winnie's home robbed
Two people were arrested on Wednesday over the theft of jewelery worth more than US$500,000 from the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of ex-president Nelson Mandela. Two of her safes were stolen and a third tampered with, in the fortress-like house protected by security guards, cameras and dogs in the township of Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Two domestic workers were later found in possession of the jewelery and were scheduled to appear before magistrates yesterday.
■ United States
Spears checks out of rehab
Britney Spears checked out of rehab for the second time in a week on Wednesday, while her estranged husband was making plans to go to court amid a custody dispute over their two children. Kevin Federline and his lawyer were scheduled to appear at a downtown courthouse yesterday for an emergency hearing in family law court, Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said. It was not known what Federline intended to ask the court. He sought support and sole custody of their two children after Spears moved to end their two-year marriage last November, but a temporary order issued on Feb. 1 granted joint custody through this month.
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