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■SOUTH KOREA

Police raid brothels

Police said yesterday they seized 100 tonnes of beds and bathtubs during a crackdown on prostitution in Seoul. They said the items and others were confiscated and destroyed during raids on dozens of massage parlors and brothels in the city’s eastern district of Jangan. A massage parlor owner committed suicide in protest at the crackdown that began on July 28, but police vowed to step up their campaign against prostitution, which is illegal in the country. On Wednesday police set up a 270-member special unit to tackle the crime in Seoul.



■JAPAN

Former serviceman arrested

A former serviceman who said he wanted to have fun was taken into custody yesterday for allegedly hurling explosive-laden fire extinguishers toward the Imperial Palace, reports said. Officers patrolling near the sprawling palace in central Tokyo heard two blasts at around 2:40am and found the man standing by a truck parked near a moat. Police detained the man, a 34-year-old former military serviceman, public broadcaster NHK said. Police searched the moat and found fire extinguishers that contained gunpowder.



■INDIA

Authorities to pay over cow

A court has ordered New Delhi authorities to pay compensation over the death of a scooter driver who crashed after swerving around one of the country’s millions of sacred cows, reports said yesterday. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi was told to pay 200,000 rupees (US$4,300) to the victim’s wife for failing to prevent the animal from straying onto the city’s busy roads, the Times of India. reported. The municipal corporation, which is under increasing pressure to clear Delhi’s streets of roaming cows, said recently that it had rounded up 20,000 cattle in the past year.



■HONG KONG

Laundering gang arrested

Police said yesterday they had arrested 33 people in an operation against the laundering of suspected drug money totaling US$37 million. The 15 men and 18 women were arrested in a series of raids across the city of 6.9 million and have been released on bail pending further inquiries, a police spokesman said. The territory is known as a transit point for drugs smuggled between Asia and Western countries.



■AUSTRALIA

‘No undie Sunday’

A pub has come under fire for offering free drinks to women who take off their panties. The Saint Hotel in Melbourne promoted its offer as “No undie Sunday,” with a notorious picture of singer Britney Spears getting out of a car wearing no knickers. The advertisement in an entertainment magazine offers a free glass of champagne to women who “flash bra or undies to bar staff.” Those who go further and “hang your undies on the line above the bar” win A$50 (US$40) worth of free drinks. The same hotel drew criticism in June when it employed a shirtless dwarf to pour shots of liquor down the throats of patrons.



■PHILIPPINES

Troops kill seven rebels

Army troops backed by rocket-firing helicopters killed seven Muslim guerrillas in a clash and seized an abandoned rebel training camp in separate victories in a month-long offensive in the south, the military said yesterday. Government forces have been hunting three commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which attacked several Christian communities after negotiations on an expanded Muslim homeland stalled last month.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Government laptops stolen

Four laptops have been stolen from a government department that deals with bankrupt companies, the Insolvency Service said on Wednesday in the latest data security breach to embarrass the government. Three of the laptops had no data on them, but the fourth contained personal information about former directors of 122 insolvent firms as well as insolvency practitioners, creditors and employees of the companies. “The theft of four laptop computers has been reported to Greater Manchester police, who are investigating,” said the Insolvency Service, which has set up a telephone helpline for those worried by the data loss.



■GERMANY

Governor retracts beer claim

Bavaria’s governor on Wednesday backed off an assertion that some people can drive safely after downing 2 liters of beer, a comment that drew anger and derision. Police and political opponents had criticized Guenther Beckstein’s remark on Tuesday that “if one drinks the two liters over six or seven hours at the Oktoberfest, it is still possible” to drive. The Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of beer-swilling, opens tomorrow. Beckstein acknowledged that he had made a “rather unsuccessful contribution” to public debate.



■MALAYSIA

Pirates hijack Greek carrier

Armed pirates hijacked a Greek bulk carrier with 25 crew members off the coast of Somalia yesterday, the 13th ship seized in the notorious African waters in the past two months, a maritime official said. The ship was en route to Kenya when it was attacked off Somalia’s eastern coast, said Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau. A multinational naval force patrolling the area has been informed, and ships have been warned to stay clear of Somalia’s coast, he said.



■RUSSIA

Warship fire kills two

A fire on a Russian warship in the Pacific killed two sailors, the navy said yesterday, the latest in a series of accidents that have raised doubts about the safety of Russia’s fleet. The Marshal Shaposhnikov anti-submarine destroyer limped into Vladivostok’s harbor, home of Russia’s Pacific fleet, yesterday after the fire. “One sailor serving under contract and one conscripted sailor, who were in the section where the accident happened, died,” the navy said in a statement. “The preliminary reason for the fire is a technical failure.”



■SPAIN

Funeral held for jet victims

Spain’s prime minister and crown prince attended a funeral mass on Wednesday in the Canary Islands for the 154 victims of last month’s Spanair jet crash, Spain’s worst air accident in 25 years. Most of the 1,350 people at the service at the Santa Ana Cathedral in Las Palmas, capital of Spain’s Canary Islands, were relatives of the 72 people killed on the plane. The majority of those present were residents of the Atlantic archipelago, police said.



■GAZA STRIP

Two die in tunnel collapse

A Gaza security official says two people have died in the collapse of a smugglers’ tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border and three are still trapped below ground. The official was from the militant Hamas movement which runs the Gaza Strip. He said the tunnel collapsed while under construction. The official said rescuers were in radio contact with the three trapped men and using bulldozers in an effort to reach them.



■UNITED STATES

Palin a green enemy: group

Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin was singled out on Wednesday as the US’ environmental enemy of the year. The Center for Biological Diversity awarded Palin its Rubber Dodo award for her insistence — despite evidence to the contrary — that the polar bear population was rising across the Arctic. The Arizona think tank condemned the Alaska governor as a “global warming denier.” “Governor Palin has waged a deceptive, dangerous, and costly battle against the polar bear,” Kieran Suckling, the center’s director, said. “Her position on global warming is so extreme, she makes Dick Cheney look like an Al Gore devotee.” The slap comes less than a week after Palin belatedly admitted the possibility of a human factor in climate change, in her first television interview since she was chosen as John McCain’s running mate.



■CANADA

Non-pot-smoker apologizes

Green Party leader Elizabeth May apologized on Wednesday for never having smoked marijuana, as she unveiled her election plank, which touts legalizing and taxing pot. “I am not a fan of marijuana use,” May told reporters at a campaign stop in Halifax, televised nationally. “I’ve never used marijuana. I apologize.” The Green Party in its policy document said decades-old marijuana prohibition “has utterly failed and has not led to reduced drug use in Canada.” Rather, prohibition has led to costly policing to combat its distribution, “criminalizing youth and fostering organized crime,” it says.



■UNITED STATES

McCain natural born: judge

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to remove Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain from the California ballot because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. US District Judge William Alsup ruled late on Tuesday that the law at the time of McCain’s birth automatically granted citizenship to offspring of US citizens. McCain’s parents were both citizens when McCain was born Aug. 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, a US territory where his father was stationed with the US Navy. The US Constitution says only “natural born” citizens may hold the presidency, a term on which the Founding Fathers did not elaborate.



■CANADA

Woman survives subway

A woman run over by three full subway cars after falling on tracks at Toronto’s busiest metro hub on Wednesday miraculously escaped unscathed, transit officials said. The unidentified woman had reportedly managed to avoid contact with the electric rail and the subway itself as it made a regular stop at the Bloor and Yonge station in the city’s center. She was later taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries.



■RAQ

Crash kills seven

Seven US soldiers were killed yesterday when their transport helicopter crashed in southern Iraq, the deadliest such incident in the country in more than a year, the US military said. The CH-47 Chinook crashed about 100km west of the main southern port city of Basra as it was flying as part of four-aircraft convoy flying from Kuwait to the northern city of Balad, it said. “The seven soldiers were the only ones on board the Chinook at the time of the crash,” the US military said in a statement. The US military said the incident was under investigation, “however enemy activity is not suspected,” it added.


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