■ china
Lion bites off child's arm
A circus lion ripped a 10-year-old boy's arm off after grabbing him through the bars of its cage, local media reported yesterday. The accident happened on Saturday at a park in Mengcheng County, Anhui Province, the Shanghai Daily said. "Park workers managed to pull the boy away, but his left arm had been torn away by the animal," the paper said. The boy was rushed to hospital and underwent surgery, the paper said, without giving details of his condition.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Tourist caught red-handed
A German tourist caught spraying graffiti on the rocks and ice face of Franz Josef Glacier was forced to clean up his handiwork, local media reported yesterday. English tourists caught Jan Philip Scharbert on camera as he spray-painted the glacier last week, the Press newspaper reported. They handed their photos to Department of Conservation staff, who informed police. Scharbert, 28, was arrested boarding a bus to leave Franz Josef village and ordered to clean up the graffiti under supervision. Police said Scharbert took one-and-a-half days to clean up his graffiti.
■ JAPAN
Child porn laws reviewed
The ruling party will review laws on child pornography, an official said on Monday, following calls to close a loophole allowing individual possession. The US and other developed countries have accused Tokyo of laxity in allowing child pornography, amid statistics showing that the number of victimized youngsters has risen to a record high. The Liberal Democratic Party has set up a panel to review the 1999 child porn law. The law bans production and sale of sexually arousing materials involving children, but does not ban possession.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Jersey cops find body parts
Police investigating allegations of child abuse said on Monday their search of a former children's home in the Channel Islands where a body was found at the weekend was now focused on a bricked-up cellar. A child's body parts, thought to date from the early 1980s, were unearthed at the Haut de la Garenne house in Jersey on Saturday after a sniffer dog detected them through several inches of concrete. Sniffer dogs have identified a number of other areas of interest in and outside the house, now used as a youth hostel, said Lenny Harper, Jersey deputy chief police officer. Police were concentrating on a cellar below the building.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
`Bus stop stalker' convicted
A man known as London's "bus stop stalker" was convicted on Monday of murdering two young women and attempting to murder a third. Traveling in his car, Levi Bellfield, 39, would visit bus stops and follow buses late at night, looking for young blondes traveling alone, police said. He would follow them, offer them rides and, if they turned him down, become enraged and attack them. Two women were both killed at night by hammer blows after getting off buses. London police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton, who led the hunt for Bellfield, said authorities will now try to find out if he carried out other murders of women, dating back as far as 1980.
■ FRANCE
Sarkozy blames bank chief
President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview published yesterday that it was wrong for Daniel Bouton, head of Societe Generale bank, to sidestep responsibility for a trading scandal. "You can't say `I'm going to be paid 7 million euros (US$10.3 million) a year' and then, when there's a problem, say `It's not me.' That, I cannot accept," he was quoted as saying in Le Parisien. On Jan. 24, the bank unveiled 4.9 billion euros (US$7.26 billion) of losses. Sarkozy has attacked its management team before over the trading scandal. Bouton dismissed the political pressure when the bank unveiled its annual results last week, saying it was a private company that decided on its own appointments.
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