■ AUSTRALIA
‘Bizarre’ couple jailed
A couple who imprisoned a six-year-old boy in a baby’s cot in their garage were jailed yesterday by a judge who described their behavior as cruel and bizarre. The pair kept the child in a portable cot covered with a homemade plywood lid that the boy was unable to remove. The boy was given water and fed once or twice a day. He was also given a screwdriver and saucepan to bang together when he needed to use the toilet, Perth District Court heard. When found by authorities in November last year, the child weighed only 12kg, had little muscle strength and several bruises. Reports said he had been kept in the cot for as long as two years. The court heard that the 34-year-old woman had become the boy’s foster mother soon after he was born, when his natural mother was unable to care for him.
■ PHILIPPINES
Police charge woman
Police charged a woman with murder yesterday after she admitted to killing her Australian boyfriend in a southern Philippine city, a police official said. Corazon Donato, 30, admitted to killing Philip Andrew Aitkin, 43, during a heated argument over the custody of their four-year-old son at their rented house in Davao City, 990km south of Manila, Senior Superintendent Francisco Villaroman said. Three men were also arrested and charged with murder, he said. Villaroman said investigators on Wednesday unearthed the decomposing body of Aitkin, a mechanical engineer working with a US company in Dubai, in the front yard of the couple’s house. Villaroman said Aitkin’s employers in Dubai sought the help of the police in locating the victim on Nov. 1 after he failed to contact them. He added that Aitkin might have been murdered that same day but the date of his death has yet to be verified by forensic experts.
■ JAPAN
Woman arrested for calls
Police arrested a woman for making more than 7,000 emergency telephone calls because an officer did not take her initial complaint seriously, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The 38-year-old was arrested on Tuesday on charges of obstructing police work, a police spokesman in western Osaka said. She made 7,177 calls during the day or night between Sept. 14 and Oct. 13 this year, sometimes shouting “drop dead” at police, he said. The woman first called in 2005 to say she had been hit by a man, but the officer who answered her call “did not take the allegation seriously, because what she said was hard to understand,” he said. “She apparently had a grudge against police officials,” he said.
■ CAMBODIA
S Korean commits suicide
A South Korean man committed suicide in a hotel after gambling away his fortune in the country’s casinos, media reports said yesterday. Police found Chae Geong-seok’s body hanging in his Phnom Penh hotel room on Thursday with a suicide note explaining to his family that his fortune was gone, the Phnom Penh Post said. The man’s body was taken to the city’s Calmette Hospital to be collected by his family.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Victim drives rapist to police
A rape victim drove her rapist to a police station when he fell asleep in his car after assaulting the woman, local media reported on Wednesday. Vipul Sharma, 22, was found guilty of abduction and two charges of rape by the Auckland District Court Tuesday, officials said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
World War I vet dies at 108
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