■ AUSTRALIA
'Sydney' inquiry begins
An inquiry began yesterday into the 66-year-old mystery of why the pride of the country's World War II navy was sunk with all hands aboard by a more lightly armed German ship. A board of inquiry will seek to explain the fate of the HMAS Sydney and its 645 crew. The hulk of the Sydney was discovered off the western coast on March 16, a day after its nemesis, the German cruiser Kormoran was found. The vessels fought a battle on Nov. 19, 1941, and both went down.
■ CHINA
Teacher accused of rape
Police have arrested a teacher linked to the rape and sexual assault of 16 schoolgirls, a newspaper reported yesterday. Huang Shiming (黃世明), a primary school teacher in Huima, Sichuan Province, was accused of raping six girls aged between eight and 11 between April 2004 and last September, the Beijing Times said. He was also accused of sexually assaulting 10 other girls. Huang disappeared after a victim's family reported him to police and eluded authorities for more than a year before being identified in Guangdong Province.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Ad angers Russian champ
A famed Russian martial arts fighter is on the warpath after being featured in a honey commercial said to damage his image. Prosecutors said yesterday they had charged the chief of a martial arts group with fraud for using the publicity rights of world heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko without consent. Emelianenko filed a complaint seeking 1.55 billion won (US$1.56 million) in compensation from Korea Sambo Federation chief Moon Jong-keum and the head of a beekeepers' association that allegedly paid Moon 22 million won to use footage of Emelianenko. "The defendants damaged Fedor's image by producing commercials that do not fit his powerful image and were made with shoddy footage," the complaint said.
■ INDONESIA
Boys takes money and runs
Police said yesterday they were searching for a boy who ran away from his Jakarta home on Thursday with more than US$10,000 belonging to his father. The nine-year-old reportedly bought a PlayStation video game console and a mobile phone after enlisting the help of a mall security guard to change about US$800 into Indonesian rupiah. The boy ran away after his mother grounded him for not doing his homework, the Jakarta Post reported. He spent the night at the shopping mall and asked the security guard to take him to school the next morning, but disappeared after telling a teacher he was going to play basketball, the paper said.
■ GERMANY
Putin critic disappears
Police and state security officers have launched a wide-scale hunt for a Russian artist and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin's government who disappeared from her Berlin flat 11 days ago. Anna Mikhalchuk, 52, who has lived in the German capital since November, went for a walk on Good Friday and failed to return. At the weekend, police divers and sniffer dogs trawled a lake and searched allotments close to the home she shares with her husband, Michail Ryklin, a prize-winning philosopher and author. "On that afternoon she said goodbye to me and said she wanted to go for a short walk," Ryklin said.
■ GERMANY
Swan reunited with boat
Petra the black swan has been reunited with her beloved swan-shaped paddleboat after a failed romance with a real bird. Officials at a Muenster zoo where Petra has been spending the winter took her to a nearby lake on Friday and released her next to the paddleboat -- shaped like a giant white swan. Petra became so attached to the boat back in 2006 that she refused to leave its side. When winter came around, she and the boat were taken into the zoo. In recent months, Petra had struck up a relationship with a real white swan. However, he abandoned her last week -- and officials decided to reunite her with the boat.
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