■ HONG KONG
Murder suspect captured
A murder suspect collected a HK$100,000 (US$12,800) ransom after he had allegedly already killed his victim, Hong Kong police said yesterday. Airport worker Yau Hiu-yin is believed to have been strangled sometime after she disappeared eight days ago and was already dead when a text message was sent to her boyfriend asking for a ransom for her release, police said. A 24-year-old decorator was arrested by police on Thursday night as he collected the cash at an arranged pick-up point.
■ JAPAN
Work stress cases increase
A record 268 people were officially recognized as suffering mental disorders from job-related stress and overwork in Japan for the year to March, the government said. It was up from 205 a year earlier and the second consecutive annual gain, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said in a survey released on Friday. Of them, 81 committed suicide for the year, also a record high, the ministry said. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. A government survey recently found almost 20 percent of Japanese adults have considered killing themselves.
■ CAMBODIA
Water buffalo injures 15
A runaway water buffalo rampaged through Cambodia’s capital, injuring 15 people and damaging several cars and motorbikes, police said yesterday. The female buffalo ran through the crowded streets early on Friday morning, causing chaos before it was harnessed with ropes, local police chief Vy Sokhon said. “The buffalo looked very surprised and hit people along the streets,” he said. The buffalo will not be killed but authorities will keep it away from people, the police chief added.
■ MALDIVES
One diver dies, 10 injured
Authorities are investigating how a Russian tourist died and 10 others were injured while scuba diving, the tourism minister said yesterday. The 36-year-old Russian was among a group of tourists, including from Germany, Australia and Russia, taken casualty on Thursday while diving around a reef, minister Mahamood Shougee said. “The family of the victim has been notified, the other tourists have since been released. It was a very unfortunate incident,” Shougee said. The cause of the accident is unknown, though local news reports quoted diving instructors saying it was likely due to faulty equipment or breathing-related problems.
■ PAKISTAN
Police killed in blast
Two roadside bombs yesterday killed two policemen and a civilian in the northwest, police said. The policemen died when the vehicle they were traveling in was blown up in Nasir Bagh neighborhood of provincial capital Peshawar, local police officer Majid Khan said. The bomb, apparently detonated by remote control, also injured two police officers, he said, adding that a police investigation was underway. A bomb also struck a vehicle carrying civilians in Khyber tribal district just outside Peshawar, killing one person and injuring three.
■ AUSTRALIA
Pair spends night at sea
Two foreign scuba divers spent the night drifting in shark-infested waters after surfacing to find their Great Barrier Reef dive boat was 200m away and the current was carrying them further into the Pacific Ocean, news reports said yesterday. The pair — a 38-year-old British man and 40-year-old woman from the US — were alone in the ocean for 20 hours off the Whitsunday Islands on the east coast before being picked up at first light yesterday. Deputy Commissioner of Queensland Police Ian Stewart said the captain of the dive boat would be asked why the alarm was not raised until three hours after the divers went missing.
■ INDIA
Protesters killed
Police shot dead 14 protesters during clashes with an ethnic group in the northern state of Rajasthan, police officials said yesterday. Two police officers also died in the overnight disturbances in Bharatpur district, where activists of the group are demanding more government aid, local law enforcement officials said. “The army has now been deployed in Bharatpur to bring the situation under control,” Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria said by telephone from provincial capital Jaipur. Another dozen people were injured in the protests by thousands of people from the local Gujjar community, who want the government to classify them “Scheduled Tribes” entitled to government jobs and education benefits.
■ PHILIPPINES
Economic aid increases
Australia has increased aid to Manila to 4.4 billion pesos (US$101 million) for this and next year to boost economic growth, education and security, the Australian embassy said yesterday. This increased Australian aid to the country by about 9 percent over the previous year, an embassy statement said. It will include over 425 million pesos to help upgrade and maintain road infrastructure in the country, Australian Ambassador Rod Smith said in the statement. Another 1.2 billion pesos will go to support improvements in education for Muslim and tribal Filipinos and to implement reforms in basic education. Australia will also support efforts to bring peace to areas ravaged by Muslim separatism.
■ CANADA
Skydiver to attempt record
French parachutist Michel Fournier, 64, will try tomorrow to break a skydiving world record by plunging from a balloon into thin air 40km above Canada’s vast western plains. The jump, beginning from the outer reaches of the stratosphere about four times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet, is his life’s dream and could someday lead to rescuing astronauts in-flight, he said. Fournier and his team were making the final arrangements on Friday in the small city of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to send him to the heavens in a stratospheric balloon. At 40,000m, he planned to throw himself into the void wearing a pressurized suit and become the first free-falling man to breach the sound barrier, hurtling toward Earth at more than 1,500km per hour. If he succeeds, Fournier will actually break four world records: for fastest freefall, longest freefall, highest jump and highest altitude reached by a man in a balloon.
■ UKRAINE
Coffin to serve as pub
Visitors to the resort town of Truskavets, already renowned for its life-preserving mineral springs, will soon be able to tempt fate by drinking in the world’s largest coffin. The coffin, 20m long, 6m wide, and 6m high will be called “Eternity” and is the brainchild of a local group of undertakers. Once the bar is fitted out, coffins of a normal dimension will be used as tables. On each of these will be a candle, one employee said.
■ GERMANY
Thief rescued from boars
Police pursuing a car thief through a dark forest turned rescuers when the man was cornered by a family of angry wild boars. Officers caught the man’s passenger after the pair rammed into a squad car on a cross-country chase and leapt from the stolen Opel, police in the eastern city of Schwerin said. But they initially lost track of the 18-year-old driver during the night-time pursuit when he fled deep into the forest. “Then he ran into the family of boars, and the head of the family squared up to him,” a police spokesman said on Friday. “So he stood there, put his hands up, and called for help.” Officers rescued the man from the boars, then arrested him.
■ RUSSIA
Fire explodes missiles
A fire that raged through an arms depot at an air base 200km northeast of Saint Petersburg on Friday set off air-to-air missiles but caused no casualties, the head of the air force said. “As a result of the fire, air-to-air missiles exploded. There were no deaths or injuries,” Alexander Zelin was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. “By preliminary information, the storage contained 410 missiles, and all of them blew up,” RIA Novosti news agency reported.
■ ZIMBABWE
Tsvangirai returns
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai returned to Zimbabwe yesterday for an election run-off with President Robert Mugabe despite his party’s fears he might be assassinated by government agents. Tsvangirai arrived at Harare airport aboard a regular South African Airways flight after canceling his homecoming a week ago after his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it had learnt he was the target of a military intelligence assassination plot. Tsvangirai, smiling and looking relaxed, did not speak to the media and left the airport in a convoy of cars. The MDC says 43 of its members have been killed and scores forced out of their homes by militias loyal to Mugabe since the disputed March elections.
■ MEXICO
Drugs found in TV boxes
Authorities in Tijuana intercepted a cargo of 1.5 tonnes of marijuana hidden in a container that looked to be full of Japanese television sets, the army said on Friday. The drugs were packaged in boxes at the Rosarito, Mexico, factory location of the Japanese company Sharp, an army source said. “The drug shipment was headed for Ontario, Canada, according to our investigation,” said general Sergio Aponte, adding that Sharp was not implicated in the trafficking and that one man had been arrested.
■ MEXICO
Court fines ruling party
The ruling party has been fined more than US$3 million for negative campaign advertisements and other irregularities during the 2006 presidential campaign. The Federal Electoral Institute also fined a coalition of opposition parties about US$3 million for similar infractions. The institute debated for hours before voting on the fines late on Friday. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says President Felipe Calderon won through fraud and dirty campaigning. The top electoral court ruled in 2006 that ads comparing Obrador to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez did not have enough impact to change the outcome.
■ MEXICO
Shark kills surfer
A surfer was killed by a shark off the Pacific coast, a mere 10km from a beach where an American man died in a similar attack last month, authorities said. Osvaldo Mata Valdovinos, 21, was attacked on Friday while surfing off Pantla Beach, west of Acapulco, local Civil Protection Director Jaime Vazquez Sobreira said. The shark bit off his left hand and broke one of his legs, Vazquez Sobreira said. The attack came less than a month after 24-year-old Adrian Ruiz of San Francisco died after being bitten by a shark while surfing off Troncones Beach.
■ CANADA
Judge reduces sentence
An obese inmate has had his jail sentence reduced because a judge found that his prison was not adequate to hold a man of his girth, reports said on Friday. Michel “Big Mike” Lapointe, 37, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in February and on Wednesday was sentenced to five years in prison, including 20 months served awaiting trial. The judge also shaved six months off his sentence because of the hardships the 195kg man claimed to have endured in prison, the daily Ottawa Citizen said. “His health was deteriorating, his weight was such that there were no objects in prison made for someone like him,” his lawyer said. “His [prison] bed is a foot smaller than he is. He can’t even sit on a chair.”
■ CANADA
Fourth foot found on island
For the fourth time in less than a year, a right human foot has been found off one of four different islands in the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia. Police said again on Friday that they do not know if there are any links between them. Police said a passerby found a human foot in a shoe on Kirkland Island in the South Arm of the Fraser River Thursday. Last August, a foot was found inside a man’s Reebok sneaker on nearby Gabriola Island, just a few days after another foot was discovered by beachcombers on Jedidiah Island. The remains of a third right foot were found on the east side of Valdez Island on Feb. 8. There is no evidence to suggest the foot — or any or the previous three — was forcibly removed, Police Constable Annie Linteau said. “All four were wearing socks and were in a running shoe,” she said. Two of the feet are size 12. Police are not releasing the size of the others.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the