■ China
Excrement saves woman
A woman survived a plunge from a sixth-floor balcony thanks to a convenient pile of excrement that broke her fall, local media said. The accident happened when the woman was hanging out laundry on Monday in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, the Kuaibao tabloid said. "Workers happened to be emptying the building's septic tank, which had not been tended for a long time and had regularly blocked sewage pipes," the newspaper said. "She probably stretched out too far and fell ... right on to a 20cm thick heap of excrement." The woman suffered only slight injuries, the newspaper said.
■ India
Angry mob kills `rapist'
A man who allegedly raped a five-year-old girl was lynched in an Indian town already reeling from a case in which dozens of poor children were sexually assaulted and murdered, reports said yesterday. Some 1,000 residents in the upscale satellite town Noida outside New Delhi set upon the ice-cream vendor after he was found with a girl who went missing on Tuesday, the Indian Express newspaper said. An angry mob led by the girl's father beat the vendor for over 15 minutes before police rescued him, a Hindustan Times report said. He later died in hospital.
■ Indonesia
`Solders' rob military office
Two men stormed a military headquarters on Sulawesi island unchallenged, stealing more than US$50,000 and a handgun before fleeing the scene, a report said yesterday. The machete-wielding robbers, wearing army fatigues, entered the local military base on Monday and made straight for the finance office, the Koran Tempo newspaper said. They attacked soldiers during the raid, wounding a soldier before making off with the handgun and envelopes containing soldiers' wages worth US$50,273, it said. The robbers then used the stolen weapon to shoot another soldier in the knee as they left the headquarters, it said.
■ China
Ex-land official probed
A former land official in scandal-hit Shanghai has been placed under investigation amid a probe into bribe-taking in return for real estate approvals, reports said yesterday. The Shanghai Securities News and other newspapers gave no details of any specific allegations against Yin Guoyuan (殷國元), the former vice director of the bureau of land and housing management. Yin's former subordinate, Zhu Wenjin (朱文錦), and eight other officials were reportedly detained last year on suspicion of accepting cash and expensive gifts in return for approving real estate developments, although the city government has yet to provide confirmation. Details of such investigations are rarely disclosed until a final decision has been made on whether to file charges.
■ Japan
Abe to visit US
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make his first trip to the US as head of state this month for summit talks on North Korea and Iraq, against a backdrop of renewed controversy over Japan's use of military brothels during World War II. Abe will travel to the US on April 26 to 27 and hold meetings with US President George W. Bush at Camp David before traveling to the Middle East, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said yesterday. The visit comes at a sensitive time, with US lawmakers considering a nonbinding resolution urging Japan to apologize formally for forcing thousands of women into the brothels.
■ Croatia
Chameleons smuggled in
Customs officers found 175 chameleons and 10 turtles at Zagreb airport being smuggled from Thailand by a local man, police said on Tuesday. The chameleons belonging to protected species Calumma globifer and Calumma parsonii were in very bad condition, and seven of them had already died during transport, the Hina news agency reported. The value of the chameleons was estimated at around US$200,000. Authorities said they would press charges against the 25 year-old.
■ Germany
Hostage video condemned
On Tuesday the government condemned a video showing a German woman hostage and her son pleading for help as their Iraqi kidnappers threatened to execute them unless Berlin withdraws its troops from Afghanistan. Hannelore Krause, 61, and her 20-year-old son Sinan were sobbing and visibly distraught in the video picked up by the US-based SITE Institute which monitors Islamist Web sites. Their captors extended by 10 days the deadline for Germany to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan or see the hostages executed, although the exact date of the new deadline was not immediately clear.
■ Germany
Hitler's citizenship revoked
Germany's Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, which will host the G8 summit in June, has revoked the honorary citizenship it awarded to Adolf Hitler in 1932. The local council voted late on Monday to formally strip the Nazi dictator's name from the roll of honorary citizens even though it felt the honor had lapsed when Hitler, a regular summer guest, killed himself. Hitler spent several summer holidays in Germany's oldest Baltic resort, 250km north of Berlin. He was given the honor on Aug. 15, 1932, Kukla said. Thousands of German towns and cities made Hitler an honorary citizen during the Third Reich and many formally revoked the title when his regime collapsed after his suicide in 1945.
■ Sweden
Name `Metallica' rejected
Metallica may be a cool name for a heavy metal band, but a Swedish couple is struggling to convince officials it is also suitable for a baby girl. Michael and Karolina Tomaro are locked in a court battle with Swedish authorities in Stockholm, which rejected their application to name their six-month-old child after the legendary rock band. "It suits her," Karolina Tomaro, 27, said on Tuesday of the name. "She's decisive and she knows what she wants." Although little Metallica has already been baptized, the Swedish National Tax Board refused to register the name. Tomaro said the official handling the case also called the name "ugly."
■ Zimbabwe
Official paper prints threat
The main government newspaper in Harare printed an apparent death threat against British embassy political officer Gillian Dare and accused her of financing what it called a terror campaign by government opponents. The escalation in the war of words between the government and Western diplomats came on the first day of a two-day nationwide strike on Tuesday called to protest deepening economic hardships that are blamed on President Robert Mugabe's government. It was the strongest public threat against a Western diplomat during escalating political unrest in the southern African country.
■ Canada
Military to rent tanks
The Department of National Defense plans to rent up to 20 German tanks to better protect its soldiers in Afghanistan, media reported on Tuesday. The government will rent 20 Leopard-type A6M tanks from the German army because they offer better protection against anti-tank explosive devices than those currently possessed by the military, CTV TV said. In addition, the army's 30-year-old C2 tanks cannot be used in Afghanistan because with the summer heat the inside temperature would surpass 60oC. The German A6M models are air-conditioned. Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to offer specifics when asked about the deal.
■ United States
Residents divided on tax
Residents of a southern New Mexico county were divided on Tuesday on a tax that would help pay for a commercial spaceport that could one day turn the area into a hub for space tourism. With all precincts reporting, unofficial results from the county's bureau of elections show those in favor of the tax increase outnumbered opponents of the measure by a mere 204 votes, but election workers were still counting another 541 provisional ballots. "It's going to depend on how those provisionals go," said Lynn Ellins, supervisor of the county's elections bureau.
■ United States
Missing python found
This was one search you could not just Google. An employee's 0.9m python went missing last weekend in Google's sprawling Manhattan office, sending search teams on an all-out snake hunt. The searchers finally found the serpent, known as Kaiser, on Monday night. "A snake was lost; it was not an April Fool's joke. It was found last night," Google spokeswoman Ellen West said on Tuesday. "The snake has left the building." She did not say where in the office Kaiser was found. But a contributor to Google's official blog wrote that the staff was told the snake was found "relaxing behind a cabinet."
■ United States
Teen faces terrorism charges
A teenager faces a terrorism charge for confronting a girl with a knife and later being found with a backpack full of restraining devices and weapons, a prosecutor said. The 14-year-old told police he planned to hold his class hostage, attorney Andrew Thomas of Maricopa County, Arizona, said on Monday. When the teen was arrested two weeks ago, county officials said he had plotted a "Columbine-like" scenario, comparing his plans to the 1999 deadly shooting massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School. The teen also was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and misdemeanor.
■ United States
Children arrested for sex
Five fifth-graders were arrested on Tuesday after an investigation into allegations that students had sex in an unsupervised classroom with other classmates present. "After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore," Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley said. "But this comes pretty close." The alleged incident took place on March 27 at the Spearsville, Louisiana, school in rural north Louisiana. Four students -- two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy -- were arrested on charges of obscenity. An 11-year-old boy who was the alleged lookout was charged with being an accessory after the fact, Buckley said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing