Print

Mail

wiki links

World News Quick Take

■PHILIPPINES

Five killed in gunfight

At least five people were killed in a gunfight among relatives over a long-standing land dispute in the south, a regional police spokesman said yesterday. Superintendent Danilo Bacas said several members of the Muslim clan were also wounded in fighting that erupted late on Thursday in a village in Datu Blah Sinsuat Town in Shariff Kabunsuan Province. “They are actually relatives by blood and by affinity, but they refused to settle their land problem amicably,” Bacas said.



■PHILIPPINES

Wife ensures fidelity

A housewife on Thursday cut off her husband’s penis while he was sleeping in their house to ensure his fidelity, Manila police said. Officer Rolly Lipata said that 37-year-old Lenly Bayabado had suspected her younger husband was having affairs, prompting her to cut off his organ. Lipata said neighbors rushed the screaming victim, 32-year-old Joelito, to a nearby hospital in the Manila suburban city of Pasig. Bayabado underwent several hours of surgery to re-attach the organ, but hospital sources said there was no assurance he would still be able perform sexually. Bayabado denied he was cheating, but said he would not file charges because he wants to keep the family intact for the sake of their four children.



■MALAYSIA

Crocodile found in shop

Fire and rescue officers caught a 3m-long crocodile that was found trying to climb the stairs of a two-story shop, a report said yesterday. The 200kg reptile, believed to be from a nearby swamp in Malacca, was halfway up the flight of steps when shocked onlookers called the fire and rescue department late on Wednesday, the Star daily said. The captured creature was transferred to the state zoo on Thursday.



■SINGAPORE

Glue-sniffing on the rise

Glue-sniffing among youth is making a worrying comeback after a decade in decline, news reports said yesterday. Seven in 10 of those caught recently were below 20, mostly students, and represented all the major races in the city-state: Chinese, Malays and Indians. The number of inhalant abusers caught has risen from an all-time low of 120 in 2005 to 644 last year, according to Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) data in the Straits Times. Four in five nabbed were male. CNB deputy director S. Vijakumar said that boredom, peer pressure and curiosity were the three reasons most often given by those who abuse glue. When the problem was at its peak in 1987, 1,112 abusers were caught.



■INDONESIA

Providers lift YouTube ban

Internet providers said yesterday they have restored access to YouTube and other sites carrying a controversial anti-Islam film following “overwhelming” protests from Web users. The move comes just days after Web providers here blocked the sites at the government’s request, sparking a storm of complaints. The government is facing accusations of censorship over the ban, which small business owners say is affecting their livelihoods. Internet providers said they would instead try block access to pages carrying the film, Fitna. Access to the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking site MySpace were blocked on Tuesday following protests against the film, which intersperses images of terrorist attacks with quotes from the Koran. The Alliance of Independent Journalists said the move amounted to censorship, comparing it to “destroying a restaurant to kill a fly.”



■RUSSIA

Man gets life for killing 14

The head of a prostitution ring was jailed for life in eastern Russian on Thursday for his involvement in kidnapping, raping and killing 14 young women, a judge said yesterday. Eduard Chudinov was charged by the Sverdlovsk regional court in the Urals region for his part in murdering the kidnapped girls between 2002 and 2005 after they refused to work as prostitutes, media reports said. Seven other members of the gang, four of whom were relatives, were also found guilty and given jail terms of between 10 and 24 years, Interfax news agency reported. The gang members were arrested after the bodies of girls between 13 and 25 years old were discovered in a shallow grave in a forest outside the town of Levikha in February last year.



■RUSSIA

Car cleaners find diamond

Car cleaners at a firm in St Petersburg got a surprise when they cleaned out a vacuum cleaner this week: a diamond pendant worth up to 300,000 euros (US$475,400). “I didn’t know how much it was worth at first so I got a jeweler to come around and he said it was worth as much as 300,000 euros,” said Vladimir Shapiro, owner of the car cleaning firm. “When I heard the value my jaw dropped to the floor ... You would have to notice losing something like this.” Shapiro said he was not going to disclose much about the pendant so that he could return it to its true owner.



■ SOUTH AFRICA

‘Kill the bastards’: official

Deputy Security Minister Susan Shabangu drew shock and anger on Thursday after instructing police in the crime-ridden country to “kill the bastards.” “You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or your commmunity,” Shabangu told a crime rally in Pretoria to a standing ovation. Official figures show 9,000 murders and nearly 7,000 robberies occur every year. “You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility. Your responsibility is to serve and protect,” she said. “I want no warning shots. You have one shot, and it must be a kill shot.” The main opposition Democratic Alliance called for Shabangu to be fired.



■UNITED KINGDOM

McCanns pan comments

The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann have rejected as a “deliberate smear” leaked comments from a confidential police investigation in Portugal which suggested that the child had been unhappy about being left alone in her bed as her parents were out dining. Madeleine, who was then three, disappeared from a room where she was sleeping with her two siblings in a Portuguese holiday resort on May 3. The Portuguese police have named Kate and Gerry McCann official suspects in the case. The McCanns will urge the Portuguese justice ministry to launch an internal inquiry into the leak which breaches the country’s strict judicial laws, their spokesman said.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Dagger sells for US$3mn

A gold encrusted dagger once owned by the Indian emperor who built the Taj Mahal was sold for £1.7 million (US$3.4 million) at the Bonham auction house in London — more than three times its expected price. The dagger, once part of Shah Jahan’s royal collection, was made in the early 17th century, just after the Mughal emperor came to power. “Objects of this quality and importance come to the market very, very rarely,” said Claire Penhallurick, the head of Bonham’s Indian and Islamic Department.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Wrappers lead to arrest

Police in Cincinnati, Ohio, say a trail of candy and wrappers led them to suspects in a break-in at a downtown candy store. Four people have been charged with breaking and entering the Peter Minges & Son candy store on Thursday. They are accused of taking about US$400 in candy. The group was arrested a few blocks away.



■UNITED STATES

Station cleaner drives drunk

The Oregon State Police didn’t have to do much when they arrested a woman for supposedly drunken driving. She came to them. Troopers charged a 42-year-old private contractor with driving under the influence of intoxicants after she came to clean the state police office in Newport. A trooper said she showed signs of being intoxicated after driving to the office. A blood-alcohol test showed her level was 0.19 percent — more than twice the legal limit.



■ CHILE

Melting ice causes ‘tsunami’

Melting ice in a southern region caused a glacial lake to swell and then empty suddenly, sending a “tsunami” rolling through a river, a scientist said on Thursday. No one was injured in the remote region. Glacier scientist Gino Casassa said the melting of the Colonia glacier, which he blamed on rising world temperatures, filled the Cachet Lake and increased pressure on the ice sheet. The water bored an 8km tunnel through the glacier and finally emptied into the Baker River on April 6. “The remarkable thing is that the mass of water moved against the current of the river,” Casassa said by telephone from the Center for Scientific Studies in the southern city of Valdivia. “It was a real river tsunami.” The lake was nearly full again by late Wednesday, he said.


This story has been viewed 1035 times.