■ Philippines
Troops clash with rebels
Troops clashed with a group of rebels in the country's south, leaving 10 guerrillas and two soldiers dead, a regional army spokesman said yesterday. The daylong gunfight took place on Thursday near Malaybalay city in Bukidnun Province, about 800km southeast of Manila, where troops encountered about 30 New People's Army rebels, said spokesman Major Samuel Sagun. Ten rebels and two soldiers were killed and three government soldiers were wounded, he said. Troops also recovered weapons and one land mine, he said. The rebels have been fighting for a Maoist state for 38 years.
■ Thailand
Man arrested for murders
A man out on bail awaiting trial for robbery has been arrested for the murder of two Russian women as they sat on the beach at the resort of Pattaya to watch the sun rise, police said yesterday. Anuchit Lumlert confessed to shooting Tatiana Tsimfer and Liubov Svirkova, the eastern region police chief, Lieutenant General Aswin Kwanmuang, said. "He said he wanted to rob them, but had to kill them because one of the two victims saw his face," said Aswin, who led the investigation in a city 150km from Bangkok. Aswin said investigators were not wholly convinced by his confession and suspected he may have been a hitman.
■ Australia
Hair fetishist jailed
An airline baggage courier who stole women's hair to satisfy a sexual fetish was jailed for two years and eight months yesterday. Rodney Petersen, 30, had pleaded guilty to 50 counts of stealing head and pubic hair from brushes and underpants in women's luggage. Petersen had a previous conviction for attempted rape. He put the hair he found in plastic slips and recorded the owner's personal details in an exercise book, the Victorian County Court in Melbourne was told, the national AAP news agency reported. Petersen's sentence took into account a suspended jail term for the 2004 attempted rape conviction.
■ Nepal
State, rebels negotiate
The government and former rebels were to begin talks yesterday to set up an interim government that would include ex-guerrillas for the first time, officials said. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was due to meet with top Maoist rebel leaders yesterday to begin talks, said Tourism Minister Pradeep Gyawali, a member of the government's peace negotiating team. The talks would include determining which ministries the former rebels would get in the new administration. The Maoists joined a temporary parliament last year. The interim government being planned would conduct elections later this year for a special assembly that would rewrite the Constitution.
■ Germany
Man forced to pee in bottle
Exam supervisors at a university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet. Overseers at the University of Freiburg told the 27-year-old, whose bladder control was impaired in an accident that left him on crutches, that he would be failed if he left the room during the exam. None of the three supervisors would accompany the man to the toilet despite other students' protests. Eventually a female student emptied her water bottle so the man could go to a corner of the room and relieve himself. In a letter written on Wednesday, university deputy head Karl-Reinhard Volz apologized to the student.
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