■AFGHANISTAN
Karzai likely to win
President Hamid Karzai will likely emerge as the winner of recent elections even after fraudulent votes are discarded, the head of the CIA said in an interview aired on Friday. “I think that what appears to be the case is that even after they eliminate some of the votes that resulted because of fraud, that Karzai ... still looks like the individual who is going to win that election,” Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta told US-funded broadcaster Voice of America. A CIA spokesman later stressed that Panetta was predicting the eventual outcome of the political deadlock, not expressing a preference.
■INDONESIA
Quake rocks Bali
A strong earthquake shook the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali early yesterday, injuring at least seven people and sending panicked tourists and residents fleeing out of homes and hotels. No tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of major damage. The magnitude 5.8 quake hit just after 6am 75km south of Denpasar, the island’s capital, the US Geological Survey said. Indonesia’s Meteorological and Geophysics Agency put the quake at a more powerful 6.4 magnitude.
■CHINA
Doctors miss 15cm knife
Doctors failed to find a 15cm knife blade that was embedded in a woman’s pelvis for four months after she was stabbed with the weapon, local media said on Thursday. Shen Ping was stabbed in the hip during a robbery on May 6 in Jiangsu Province, the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported. The handle apparently broke off the carving knife during the attack and left the entire blade embedded in Shen’s pelvic cavity. But doctors who examined her following the robbery failed to locate the blade, and when Shen went for further checks after complaining of pain she was told that she was probably suffering from a bladder infection. Following an ultrasound scan, the blade was finally removed by surgeons at Shanghai’s Anting Hospital on Tuesday, the newspaper said.
■SOUTH KOREA
Pornographers disappointed
Prosecutors on Friday rejected accusations by foreign pornographers that local Internet users have breached copyright by uploading their content onto Web sites. The prosecutors’ office said it would investigate an unspecified number of Internet users just for distributing pornography. In an unusual case, a local law firm representing 50 US and Japanese porn producers filed suit in July, accusing about 10,000 people of pirating the foreign content for profit. Some local Internet users allegedly earned up to US$25,000 a month from users. Prosecutors charged just 10 habitual offenders with breach of copyright, which is punishable by jail in South Korea. Disgruntled foreign pornographers filed a second complaint last month against 300 habitual uploaders on similar charges.
■HONG KONG
Detective jailed for rape
A detective was jailed on Friday for 12 years for raping a teenage girl and molesting three other victims, aged 16 to 21, in the identity parade room of a police station. Leung Lai-chung, 30, used the police computer to contact female victims of crimes and then invited them back to the police station on false pretences, the High Court heard. He attacked them in the city’s Mongkok police station over a 10-day period in November, raping a 19-year-old woman who had reported a lost purse and sexually assaulting the three others.
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