■ HONG KONG
Murder suspect arrested
Police said they arrested a Pakistani man early yesterday in connection with the murders of four sex workers. Four women have been found murdered since Saturday, prompting fears that a serial killer was targeting prostitutes. The suspect was detained in Macau and sent back by ferry to Hong Kong, where he was arrested, police said. Superintendent Steve Li said Macau police and the Hong Kong Organized Crime and Triad Bureau were involved in the case. "At the time of the arrest we were able to recover two mobile phones which had been stolen from two of the victims," Li said on local radio RTHK.
■ INDIA
Bloodsucking ring broken
Police in Uttar Pradesh state said yesterday they have broken a racket in which a gang held 17 men captive and forced them to give blood several times a week, selling it for thousands of dollars. The men -- all poor migrant workers -- were so weak when they were rescued that they could not stand up, and are now being treated in hospital, police said. The arrested men have been charged with selling blood, which is against the law, and unlawfully confining their victims. The gang promised jobs to their victims and then persuaded them to undergo blood tests by paying them 50 rupees (US$1.25).
■ NEW ZEALAND
Teen charged with murder
A 14-year-old boy was charged in a Rotorua court yesterday with the murder of a Scottish tourist last month. The boy, who could not be named, was remanded in custody after being accused of murder, aggravated robbery and intentional damage. Karen Aim, 26, from the Orkney Islands in Scotland, was attacked in the early hours of Jan. 17 as she was returning to her apartment from a night out with friends in Taupo, a lakeside tourist town in the North Island. Aim was found with severe head injuries by police investigating vandalism at a nearby high school but she died soon after in a hospital.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Villagers turn TV off
Residents of a small island turned on to their wives after turning off their TVs for three weeks in an unusual social experiment, a report said yesterday. All 28 residents of Darang island off the south coast agreed to take part in the experiment by a local educational broadcaster and surveillance cameras were set up in each home to avoid backsliding, Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported. The islanders, including the village leader, had a tough time at first fighting their viewing habits. But the vast majority said later that their lives had become much richer.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Anthony Minghella dies
Oscar-winning British film director Anthony Minghella has died aged 54, a spokeswoman for his agent said yesterday. Minghella won the Academy Award for best director in 1996 for the wartime romance The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. Details of his death were not immediately released. Minghella was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for the crime thriller The Talented Mr Ripley. He also wrote the screenplay for Cold Mountain. Previous films included Truly Madly Deeply and Mr. Wonderful. In recent months Minghella had been making a film adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency for the BBC.
■ ZIMBABWE
Journalists warned
The government has threatened to arrest Western journalists who it accuses of spying on behalf of "hostile" countries ahead of next week's presidential election. President Robert Mugabe's spokesman, George Chiramba, said the government would "flush out" reporters he described as "agitators embedded in journalism." His statement appears to be a move to justify barring journalists from Britain and other countries during the March 29 poll.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Hotel offers sex minibar
A new boutique hotel at a seaside resort in northwest England is to offer guests a sex toy minibar when it opens later this year, its owner said on Monday. The Vincent Hotel, in Southport, near Liverpool, will have "intimate seduction kits" in each of its 60 rooms from May, containing lubricating gel, massage oil, a vibrating ring and two condoms. The kit will be in a sealed box alongside more traditional minibar items like nuts, chocolate and alcohol. Guests can request an extra special kit containing a whip, mask and bondage tape.
■ SPAIN
Police officers probed
Three police officers are under investigation for murder after a Senegalese man reportedly drowned after they punctured the inflatable mattress with which he was trying to reach the country's coast. Laucling Sonko, together with three other Africans, was intercepted by a Civil Guard boat near a beach in the North African enclave of Ceuta one day before dawn in September, El Mundo newspaper reported on Monday. Police towed them back a short distance and slashed the mattress when they were about 100m from the Moroccan shore, despite Sonko's pleas that he could not swim, a commission investigating the incident said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Matthews' relative charged
A distant relative of a British girl whose nearly monthlong disappearance drew national attention has been charged with her kidnapping, a prosecutor said on Monday. Shannon Matthews, 9, never arrived home from school on Feb. 19 and became the subject of a massive search. Police eventually found her hidden inside the pullout drawer of a divan bed in a row house less than 2km away from her home in the northern English town of Dewsbury on Friday. Michael Donovan, the 39-year-old uncle of Shannon's stepfather Craig Meehan, was arrested the same day. Prosecutor Peter Mann told reporters Donovan would be charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment.
■ ISRAEL
Spies allowed to blog
Shin Bet, the domestic spy agency, has allowed some of its staff to blog in an attempt to win over high-tech recruits. Four employees, none of whom appear to be frontline agents, have started blogs, although their offerings are more mundane than their profession might suggest. Shin Bet agents are routinely involved in surveillance, interrogation and armed operations against Palestinian militants inside the country and in the occupied territories. The bloggers have technical office jobs. Still, they guard their anonymity, using only silhouetted portraits of themselves.
■ UNITED STATES
Man in wheelchair shot
A man in a wheelchair at a hospital in Boulder, Colorado, who claimed his oxygen tank had a detonator was fatally shot by police after a four-hour standoff. Terrance Baughman, 32, was shot in the chest and died about seven hours later after undergoing surgery on Monday at Boulder Community Hospital, police said. It was not clear why Baughman was at the hospital. He was a Boulder resident who had once been a patient there. Baughman got out of the wheelchair during the standoff, leading officers to fire, police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said. "It was his movement that triggered the confrontation," Huntley said.
■ UNITED STATES
Astronauts finish robot
Two of the country's astronauts finished assembling the Canadian robot Dextre yesterday during a nearly seven-hour space walk outside the International Space Station, NASA said. Rick Linnehan and Robert Behnken put together the tool-handling assembly of the US$200 million robot and attached a spare-parts platform, readying Dextre to undertake delicate maintenance tasks which have up until now been handled by astronauts. Linnehan and Behnken wrapped up their walk after six hours and 54 minutes outside the ISS, and on the 43rd anniversary of the very first walk in space by a human, when a Russian cosmonaut pushed into the abyss for 12 minutes on March 18, 1965.
■ UNITED STATES
Death toll raised in mishap
Seven people were killed over the weekend when a construction crane collapsed in New York, police said on Monday, reporting the discovery of three more bodies in the rubble. Four construction workers were initially confirmed dead in Saturday's accident, which saw a 60m crane collapse and crush an entire residential building and damage several other properties. A police spokeswoman said on Monday that three more bodies had been discovered in the remains of the buildings on Manhattan's east side, but was unable to give their identities pending notification of next of kin.
■ UNITED STATES
Chihuahuas rescued
A frenzy of tiny-dog lovers has descended on an animal shelter that rescued hundreds of Chihuahuas from a filthy rural Arizona home, with some potential owners getting into shoving matches and others calling from around the globe. The nearly 800 small dogs, mostly Chihuahuas, and 36 parrots were found in a large mobile home northwest of Tucson last week. All that were old enough and to leave the shelter were adopted by Monday, authorities said. When news spread on Thursday of the dog rescue, hundreds of people packed into the Humane Society of Southern Arizona in hopes of adopting the dogs, a spokeswoman said.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
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