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World News Quick Take

■AFGHANISTAN
Blast kills NATO troops
An explosion in the south of the country killed two NATO soldiers yesterday, the alliance said. Two other soldiers were wounded and were evacuated to a military base for treatment, NATO said in a statement. It did not disclose the exact location of the blast. Separately, militants abducted and beheaded two Afghan men working at a US military base in the eastern Kunar province, provincial police Chief Abdul Jalal Jalal said.

■HONG KONG
Cakes laced with drug
A woman was convicted on Tuesday of poisoning churchgoers by giving them cakes laced with a psychotropic drug. Jannifer Chan Mei-fung, 37, left the cakes as a gift for members of the Church of Christian and Missionary Alliance in August, the city’s district court was told. Six people became sick and two teenagers ended up in a hospital intensive care unit after the cakes were served up at a youth group meeting later the same day, the court heard. Tests found a pscyhotropic drug inside the cakes, and police said they found the same drug when they later raided the defendant’s home. She told officers it had been prescribed to her by doctors. Chan was found guilty of administering a poison with the intention of endangering life. Judge Joseph Yau said the defendant suffered from mild paranoia but knew right from wrong.

■SINGAPORE
Sedition charges for duo
A court has charged a couple with sedition for distributing an evangelical publication that cast Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, in a negative light, a newspaper reported yesterday. Ong Kian Cheong, 49, and Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 44, had two charges lodged against them in court on Tuesday — one under the Sedition Act and the other under the Undesirable Publications Act, the Straits Times reported. The report did not provide details about the couple’s alleged publication.

■AUSTRALIA
Environment biggest worry
Australians are more worried about the environment than the economy, terrorism or any other issue, according to a national survey released yesterday. The Australian National University poll asked 1,000 people what was the most important problem facing the country today, and the most common answer (at 19 percent) cited the environment, global warming or sustainability. In second was the economy (18 percent), followed by water management (8 percent), interest rates (7 percent) and housing affordability (7 percent). Terrorism was not among the top 10. When the respondents were asked what would be the biggest problem facing the country within five years, the environment led all other issues at 30 percent. Next was the economy (20 percent) and water management (11 percent).

■SOUTH KOREA
Firm scraps Nazi ad
A cosmetics maker said yesterday it has scrapped a Nazi-themed TV advertisement, after a pilot version was leaked on the Internet and sparked international protests. Coreana amended the pilot version before it was broadcast, removing a reference to Hitler. But a modified version that appeared on TV still featured a local actress in a Nazi-style uniform, with the sound of shells exploding in the background. A company official said it has now scrapped the commercial altogether. The pilot promotion for a new skin care product carried a caption superimposed on the actress reading: “Even Hitler could not take over the East and the West at the same time.”

■YEMEN
Eight-year-old divorces
A court on Tuesday granted divorce to an eight-year-old girl who sought the help of a court judge to terminate her marriage two months after she was forced into it. Nojoud Muhammad Nasser lodged a complaint at a court in the capital Sana’a last week against her father, who forced her to marry a man 22 years her senior, and asked the judge to secure her divorce. The girl’s lawyer, Shadha Nasser, said that the court “ordered the marriage to be terminated immediately because she was underage and had not reached puberty. We paid 50,000 riyals (US$250) to the husband as a compensation,” the lawyer said. The compensation was paid by a volunteer who was attending the trial, she said, adding that the compensation was for the dowry the husband had paid to the girl’s father. Last week, the court ordered the father and husband to be arrested after hearing her the girl’s testimony in which she accused her husband of sexual and domestic abuse. The father was later released due to health problems. “He used to do bad things to me and I had no idea as to what a marriage is,” the girl said. “Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months,” she said.

■GERMANY
Coin thief ‘returns’ haul
Three days after stealing a rare collection of coins, a thief took them to the bank for safe keeping — and delivered them into the hands of the man he had robbed. “I don’t think the thief was expecting that,” said a spokesman for police in the city of Dortmund on Tuesday. Soon after the thief made the deposit, a bank worker handling the coins recognized them as the set worth some 50,000 euros (US$80,000) that had been stolen from his house. Police tracked down the suspect and arrested him, securing a haul of other stolen goods in the process.

■SOUTH AFRICA
‘Policemen’ steal documents
Thieves dressed as policemen talked their way past guards at Johannesburg’s High Court, then locked them in a bathroom and stole highly sensitive documents, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday. About six armed men in police uniforms convinced security guards they were at the court on Sunday night to look into a rape case, spokeswoman Julia Claassen said. Once inside the building, the robbers disconnected surveillance and alarm systems, tied up the guards in the toilets, broke into a safe and left with the court documents. Claassen did not give details about the stolen papers, but local media reports said one of the documents was linked to the case of a senior state prosecutor who is under police protection.

■UNITED STATES
Senator’s cancer returns
Senator Arlen Specter announced on Tuesday that he had a recurrence of cancer that he had fought in 2005, but said he would still campaign for re-election in November. Specter, an influential 78-year-old Republican lawmaker representing Pennsylvania since 1980, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. He underwent treatment for the disease three years ago and was declared in remission after chemotherapy. “I was surprised by the PET scan findings because I have been feeling so good. I consider this just another bump on the road to a successful recovery from Hodgkin’s, from which I’ve been symptom free for three years,” Specter said.

■UNITED STATES
Iraq posts may be obligatory
The State Department is warning diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained by reporters on Tuesday. A similar call-up threat last year caused a revolt among foreign service officers who objected to compulsory work in a war zone, although in the end the State Department found enough volunteers to fill the jobs. Now, the department anticipates another staffing crisis. The unclassified April 8 cable says, “the prime candidate exercise will be repeated” next year, meaning the department will identify diplomats qualified to serve in Iraq and who could be forced to work there if they don’t volunteer.

■UNITED STATES
Fires spread in Colorado
Wildfires in warm, windy weather burned into a southeast Colorado town and on an army post, leading to the deaths of a firefighting pilot and two others. The pilot died when the crop duster-type plane crashed along a highway just east of Fort Carson, Mike Fergus of the Federal Aviation Administration said. At least 20 buildings were damaged in Ordway and about 29km² of grasslands were scorched around the town 196km southeast of Denver. The fire at Fort Carson has burned about 3,642 hectares.

■BRAZIL
Nine killed in Rio gunbattle
At least nine people were killed when a gunbattle erupted during a police drug raid on a Rio de Janeiro slum. The clashes, in which at least seven men were also injured, occurred on Tuesday in the Vila Cruzeiro slum in northern Rio, media reports said, citing government authorities. A police spokesman said all those killed were criminals. The raid, in which 15 people were arrested and 200 heavily armed officers took part, continued into the night, more than 12 hours after it had begun. It followed the deaths this month of 11 suspected criminals in a police raid on gangs in two Rio slums.

■CANADA
Police search party offices
Police searched offices of the Conservative party on Tuesday at the request of the election commission, which has accused the ruling party of campaign finance irregularities. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party confirmed that its offices were searched. Elections Canada did not explain the reason for the search, but broadcaster CBC quoted Conservative House leader Peter Van Loan as saying the search was “in relation to the issue of the campaign financing questions and our approach on spending.” The commission launched a probe last year into what it believes were campaign finance irregularities. The body refused to reimburse close to US$1.2 million to candidates for television and radio campaign advertisements.

■SWEDEN
Man stuck in waste chute
For want of a key, a man tried to climb up a waste chute in an apartment building in the ski metropolis of Are and had to be freed after he got stuck halfway into the chute, reports said on Tuesday. The man managed to get his head and shoulders into the chute before the rest of his body got stuck in the chute opening, the online edition of the Ostersunds-Posten newspaper reported.
■FRANCE
Pirates arrive in Paris
Police say six Somali pirates who attacked a French luxury yacht have arrived in Paris for eventual trial. The six were brought to France aboard a military plane after French troops caught them after a chase last week in Somalia. The yacht’s 30-member crew was released after its owners apparently paid a ransom.

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