■ Hong Kong
Staff fined over waste
Staff at a theme park say management have fined them hundreds of dollars for the loss of disposable paper plates and lunch boxes, a media report said yesterday. Unions at Ocean Park, a cliffside zoo and recreation park, say that although the lost items cost just a few cents, management had fined a handful of employees the full cost of the drinks and meals -- up to HK$25(US$3.2) -- that would have been served in them. The fines averaged a total of US$1,000 a month, the report said.
■ Cambodia
Swiss found guilty of abuse
A court sentenced a Swiss man to 11 years in prison yesterday for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl. Hurni Hans Ulrich, 68, from Basel, was found guilty on Friday of debauchery, a legal term for sex offenses involving minors. Municipal court judge Chan Madina handed down the sentence yesterday and ordered Ulrich to pay 5 million riels (US$1,250) in compensation to the girl's parents. Ulrich denied the charges against him, saying he had never mistreated the girl and had spent more than US$1,000 to help the family and provide for her school expenses.
■ Vietnam
Bird flu found in north
Bird flu has struck poultry in Ha Tay Province, the latest in a string of outbreaks reported in recent weeks across the country, officials said yesterday. Symptoms of the H5N1 bird flu virus have been detected in two chickens at a farm in the province, just eight days after an outbreak was reported in the nearby province of Hai Duong, said Nguyen Huy Dang, director of Ha Tay Animal Health Department. Authorities slaughtered 550 chickens at the farm, Dang said. Test results released by a government laboratory in Hanoi yesterday confirmed the two chickens were infected with H5N1.
■ Bangladesh
Man enjoys time in tree
Tired of trying to get a bit of peace and quiet in one of the world's most densely populated countries, a Bangladeshi man in Dhaka with a head for heights has hit on the perfect solution. Each day carpenter and aspiring writer Salim Hossen Gaus, aged 25, winches himself 30m in a precarious home-made pulley to a small wooden platform he has built at the top of a palm tree. "I spend four to five hours minimum in the tree reading and writing, listening to the birds chirping," he said, adding that his favorite authors were Shakespeare and the Nobel laureate, Bengali writer and poet Rabindranath Tagore.
■ Australia
Military buys new bombers
Canberra will buy 24 advanced Super Hornet fighter bombers for a total of A$6 billion (US$4.6 billion), the government said yesterday. The F/A-18F Super Hornets would ensure that the air force capabilities would be maintained during the transition to the Lockheed F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) over the next decade, Defense Minister Brendan Nelson said. The Super Hornet aircraft are built by a team including US companies Boeing, Northrup Grumman, GE Aircraft Engines and Raytheon along with more than 1,800 suppliers in the US and Canada. The Super Hornet is a highly capable, battle proven, multi role aircraft that is currently in service with the US Navy through to 2030, Nelson said.
■ Serbia
Pensioners fight over love
Police had to separate two septuagenarians fighting with a gun and an axe in a love feud over a younger woman, local media reported on Monday. The woman, 52-year-old Zivkica Jankovic, was shot in the leg during the fracas, and more than two dozen police had to be called in to stop the brawl in the southern town of Leskovac. Radivoje Sinadinovic, 77, said Jankovic had been his lover but was wooed away by his neighbor Ljubisa Petkovic, 78, who had bragged about the size of his pension. "We had planned to get married," Sinadinovic said. "But when Ljubisa came to buy plum brandy and boasted of how high his pension was, it went to her head. She left and did not come back."
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