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World News Quick Take

■ AUSTRALIA

Terror case probed

A judicial inquiry was ordered yesterday into the bungled case against an Indian doctor arrested over failed bomb attacks in Britain last year. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the inquiry into the case against Muslim medic Mohamed Haneef was needed to maintain public confidence in the country's anti-terrorist measures. "Australians are entitled to be reassured that their national security agencies are functioning as effectively as they can be and that anti-terrorism laws are being appropriately enforced," McClelland told reporters. "Understandably, the Haneef case has prompted some in the community to question this."



■ INDIA

Murder, rape charges in Goa

A suspect has been arrested and charged with the rape and murder of a British teenager found dead on a southern Indian beach last month -- the second suspect charged in the case, police said yesterday. The bruised and partially clothed body of Scarlett Keeling was found on Feb. 18 on Anjuna beach in Goa, a tiny state with a coastline crowded with tourist resorts. Police have charged Placido Carvalho with rape and murder, senior police official Bosco George said. Carvalho was one of the men seen with Keeling the night before her body was found.



■ JAPAN

Domestic abuse rising

Police said yesterday they received a record number of domestic abuse cases last year, with people in their 30s most likely to be both victims and perpetrators. It was the highest number of cases reported since 2001, when the government created a law to prevent domestic abuse from escalating. The law lets courts put restraining orders on abusive partners. Experts have attributed the rise in cases in part to a growing willingness by victims to come public about domestic abuse. Police received 20,992 complaints or reports of injuries from domestic violence last year, up 15 percent from 2006, the National Police Agency said.



■ THAILAND

Governor faces charges

Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosoyodhin suspended his official duties yesterday to face corruption allegations in the city's purchase of 315 fire trucks and 30 fire-fighting boats from Austria's Steyr Company (ASC) in 2004. Apirak, whose term as Bangkok governor will end in September, is one of six people charged by the Assets Scrutiny Committee of involvement in the dubious 6.7 billion baht (US$213 million) purchase of fire-fighting equipment for the capital from the Austrian firm Steyr. The purchase was signed by former Bangkok governor Samak Sundaravej on Aug. 27, 2004, his last day in office. Samak, who is now prime minister, also faces corruption charges by the ASC.



■ CHINA

Police use tear gas

Chinese police shot tear gas at around 1,500 factory workers from a wood furniture company who have been on strike and clashed over contracts, a factory manager said. The US government-funded Radio Free Asia said a tear gas canister struck and killed one female worker at the plant in south China and police had detained 14 others in a clash. Police in Boluo County, Guangdong Province, could not be reached for a comment. An online appeal outlining the workers' plight and apparently written by one of them said that in January the factory forced all employees to sign blank contracts before leaving for the Lunar New Year holiday. ■ UNITED KINGDOM

Erotic television ad banned

An erotic television advertisement for hair straighteners that used religious imagery like rosary beads and the phrase "thy will be done" has been banned for being offensive to Christians. The ghd hair products ad prompted almost two dozen complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, including one from the archdeacon of Liverpool, Ricky Panter. The authority ruled that the advertisement, which also used votive candles and the letter "t" in a font that made it resemble the Cross of Jesus, caused serious offense. The ad featured lingerie-clad women lying on a bed praying.



■ ITALY

Too fat to stay in jail

A court in Sicily has ruled that an accused mafioso can be put under house arrest because he is too fat for any Italian jail. Salvatore Ferranti, who weighs 210kg, was allowed to go home after spending six months in four Italian prisons, his lawyer said, confirming a local newspaper report. Guards at the first two prisons said they constantly needed to help Ferranti, 36, get dressed and undressed, move about and go to the bathroom. Guards at other prisons said there was no bed big enough for him, that he could not get through the bathroom door and that they would be at a loss if he had to be taken to a hospital in an emergency.



■ IRELAND

PM backs missing ministers

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern on Wednesday defended the departure of most of his government to 45 locations around the world as part of an annual migration to celebrate St Patrick's Day. The celebrations surrounding the national holiday on March 17 provides a "framework to showcase modern Ireland all over the world," Ahern told the Dail (lower house of parliament) on Wednesday. "It is used by us as a marketing opportunity," he said. State broadcaster RTE, using details obtained under freedom of information laws, reported on Wednesday that last year's St Patrick's Day trips by officials and members of the government cost over 560,000 euros (US$861,000).



■ GERMANY

Dead man's bones found

Two Italian women carrying luggage containing the remains of a man who died in Brazil 11 years ago were stopped by Munich airport police during a stopover on their journey from Sao Paulo to Naples. "Airport security spotted the skull and bones when the suitcase was put through the x-ray machine," police spokesman Christian Maier said. One of the women was the dead man's sister and she explained to surprised officials that it had been her brother's wish to be buried in Italy. After showing his death certificate, the Italians, aged 63 and 62, were allowed on their next flight to Naples. "We questioned the women and they produced a valid death certificate showing he had died 11 years ago of natural causes. As they were not violating any German laws they were allowed to continue their journey to Italy," Maier said.



■ FRANCE

Baby killer to stand trial

A French woman who confessed to killing three of her newborn babies between 1999 and 2003 has been ordered to stand trial for murder, her husband's lawyer said on Wednesday. Veronique Courjault, 38, has admitted killing two infants born in South Korea in 2002 and 2003, found by her husband in the family freezer in Seoul, as well as a third child born in France in 1999. ■ CANADA

Snow rage' incidents erupt

Although the country is one of the snowiest in the world, a series of violent "snow rage" incidents has revealed that even the locals have their limits. Police in French-speaking Quebec said on Wednesday that people were fighting over snow clearing and even parking spaces. Recent winters have been mild, but this one looks set to break all-time records for snow. One storm last weekend dumped 58cm on Ottawa and 48cm on Quebec City, which has already received more than 400cm this year. Quebec City police said they had been called to a dozen violent disputes about snow from one property ending up on someone else's.



■ UNITED STATES

AP correspondent dies at 93

John Roderick, an Associated Press correspondent who won renown for his reports on Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and other communist guerrilla leaders while living with them in their cave headquarters in the mid-1940s, has died. He was 93. Roderick died on Tuesday morning, friends and family said. He spent his last days in his Honolulu apartment gathering friends for final farewells, smiling and nodding when his weakened condition from heart failure and pneumonia prevented speech. He was an avid journalist to the end, completing a memoir about his restored farmhouse in Kamakura, Japan.



■ UNITED STATES

Bounty put on stray cats

A tiny town in Iowa is offering a US$5 bounty for each feral feline turned in. Those not claimed will be destroyed. Mayor Vance Trively said that Randolph, the southwest Iowa town of 200 people, is being overrun by dozens of feral cats and that something had to be done. "You can't just let them keep multiplying in town," Trively said on Tuesday. Town officials approved the bounty after receiving numerous complaints, ranging from a cat attacking a small dog to a dozen cats showing up at the bowl when a resident tried to feed his own cat.



■ UNITED STATES

Bailiff forgets inmate in cell

A bailiff in Little Rock, Arkansas, is under an internal investigation after a woman spent four days forgotten in a holding cell without food, water or a toilet. Bailiff Jarrod Hankins put Adriana Torres-Flores in the cell to await transport to jail last Friday and did not let her out until Monday morning. No one on the fourth floor of the courthouse had heard her cries or her banging on the 5cm thick steel door of the 2.74m by 3m cell. "There's nothing at all that indicates this was done intentionally," said Washington County Chief Deputy Jay Cantrell.



■ UNITED STATES

Toilet gets lots of use

Police said a woman in Ness City, western Kansas, sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years. They were investigating whether she was mistreated. Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said a man called his office last month to report that something was wrong with his girlfriend. The sheriff said the woman's muscles had atrophied and that medical personnel had to remove her from the toilet because she had become bound to it by "natural means." Whipple said the woman at first refused ambulance service and "didn't want to leave." She is hospitalized in Wichita, but so far has been refusing to talk to the authorities.
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