World News Quick Take

■MALAYSIA

Group kills ‘voyeur’

A group of some 20 men attacked and killed a man whom they accused of voyeurism in a village in the northern state of Perlis, a news report said yesterday. Hatib Leman, 35, died hours after being rushed to a hospital after the group of men attacked him and his wife on Saturday, the New Straits Times daily said. The men had confronted Leman, a laborer, and accused him of being a “peeping Tom.” A fight ensued, resulting in the attack, the report said. Police have detained six villagers, between the ages of 30 and 40 and are investigating the involvement of several others, the report said.



■JAPAN

Child populations falling

The number of children has fallen for the 27th straight year to hit a new low, the government said yesterday in a sign of the country’s rapidly aging population. Children aged 14 or younger numbered 17,250,000 as of April 1, down by 130,000 from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry said in an annual survey released to coincide with the Children’s Day holiday yesterday. The figure is the lowest since 1950 when comparable data was first recorded. The ratio of children to the total population sank for 34 years in a row to 13.5 percent, also a record low, the ministry said. The average number of children a woman has during her lifetime has been hovering around 1.3, well below the 2.07 seen as necessary to maintain the population at current levels.



■MALAYSIA

Travel proposal rejected

The home ministry rejected a proposal yesterday to impose restrictions on women traveling overseas on their own following an outcry from women’s groups. Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said his ministry could not impose conditions requiring women to get written consent from their family before they could travel abroad alone. Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said on Saturday both the foreign and home ministries mooted the idea in response to a string of cases where women traveling alone were used by international drug syndicates to smuggle drugs across borders.



■INDONESIA

Timorese rebels extradited

Four rebels wanted over armed attacks against East Timor’s president and prime minister were extradited amid tight security from Indonesia yesterday. The unidentified four, wearing red T-shirts and handcuffed, were seen boarding a charter plane under heavy armed police escort at the Halim Perdanakusumah airport in East Jakarta. More police were deployed on the runway as the rebels left for East Timor to face justice over the Feb. 11 attacks. Indonesian police arrested the four East Timorese former soldiers — two in a border town in West Timor and two in Jakarta — in the weeks after the failed attacks which almost killed Ramos-Horta.



■THAILAND

Bombs wound 16

Sixteen people, including three girls, were wounded in two separate bomb blasts among the latest separatist violence in the insurgency-wracked south, police said yesterday. A bomb in an iron box was planted in front of the house of the deputy provincial governor of Narathiwat and triggered by a digital watch on Sunday night, local police said. The blast wounded 12 people, including three girls who had been visiting an annual fair. Another bomb was triggered yesterday morning in Ra Ngae district when soldiers were inspecting the area where militants had put up a board attacking government officials.

■ FRANC

Le Pen item pulled off eBay

An online advertisement on auction Web site eBay for far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen’s armored car mysteriously came off the site again on Sunday, after it was flagged for preposterous bidding. The bid for Le Pen’s 1992 blue Peugeot 605 went online last Wednesday. It was taken off the site the same day after a 10 million euro (US$15.5 million) bid, which eBay said was a “joke.” It was then readvertised with a note for bidders to contact the owner directly. But by Friday the bidding price had once again shot up to 10 million euros. In 2002 the firebrand far-right leader shocked Europe by making it through to the second round of the presidential elections.



■FRANCE

Church backs apparitons

A Roman Catholic bishop said on Sunday the Church had recognized the Virgin Mary appeared to a teenage shepherd girl in the French Alps starting in the mid-1600s. The announcement marks the first time the Church has recognized apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the country since those in Lourdes 150 years ago, the diocese of Gap and Embrun said. Speaking at Mass in Laus, Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri said he recognized the “supernatural origin” of the apparitions to the 17-year-old Benoite Rencurel starting in 1664 and running through 1718. The recognition process involved a panel including two theologians and an investigating judge, he said.



■RUSSIA

Explosion kills five officers

At least five police officers have been killed and two injured in an explosion in the turbulent southern region of Chechnya, the local interior ministry said yesterday. A ministry spokesman said a bottle packed with explosives and nails went off late on Sunday nearby a group of police officers on patrol in the Chechen capital Grozny. “Five policemen were killed by the blast,” the spokesman said. The country has fought two wars against Chechen rebels since 1994.



■GERMANY

Police investigate break-in

Berlin police say they are investigating a break-in at a museum in the former East German Stasi secret police headquarters building. Police say the thieves made off with memorabilia including a hockey stick from Moscow and a portrait of Lenin from the Stasi museum in Berlin’s Lichtenberg district. The break-in was discovered by a museum employee before opening on Saturday and was thought to have occurred late on Friday or early on Saturday morning. Police said on Sunday that the thieves appear to have opened a window and gone through several rooms, including the former office of Erich Mielke, East Germany’s last minister of state security.



■EGYPT

Workers ignore strike call

Workers largely ignored a call by online activists for a general strike on Sunday to protest against the government on President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday. Analysts said the failure showed the limited influence of activists organizing on the Facebook Web site after their successful strike last month generated enthusiasm that a new form of political protest was emerging. Veteran political analyst Mohammed Sayyed Said sees the “total failure” of this strike showed an inability to connect with the common person. “Several thousand people were debating an issue, which is extraordinary by any standards. ... But when it comes to touching cause with the public, it’s a different story,” Said said.

■CUBA

Cigar roller aims for record

Jose Castelar began rolling cigars when he was five. Now, at 64, the Cuban expert hopes to finish rolling a 20m stogie by tomorrow to garner his fourth world record from the Guinness Book of Records. “I can’t tell you exactly how far I’ll get, but my goal is to beat my former record of 20.41m,” Castelar, knicknamed “Cueto,” said on Sunday. He rolls his mega-cigar out of premium tobacco leaves, making a long, slender tube about 4cm across. He works non-stop, eight hours a day since he began his record-seeking attempt on Saturday. Nothing distracts him, not even the hustle and bustle of the 28th International Tourism Fairground that is going up near his workplace at the colonial fortress of San Carlos de la Cabana. His mega-cigar, once finished, will be shown at the fair.



■UNITED STATES

Subway cars jump tracks

Transit officials say two Manhattan subway cars jumped the tracks about 30m north of a station near Central Park. Officials say the 400 passengers on the train were safely evacuated. The cars derailed at 4:23pm on Sunday just north of the 57th Street and 7th Avenue stop on the N train line, which was traveling south from Astoria, Queens, to Brooklyn. Firefighters removed the passengers from the tunnel in about an hour, evacuating them on a “rescue train.” Two people reported minor injuries, but did not require treatment.



■UNITED STATES

Gretchen Wilson graduates

Country music singer Gretchen Wilson has a mantel full of awards in her Lebanon home. Her first radio single, Redneck Woman, spent five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and it earned her a 2005 Grammy. Her debut album sold 4.5 million copies. Despite all her successes, the 34-year-old songwriter was one of 20 percent of Tennesseans without a high school diploma. But no longer. Wilson, who dropped out in ninth grade, passed her General Educational Development high school equivalency exam in April and will don a cap and gown during a May 15 graduation ceremony.



■UNITED STATES

No smoking at pipe show

There will be no indoor smoking at a large convention for pipe smokers in Illinois. A new state law bans smoking in public places. That’s taken some of the steam out of this weekend’s Chicagoland International Pipe Tobacciana Show in St. Charles, Illinois. The event draws 4,000 pipe collectors from more than 60 countries. Organizers tried to get around the new law by arguing their gathering was a private club meeting. Police and health officials said no. Instead, a large smoking tent has been set up 4.6m away from the convention center. Convention-goer Al Shinogle of Denver likens it to a wine tasting without the wine.



■UNITED STATES

Parenting skills on the wane

Nearly a third of US parents know surprisingly little about typical infant development and this lack of understanding can rob their babies of much-needed mental stimulation, researchers said on Sunday. “There are numerous parenting books telling people what to expect when they’re pregnant,” said Heather Paradis of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “But once a baby is born, an astonishing number of parents are not only unsure of what to anticipate as their child develops, but are also uncertain of when, how or how much they are to help their babies reach various milestones, such as talking, grabbing, discerning right from wrong, or even potty-training.”