■HONG KONG
Kidnapper starts jail term
A social worker was beginning an 11-year jail sentence yesterday for kidnapping a friend’s son, aged 7, a court report said. Pakistani national Mohammad Nadim, 22, said he plotted the abduction with his pregnant partner to raise money for his unborn child. The court was told that Nadim picked up the boy on his way to school on a morning last June, telling him the bus had broken down, a report in the South China Morning Post said. They took him to their apartment where he was blindfolded and gagged with adhesive tape. Nadim then called the boy’s mother, demanding she bring HK$20,000 (US$2,580) to a rail station for his return. The boy was bundled into a nylon bag in the boot of a car. Nadim was arrested later the same day when police intercepted the car and rescued the boy.
■CHINA
Labor disputes double
Labor disputes doubled last year amid the financial downturn that triggered mass layoffs of migrant workers and factory closures, state media reported on yesterday. Human Resources and Social Security Vice Minister Yang Zhiming (楊志明) said there were 693,000 labor dispute cases last year, 98 percent higher than the year before, and involved 1.2 million workers, the Xinhua news agency reported. Yang, speaking in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen — a major factory belt in the export engine of the Pearl River Delta hard hit by the slump — said there were 22,000 collective labor disputes involving more than three workers each.
■MALAYSIA
‘Nude run’ probed
Authorities are investigating claims that an island in the Muslim-majority country was used as a location shoot for a “nude run” on a European reality show, a report said yesterday. Photographs of a group of men and women running naked on a beach allegedly taken from an episode of Survivor reportedly broadcast in Denmark were published on the front page of a local tabloid. The tabloid said 16 out of the 22 participants stripped naked for the run while five others got to keep their underwear on. A female participant who refused to strip was kicked out of the show.
■MALAYSIA
Possible outbreak kills one
A man died and 12 others are in serious condition following a suspected outbreak of bacterial meningitis at a training camp in the southern state of Malacca, a news report said yesterday. State health director Ghazali Othman said three patients have been placed in intensive care while the others are in the isolation ward of a state hospital. A total of 85 trainees from the Road Transport Department have also been quarantined at the department’s training academy following the outbreak, Ghazali was quoted as saying by the Star daily.
■INDIA
LET commander killed
A top commander of the Islamic militant Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) group was killed along with his aide by security forces in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday, news reports said. Acting on a tip about the presence of militants, Indian security forces threw a tight cordon around the Dhar forest area in Doda district, about 140km southeast of the state capital Srinagar, late on Friday, the IANS news agency reported. The militants were surrounded and the gunbattle began early yesterday, senior Doda district police official Hemant Lohia was quoted as saying.
■GERMANY
Paint ball to be banned
The government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games after a recent school massacre in which 15 people died. The proposal would make using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents illegal and punishable with fines of up to 5,000 euros (US$6,810). The decision, which is expected to be fast-tracked through the Bundestag before the summer recess, comes two months after 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar shot dead 15 people at his former school in Winnenden, with a weapon he had taken from his father’s bedroom.
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