■ SOUTH KOREA
Police nab `dead' burglar
A 47-year-old man has been arrested for faking his death with the help of his wife in an attempt to elude police on his trail over a theft, Seoul's Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday. Police had had difficulty hunting down the suspected burglar, identified only by his last name, Chung, as all official records showed he had died two years ago, the report said. Chung stole 200km of electrical wire worth 7 million won (US$7,500) from a warehouse in Daejeon last year, the paper said, quoting police. Police finally arrested Chung on Tuesday and found out his wife made a false report to the government that he died of a liver disease in 2005, it said. "Chung is suspected of orchestrating the false report of his death to habitually commit crimes," a police officer said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Military buys Spanish ships
Australia will buy five new military ships from Spain in an A$11 billion (US$9.3 billion) deal to boost its ability to respond to threats in the region, Prime Minister John Howard announced yesterday. Canberra has ordered three F-100 air warfare destroyers and two amphibious ships capable of landing up to 1,000 troops from Spanish state-owned military shipyard, Navantia. Howard said the new ships represent a "massive lift" in the nation's ability to respond to humanitarian and military incidents in the Pacific region and beyond. He said the F-100 destroyers are capable of carrying missiles, which could be added if Australia agrees to join in a missile defense system being built by the US and Japan to guard against regional threats.
■ VIETNAM
Wartime shell kills two
A father and his 12-year-old son were killed when a Vietnam War-era artillery shell exploded after they hit it while working on their farm in Quang Nam Province, police said yesterday. Le Van Thanh, 41, and his son Le Hong Vy died at the scene following the incident on Sunday, police said. The pair were planting a eucalyptus tree when they hit the 105mm shell with a hoe, the officer said. Thirty villagers spent two hours collecting their remains, he said. The family's farm is near a former US military post.
■ CHINA
Seven bodies retrieved
Authorities pulled seven bodies from a swollen river following a bridge collapse in Guangdong Province, but doctors said three of them were not victims of the accident, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Part of the bridge collapsed last Friday after a barge loaded with sand hit a support pillar. Surveillance videos showed seven people riding in cars and two workers on the bridge over the Xijiang River at the time of the collapse. Doctors concluded after a forensic examination that three of the bodies were not bridge collapse victims, Xinhua reported without elaborating. The other four bodies were bring identified, the agency said, citing a government spokesman. About 200m of the 1,600m-long bridge collapsed. The barge's crew have been detained.
■ CHINA
Sichuan floods kill 15
Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed 15 people and left two missing in Sichuan Province, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The deaths happened in or near Dazhou city, where a flash flood late on Monday damaged 16 reservoirs, and damaged or destroyed about 4,000 homes, Xinhua said. The flood also triggered landslides and cut off utilities in parts of the city.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Monet sells for US$36.8m
A painting of water lilies by Claude Monet sold at a Sotheby's auction on Tuesday for US$36.8 million. It was the second major work by the Impressionist artist to go under the hammer this week. Nympheas, which has not been seen in public since 1936, sold to an anonymous bidder for more than its pre-sale estimate of US$20 million to US$30 million as the London art market sees a week of high-profile auctions. The price, which includes buyer's premium, is the second highest ever for a Monet at auction.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Three students hang selves
Students at a Northern Ireland high school were receiving suicide counseling Tuesday after three of their classmates hanged themselves over the past month. Authorities played down speculation that the trio could have been involved in a wider ``suicide pact,'' but also called for an investigation into whether the victims were influenced by the content of Web chat sites that promote suicide as a glamorous option. Lee Walker, 15, was buried Monday, three days after he was found hanged in the village of Tandragee -- and just five days after another 15-year-old classmate, James Topley, did the same. Four weeks ago Wayne Browne, also 15, hanged himself at the same spot as James.
■ HOLY SEE
Church offers driving guide
The Vatican released its Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road on Tuesday. In the document, the Vatican suggested drivers should pray vocally, as "this will help [driver and passengers] to feel immersed in the presence of God [and] stay under His protection." The code also has some words of warning for lovers of fast, power cars. "The domination instinct, or the feeling of arrogance, impels people to seek power in order to assert themselves." Cars, the documents goes on to warn, "lend themselves to being used by their owners to show off, and as a means for outshining other people and arousing a feeling of envy. When we praise our cars we are, in fact, praising ourselves, because they belong to us," it says.
■ RUSSIA
Racial killers sent to prison
A court on Tuesday sentenced four men to prison terms of between seven and 14 years for the racially motivated killing of a Congolese student two years ago. The slaying of Roland Epassak in St. Petersburg prompted outrage and protests among local and foreign exchange students and other young people. The St. Petersburg City Court's ruling on Tuesday that the four were driven by "extremist" motives followed a jury's guilty verdict earlier.
■ FRANCE
African leaders probed
Paris prosecutors are investigating campaigners' claims that five African leaders and their families used embezzled funds to buy homes in France, a judicial official said on Tuesday. Investigators will look at the assets of Gabonese President Omar Bongo, Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso, Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, Equatorial Guinea President President Teodoro Obiang Ngeuma and Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Prosecutors are acting on a legal complaint filed by two NGOs, Sherpa and Survie.
■ HONDURAS
Operation `Fiscal Love'
In an effort to crack down on tax evasion, government officials began counting the cars outside hundreds of so-called "love motels" on Tuesday, saying the establishments earn more than they report and cheat the government out of about US$40,000 in taxes each month. Under the "Fiscal Love" operation, tax auditors were also stationed inside the lobbies of the motels. "Love motels" rent rooms for as little as six hours and are common throughout Latin America. "We're not interested in whether customers go into the rooms as a twosome, threesome or foursome," said Armando Sarmiento, a spokesman for the national tax office. "We're only counting the cars that arrive."
■ COLOMBIA
Uribe calls for investigation
President Alvaro Uribe formally asked the chief federal prosecutor on Tuesday to investigate allegations that far-right paramilitaries helped finance his 2002 political campaign. The request came after the president denied vague accusations made by a fugitive Colombian drug lord that Uribe's first presidential campaign was partially financed by illegal right-wing militias. "I would not have sought the presidency of the republic with illegal money," Uribe said in a speech in Cartagena. Fabio Ochoa Vasco, one of the world's most sought-after drug traffickers, alleged in an interview that Uribe's campaign was partly funded by Salvatore Mancuso, a paramilitary warlord who ran much of the Caribbean coast at the time.
■ UNITED STATES
Pacifier investigation begins
A woman in Washington State has been arrested in the death of her four-month-old son after telling authorities she had taped a pacifier to his face to keep the device in his mouth. Bonnie Desmond, 20, was arrested by police in this town east of Everett and booked into the Snohomish County jail on Monday night for investigation of first-degree manslaughter, with bail set at US$100,000, the jail Web site said. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. The woman called authorities on Monday morning, saying her baby was unconscious.
■ UNITED STATES
Who looks where, how long?
Men are more likely to look at a woman's face before other areas when shown naked pictures, a study by Emory University researchers showed. Women will look at pictures of heterosexual sex longer than men, the study found. Both findings, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, make sense psychologically, Emory psychologist Kim Wallen told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Still photos of couples having sex were shown to 30 women and 15 men between the ages of 23 and 28. Each was rigged up with a high-tech eye-tracking device to measure where his or her gaze went first and how long it stayed there.
■ UNITED STATES
Kitten flushed from drain
It took two fire trucks, five firefighters, several animal rescuers and about 946 liters of water to rescue a kitten that refused to come out of a Parkersburg, West Virginia, storm sewer drain. Animal control officers tried coaxing the tabby with encouraging words and food on Monday afternoon. Firefighters tried banging tools on one end of the pipe and flashing lights on Monday night near the Parkersburg-Belpre Bridge in hopes of driving it out the other end. Only when firefighters flushed enough water through the pipe to wet the kitten's paws did it rush into the hands of a firefighter standing inside a manhole.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema