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World News Quick Take

PHOTO : AP

■FIJI

Grip over lawyers tightened

The military regime yesterday moved to tighten its control over lawyers, drawing condemnation from critics who saw it as further sign of deepening authoritarian rule. Under a government decree published yesterday, lawyers will need the approval of a military-appointed court registrar to continue working as legal counsel from July. Licensing of lawyers had previously been the responsibility of the Fiji Law Society, whose offices were raided on Saturday. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the move meant Fiji lawyers would “be deregistered if they don’t support the regime.”



■PHILIPPINES

Coast guard probes sinking

The coast guard is investigating the crew of two vessels that allegedly passed by a sinking ferry without offering help, while some passengers reportedly snapped pictures, it said yesterday. Twelve people, including a Japanese, drowned on Saturday when large waves broke a bamboo outrigger, flipping it over in waters near the beach resort at Puerto Galera. The authorities did not release the names of the vessels.



■INDIA

Nearly 100 skulls found

Nearly 100 human skulls and other skeletal remains were discovered in a dry pond in northern India, officials said yesterday. The grisly discovery was made by children playing in a pond that had dried over the summer in Aligarh, a city 120km southeast of New Delhi. Local government official Shailendra Singh said the remains were most likely those of unidentified people killed in road accidents and other mishaps. Human rights groups accused police of being callous. “Even dead bodies deserve honorable cremation after post mortem,” said Ashish Shukla, of the Uttar Pradesh State Human Rights Organization.



■JAPAN

Horror in the toilet

In a nation where ghosts are traditionally believed to hide in the loo, a local firm is advertising a new literary experience — a horror story printed on toilet paper. Each roll carries several copies of a new nine-chapter novella written by Koji Suzuki, the author of the horror story Ring, which has been made into movies in Japan and Hollywood. Drop, set in a public restroom, takes up about 90cm of a roll and can be read in just a few minutes, maker Hayashi Paper said.



■AUSTRALIA

Werbeloff ‘faked’ story

Known as the “Chk-Chk-Boom Girl” to YouTube viewers, Clare Werbeloff gained instant celebrity as witness to a shooting in Sydney’s nightlife district. But in a twist to the tale, the 19-year-old now says the TV interview she gave was pure invention and she never saw the shooting, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday. Shortly after a man was shot and wounded on May 17 on a street in the Kings Cross area, Werbeloff gave a Nine Network cameraman a graphic eyewitness account of what she said had happened.



■MALAYSIA

US diver missing

A US diver has gone missing off the east coast after the yacht he was sailing in was hit by an unknown vessel, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency official Syed Noradli Syed Abdul Rahman said. A search operation was being carried out by the navy and marine police for 63-year-old Kenneth Wayne, he said. Wayne had been traveling with his friend James Edward, 27, on a yacht to the islands of Langkawi and Tioman, Syed Noraldi said. His friends and the crew were rescued by local fishermen.



■ITALY

PM grilled over model

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced new questions on Sunday about his relationship with Noemi Letizia, 18, after claims that he flew the aspiring model to his Sardinian villa for New Year’s Eve after seeing her modeling portfolio. Berlusconi has previously said that he knows Letizia through her parents, who he has described as old friends. But Letizia’s former boyfriend, Gino Flaminio, 22, told La Repubblica newspaper yesterday that “Noemi’s parents have nothing to do with this, the link was just with her.” Letizia’s father challenged his version of events as “gravely defamatory, because it attributes to Noemi things that have never been done, said or thought,” and said he would take legal action.



■FRANCE

Jailed mayor kills himself

A mayor accused of engineering a multimillion-dollar art scam in his town killed himself in his prison cell early on Sunday morning, police said. Jacques Bouille, who had been in provisional detention since December on charges including corruption and money laundering, was found by guards at a jail in Perpignan. Police said he had hanged himself. Bouille, who had been mayor of the small town of Saint-Cyprien since 1989, was expelled from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right UMP party when his time in office became embroiled in controversy.



■SAUDI ARABIA

Couple split over name

A couple divorced days after the birth of their first son because the two could not agree on a name for the child, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The father of the child insisted on naming his son after his own deceased father. Meanwhile, the child’s mother insisted on naming the newborn after her own father, in order to keep a promise she had made to him, the newspaper Okaz said. The pair’s families unsuccessfully intervened to keep the couple together, Okaz reported, and the two divorced within 48 hours of the birth of their first son.



■GREECE

British diver dies

A British diver on a National Geographic underwater filming mission died on Sunday from suspected decompression sickness, the merchant marine ministry said. The 37-year-old Briton was part of a 17-member crew commissioned by the magazine to film the wreck of HMHS Britannic, the British World War I hospital ship that sank off the Aegean island of Kea in 1916 after hitting a mine. “A Super Puma rescue helicopter was dispatched to collect the diver who was unconscious with decompression sickness symptoms,” a ministry spokeswoman said.



■UAE

French inaugurate base

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says his nation’s first military base in the Gulf is an important step in international cooperation to fight piracy and safeguard oil routes. Kouchner is in Abu Dhabi ahead of the scheduled arrival of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to inaugurate the naval base there today. The naval station is France’s first major military foothold in the Gulf and is expected to contribute to anti-piracy patrols off Somalia and guard vital Persian Gulf shipping lanes.



■UNITED STATES

Viagra developer dies at 92

Robert Furchgott, the Nobel prize-winning scientist whose research on a gas’ effect as a blood vessel relaxant paved the way for revolutionary impotence treatments such as Viagra, has died at age 92. The pharmacologist died last Tuesday in Seattle, Washington, his daughter said. Research led by Furchgott and colleagues Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad showed that nitric oxide plays a vital role in the human cardiovascular system and regulating blood pressure and circulation. The three researchers earned the Nobel prize for physiology in 1998.



■UNITED STATES

Mother accused of murder

A mother accused of throwing her two children into the Willamette River in Oregon — killing her four-year-old son and injuring his older sister — has a history of domestic violence and recently filed for separation from the children’s father, police said. Amanda Jo Stott-Smith, 31, was taken into custody at a parking garage on Saturday morning. Stott-Smith’s son drowned. Her seven-year-old daughter was hospitalized after surviving a fall of 23m and more than a half-hour in the cold water. Stott-Smith faces aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder charges.



■UNITED STATES

Space shuttle returns safely

Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned safely to Earth on Sunday, detouring from stormy Florida to California to end a 13-day mission that repaired and enhanced the Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis’ crew had waited since Friday for the go-ahead to land as Mission Control hoped to avoid the time and expense — about US$1.8 million — of diverting to California’s Edwards Air Force Base.



■COLOMBIA

Police seize black cocaine

Police seized a shipment of black cocaine that is almost impossible to detect with traditional methods, regional police chief Fabio Cardona said on Sunday. “It’s the first time we have encountered this type of cocaine,” Cardona said after reporting that 15 packets of the drug had been discovered in the fuel tank of a car heading to the El Dorado airport in Bogota. Black cocaine has no odor, making it difficult to detect, even for well-trained drug-sniffing dogs.



■PARAGUAY

Celibacy vows ‘imperfect’

President Fernando Lugo, who last month admitted fathering a son conceived while he was still a bishop, said celibacy vows taken by Roman Catholic clerics are “imperfect.” Lugo stunned Paraguay last month when he recognized as his son a two-year-old boy born to a former parishioner. Two other women have claimed he is the father of their sons, and Lugo has agreed to take a DNA test in one of the cases. Celibacy “is a personal option of faith required by the Catholic church,” but everything humans do is flawed, the president said in an interview published on Sunday.



■SOMALIA

Islamists claim bombing

A radical Islamic group claimed responsibility yesterday for a suicide bombing that killed seven people over the weekend. The political leader of the radical group al-Shabab, Sheik Husein Ali Fidow, said a teenager carried out the attack on a military base in the Somali capital on Sunday. Six guards and a civilian were killed, the government said. Authorities suspect the bomber was one of some 300 foreigners fighting alongside Islamist insurgents.


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