■SOUTH KOREA
Game marks start of war
Seoul normally publicity-shy intelligence agency is creating a stir among liberal groups with a “spot the spy” flash video game offering a variety of prizes. The National Intelligence Service is hosting the game on its Web site to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. The game, which started on June 22 and runs to July 21, challenges users to pick out spies and those who sympathize with communist North Korea. The first stage invites users to identify suspicious characters in a crowded park. One figure is shown holding a placard reading “Love Kim Il-sung,” the North’s founding president who died in 1994.
■CHINA
Police battle prostitution
Police have launched a nationwide “strike-hard” campaign against prostitution that will last until the 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1, state press reported yesterday. The campaign will target providers of paid sex services at night clubs, bathhouses, barber shops and hotels, and will seek to crack down on those that force women into prostitution, the Global Times reported. The campaign comes after a waitress was convicted this month of using “excessive force” when she stabbed to death a local government official who tried to force her into having sex at a bathhouse in central China’s Hubei Province last month. Although convicted of the killing, the girl was not sentenced to prison time and was released amid a public uproar over the brash and corrupt lifestyles of Chinese officials.
■NEW ZEALAND
Marksmen kill gunman
A wheelchair-bound gunman was shot dead by police marksmen after he injured two people in a shooting spree in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, police said yesterday. Shayne Sime, 42, was shot and killed late on Sunday night, after he fired more than 100 shots indiscriminately from a shotgun and rifle in his quiet suburban street, police said. The man was believed to have been drinking earlier on Sunday and had contacted family to say he was feeling suicidal, they said.
■CHINA
Activists rescue cats
Animal activists in Shanghai rescued 300 cats from a dealer who had bought the allegedly stolen pets for sale to restaurants, state media reported yesterday. The activists found 22 bamboo cages full of cats in a freight yard, from where they were to be shipped to Guangdong Province, the Shanghai Daily reported. Most of the animals were returned to their owners, the report said. Restaurants pay about 50 yuan (US$7.30) a cat, the report said. Police detained the cat dealer, Yang Baoguo (楊寶過), after he battled dozens of animal lovers who tried to break his cages. The dealer was released after a few hours without charge because the country has no animal protection laws.
■VIETNAM
Ordnance death toll rises
Unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War has killed more than 42,000 people in the country since the conflict ended more than three decades ago, and deadly accidents continue daily, a senior military official said yesterday. US forces used 13.6 million tonnes of bombs and ammunition during the war and an estimated 725,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance still contaminates 20 percent of the country’s area, Vice Defense Minister Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Huy Hieu wrote in the state-run People’s Army newspaper.
■GERMANY
Some wish Wall never fell
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