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■CHINA

Police may be disarmed

Police facing emotional strains because of financial or romantic problems could be stripped of their handguns in Jiangxi Province, a newspaper reported yesterday. The public security bureau in the province will begin inspections this month to make sure officers who have received administrative punishments, or are under investigation, will not be able to carry guns, the Southern Metropolis Daily said. Guns would also be retrieved from “officers who are suffering from serious illnesses or face psychological and emotional instability resulting from love or marriage frustrations and heavy debt,” it said.



■INDONESIA

Padlocked pants criticized

A move by massage parlors to padlock workers’ pants to prevent prostitution has caused outrage, with one minister branding it an “insult” to women, reports said yesterday. Minister Meutia Fardia Hatta Swasono reacted angrily to reports of locks being fitted to the pants of female staff in a small town where massage parlors are often used as a front for prostitution. “It’s not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong,” Swasono, the minister for women’s empowerment, told the Jakarta Post. The daily said authorities in Batu in East Java had ordered masseuses to wear the locks to protect the town’s reputation.



■MALAYSIA

Opposition leader has stroke

The leader of the fundamentalist opposition Islamic party was hospitalized yesterday after suffering a mild stroke, his party said. Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) President Hadi Awang was reported to be in stable condition and could be discharged in the next few days, PAS secretary-general Kamarudin Jaffar said in a statement. “He is able to talk,” Hadi’s spokesman Roslan Shahir said. Hadi, a Muslim cleric who led PAS since 2002, won a parliamentary and a state seat in his home state of Terengganu.



■NEW ZEALAND

Cops may hire in Singapore

Chinese-speaking police officers may be hired from Singapore to meet the needs of the fast-growing Asian population, a newspaper reported yesterday. A spokesman for Police Minister Annette King told the New Zealand Herald that a final decision had yet to be made. “If that happened, we’d be recruiting very experienced police who could speak Chinese,” the spokesman said. The paper said that police commissioners of the two countries had reached an agreement in principle. “Singapore has a similar-size force serving the same population, and also their policing ethos is remarkably similar to ours,” said Inspector John Mitchell, police development manager for Auckland.

■SPAIN

Muslim writer cancels visit

A former Muslim author and journalist who made headlines when he was baptized by the pope last month canceled a visit over concerns for his safety, his Spanish publisher said on Wednesday. Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian citizen, had been scheduled to present the Spanish edition of his book Conquering Fear: My Life Against Islamic Terrorism and the Unconsciousness of the West at a Madrid university on Wednesday. Allam, a critic of religious extremism who defends Israel’s right to exist, has for years received death threats from Islamic radicals, the statement said.



■BENIN

Priests pray for Betancourt

Voodoo priests cried out in tongues and made sacrificial offerings on Wednesday, imploring God and the ancestors to help free French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt from the hands of Colombian rebels. The ritual by initiates in the West African home of the ancient religion was part of a three-day program of fasting and prayer decreed by President Thomas Yayi Boni for Betancourt, who has been held hostage since 2002. Sarkozy says Betancourt is ill and close to death and has made it a priority to secure her release. The 46-year-old French-Colombian citizen was kidnapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency.



■BRAZIL

Underpants draw bidders

He is accused of being one of the world’s most powerful cocaine traffickers, a Colombian kingpin allegedly responsible for more than 300 murders. But when Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia’s belongings went on sale on Tuesday in Sao Paulo, the best-selling items were not the plasma screen televisions or his designer sunglasses. They were his underpants. Pnina Spett, a volunteer saleswoman, told Globo television that Abadia’s pants had become “folklore” after he was arrested half-naked last year by federal police at his Sao Paulo hideout. The shoppers “came straight for the Y-fronts,” she said. This month he was sentenced to 30 years in prison on drug charges.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Diggers make breakthrough

Archaeologists conducting a major excavation at Stonehenge said they had made a key breakthrough that may help explain why the site was built, the BBC said on Wednesday. The team has reached a series of sockets that once held bluestones, smaller stones, most of which are now missing, that made up Stonehenge’s original structure. The bluestones were transported from Wales and the researchers think they were brought to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire because ancient people believed they had healing properties. The team must now extract material from the holes left by the bluestones to better date when they first arrived.



■RUSSIA

Poisoner faces life sentence

A man is facing life in jail for killing at least six people, including his wife and daughter, by adding poison to their food and watching their agonizing deaths, the Vesti news program reported on Wednesday. Vyacheslav Solovyov started inventing poisons to test on humans some six years ago, it said. Solovyov has been charged with six murders and four attempted poisonings. The poisonings have shocked the central town of Yaroslavl and Solovyov has asked for his trial to be held behind closed doors. “He has pleaded guilty to a majority of the killings, but his motives remain unclear,” the report said. Two previous examinations found him to be criminally sane.
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