■AFGHANISTAN
Cleric arrested over wedding
Police have detained a cleric for presiding over the marriage of a seven-year-old girl to a teenage boy in a remote northern town, police said on Thursday. The groom, his father and two brothers were also detained in Jawzjan Province last week, provincial police chief Khalilullah Aminzada said. They have been accused of violating a law that bans marriage for girls who are under 16 and men under 18, and are due to face trial, Aminzada said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Actor joins police hunt
Christchurch police hunting a teenage burglar have circulated a mug shot of 58-year-old British actor Robbie Coltrane who, they say, has a strong resemblance to their young suspect. Posters bearing a photograph of Coltrane were dropped by police this week in mailboxes around the area where the burglar has been most active. “Robbie Coltrane is not the burglar,” the poster says, “But imagine him aged 16 with lank, greasy hair and you have the picture.”
■AUSTRALIA
Police to reopen cases
Police will re-examine 7,000 crimes solved through DNA evidence after a mistake forced detectives to free a suspect wrongly accused of murder. Melbourne police withdrew charges against Russell John Gesah, accused last month of the 1984 murders of a 35-year-old mother and her nine-year-old daughter. “It’s obviously an embarrassment and we would rather not be in this position,” Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland said on Thursday.
■JAPAN
Bomb threat disrupts flights
An Air China passenger jet was forced to return to Japan and four others were delayed yesterday after a bomb threat was e-mailed to the airline’s Tokyo office, the Japanese Transport Ministry said. The anonymous e-mail, written in Japanese, told the Chinese airline to suspend its flights or the writer would “bomb the aircraft,” ministry official Fumio Yasukawa said. China’s official Xinhua news agency said the airline ordered all of its flights not to depart from Japan until their safety was ensured. The plane that was forced to return to Japan, which was carrying 70 people from Nagoya to Chongqing via Shanghai, and four other delayed Air China flights took off later yesterday after no bombs were found on them, ministry officials said.
■MALAYSIA
Blogger detained for posting
Authorities have arrested a political blogger for possible sedition after he allegedly insulted police on his Web site, Victor Sanjos, a police official in the Commercial Crimes Investigation Department, said yesterday. Police detained Abdul Rashid Abu Bakar under the Sedition Act on Wednesday to question him about a blog entry that he posted last month. Abdul Rashid defaced the Royal Malaysian Police’s logo by replacing its image of a tiger with a dog and indicated in his comments that he believed Chinese criminal gangs controlled police data systems, Sanjos said.
■AUSTRALIA
Record ecstasy haul seized
Customs and police said yesterday they had seized 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy tablets worth nearly A$400 million (US$394 million), calling it the biggest haul of the drug in the world. Police said the seizure of the drugs, hidden in tins of tomatoes shipped from Italy, had resulted in the arrests of 21 people nationwide yesterday. Authorities had worked for more than a year to track the syndicate behind the drugs.
■UNITED KINGDOM
‘Lord’ puts life up for sale
An eccentric millionaire has put his entire life up for sale on the Internet — including his title of Lord of the Manor of Warleigh — in the hope of converting his assets into cash. David Piper, a hotelier who made headlines six years ago after advertising for a wife to become his “lady of the manor,” wants to sell his west of England existence on the auction site eBay and move to London to be closer to his children. He is selling two hotels, two Bentleys, a collection of paintings and his title of Lord of the Manor — which he bought along with a large estate for £1 million (US$2 million). “This sale is brought about as the present lord has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer,” the advertisement for the sale explains. “For sale as a whole or in part ... Can include David, the existing eccentric lord of the manor, physically as well to a suitable purchaser.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Spelling ‘truely atrosious’
Fed up with his students’ inability to spell common English correctly, an academic has suggested it may be time to accept “variant spellings” as legitimate. Rather than getting in a huff about “argument” being spelled “arguement” or “opportunity” as “opertunity,” why not accept anything that’s phonetically correct as long as it can be understood? “Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea,” Ken Smith, a lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement. “University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”
■FRANCE
Police defuse devices
Officials say bomb squads have defused explosive devices planted at tourist sites in the country’s Basque country. The prefecture in the Pyrenees Atlantiques region says the discoveries followed an anonymous phone call yesterday. The prefecture says experts have defused one device at a vacation village in Arcangues and another on a train line in the town of Ondres. Bomb squads were still working on a device found at Arcangues’ tourism office.
■PORTUGAL
Hostage drama ends
A hostage drama in a Lisbon bank on Thursday took a bloody end as police intervened and killed one of the suspects, with some of the incident broadcast live on television. One of the robbers, who along with his accomplice had taken three people hostage in the bank, was shot to death. The second was seriously injured, officials said. The hostages were rescued, with one of them suffering minor injuries.
■BELGIUM
Stinky flower steals show
It’s one of the world’s largest flowers, it stinks and looks very much like a giant penis. The Amorphophallus Titanum — literally “the giant strangely shaped penis” — has been attracting big crowds at the National Botanic Garden on the outskirts of Brussels. The rare phallus-like flower that springs from the plant only survives about 72 hours and its timing is completely unpredictable, said Gert Ausloos, head of education at the garden. Auloos called it “a botanical superstar. It’s there for a short time, it’s glamorous, it’s big, it produces something special.” Thousands queued to see the 1.6m tall specimen on Thursday. Visitors compared the smell to rotten fish, others to rotten meat or old cheese. Because of its appearance, Victorian women were kept from viewing it.
■HONDURAS
US execution lamented
The government protested Thursday’s execution in Texas of a Honduran man that the Central American country says was arrested in violation of an international treaty. The country lobbied to stop the execution of Heliberto Chi, saying he was not permitted to contact anyone from his government after he was arrested in California and extradited to Texas. The argument is similar to the one raised earlier this week by Mexican-born Jose Medellin, who was executed late on Tuesday night for his part in the gruesome gang rape-slayings of two teenage Houston girls 15 years ago. Chi was executed for the 2001 killing of Armand Paliotta at a men’s clothing store in suburban Dallas during a robbery.
■UNITED STATES
Man uses truck in fight
Authorities say a man rammed his house with a semitrailer during a fight with his roommate and tried to run down police called to the scene. State police say 20-year-old James Rosenberg injured no one on Thursday. Authorities say Rosenberg rammed a pickup into a garage door, then drove the semi through the door and hit a car. That vehicle hit a stove that crashed through a wall into the living room. Police say Rosenberg then drove the semi into a camper before trying to run down two officers called to the scene. Rosenberg is charged with assault, reckless endangerment and terroristic threats.
■UNITED STATES
Trash talk heard on kid’s toy
A West Virginia mother is seeking the recall of a popular walkie-talkie — a form of two-way radio — after her three-year-old’s toy apparently intercepted a profanity-laced conversation between truckers about drugs and strip clubs. Deborah Pancaro, 34, said she contacted manufacturer Fisher-Price after she heard a conversation in which a man said “We should go smoke some weed,” after talking about being in a strip bar, Pancaro said on Thursday. The walkie-talkie is supposed to have a range of about 6m, but Pancaro said she heard one of the voices say he was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, about 442km north of Huntington.
■UNITED STATES
Mailman advocates kilts
A 183cm-tall, 113kg letter carrier is campaigning for the right to take off his pants. Dean Peterson wants the US Postal Service to add kilts as a uniform option for men. The idea was soundly defeated last month at a convention of his union, the 220,000-member National Letter Carriers’ Association, so Peterson knows convincing management will be an uphill struggle, but at least he’ll be comfortable in his kilt, or Male Unbifurcated Garment. With his build, Peterson said, his thighs fill slacks to capacity, causing chafing and scarring. Peterson, 48, began wearing kilts a couple years ago when his wife brought one back from a trip to Scotland.
■UNITED STATES
Research monkeys overheat
A drug research company says a roomful of research monkeys quarantined at its lab were accidentally killed in May due to overheating. Officials for Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories issued a statement on Thursday confirming that 32 longtail macaques died at its Sparks lab. The company blames a series of human error in the operation of climate control in one room at the quarantine facility. It says the May 28 incident affected no other primates and that at no point was the public ever in danger.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not