■ NEW ZEALAND
Woman electrocuted
A young woman was electrocuted when she stepped out of her car after it crashed into a power pole, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Three young children in the car were taken to a hospital, with one them suffering from electrical shocks, the Sunday Star-Times said, quoting police at the scene of Saturday night’s accident near the South Island town of Blenheim. Police did not immediately release the woman’s name, the paper said.
■THAILAND
Militants wound teacher
Suspected separatist militants shot dead three people and seriously wounded a teacher in attacks throughout the insurgency-hit far south, police said yesterday. On Sunday a 28-year-old man was killed in Yala Province, a 42-year-old man shot dead in Pattani Province, while suspected militants also killed a 49-year-old village chief in a drive-by shooting in Narathiwat Province. A 29-year-old teacher was shot and seriously injured as he made his way to school in Pattani early yesterday, local police said. Schools and teachers are frequent targets of attack in the far south because militants see the education system as an effort by Bangkok to impose Buddhist culture on a region that is mainly Muslim and ethnic Malay. Tensions have simmered since the country annexed the mainly Malay sultanate in 1902.
■SRI LANKA
Tiger’s fight intense battle
Tamil Tiger rebels fought an intense battle with government forces advancing into their territory in the north and killed at least 43 soldiers, a pro-rebel Web site reported yesterday. Members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resisted a military push at Nallur in the northern mainland on Sunday, the Tamilnet.com Web site said. They said the Tigers recovered the bodies of eight soldiers, but did not give their own casualties. However, the guerrillas for the first time admitted that security forces had taken the strategically important town of Pooneryn and that heavy fighting was taking place on the outskirts of their political capital Kilinochchi. There was no immediate comment from military authorities on casualties from the latest fighting, but the defense ministry on Sunday said that troops were marching on Kilinochchi from three directions. The government has vowed to take the Tiger political capital and dismantle the LTTE’s mini-state.
■THAILAND
Pedophile gets six years
Bangkok’s Criminal Court said yesterday a Canadian pedophile nabbed last year after German police “unswirled” his altered photograph on the Internet has been given an additional six years in jail. The court confirmed that Christopher Paul Neil, 33, had been sentenced to just under six years in jail earlier this month for molesting a Thai boy in 2003, after claiming his innocence. He was also ordered to pay 50,000 baht (US$1,415) compensation to the boy’s family. The verdict was given in an unscheduled hearing on Nov. 14 and not reported at the time. In a separate case, Neil had already been found guilty of abducting and molesting a minor in 2003 when he was teaching English in Bangkok and of distributing pornography. He was sentenced to three years and three months in jail. The sentence was commuted after Neil pleaded guilty. Neil was arrested on Oct. 19 in Nakorn Ratchasima Province, 210km northeast of Bangkok, ending an international manhunt sparked after Interpol released his picture with a red alert, its highest search signal.
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