■JAPAN
Toddler survives train hit
A toddler who strayed onto rail tracks got away with scratches on Monday after a train ground to a halt on top of her, police and rescuers said. The driver spotted the girl standing on the tracks in Suzaka City, northwest of Tokyo, and applied the emergency brakes, local police said. The train stopped with the girl beneath, they said. She was alive and trapped in the 50cm gap between the train and the tracks, rescuers said. “It could have been a tragedy. It’s a miracle that she survived this way,” a rescue worker told the TV Asahi network.
■AUSTRALIA
Cat shot, walks home
A cat named Smokey survived 13 shots to the head from an air rifle and then found his way home after what police yesterday called a “shocking” act of animal cruelty. The nine-year-old moggy turned up on his owners’ doorstep bleeding from his head last week, three days after he went missing from the family home in Maryborough, Victoria. A medical examination revealed 13 pellets lodged in his head and face. Sergeant Craig Pearse said it was remarkable Smokey had managed to get home after his ordeal. “This is just a shocking incident where someone either working alone or in a group has shown no regard for animal life and left Smokey for dead,” Pearse said.
■VIETNAM
Baby-selling trial opens
A court in the north has put 16 people on trial for allegedly selling more than 250 babies for foreign adoption, a court official said yesterday. The head of two social welfare centers in Nam Dinh Province as well as several doctors and nurses at village clinics went on trial yesterday, said Dang Viet Hung, the chief judge at the court hearing the case. The defendants are charged with “abuse of power and authority” and could face prison terms of five to 10 years. The defendants allegedly solicited infants from unwed mothers and those from desperately poor families and falsified documents claiming the babies had been abandoned at village clinics, making them eligible for adoption, Hung said.
■CHINA
Five jailed in plate fight
Five men have been jailed in Beijing for up to 16 months for fighting over a “lucky license plate” containing the number eight, a traditional number for good fortune, state media said yesterday. The men allegedly armed themselves with knives and clubs and beat anyone who came near a machine issuing new license plate numbers at a Beijing vehicle registration center, the Beijing News reported. Several people were injured, one of them seriously. The incident occurred in July last year as plates with “8888” as the last four digits were about to be issued, the report said. The ringleader had lined up four cars for new plates and paid his four accomplices a total of 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) to guard the machine and ensure he got the numbers he wanted, it said.
■SOUTH KOREA
New fingerprinting rules
All adult foreign visitors visiting the country will by 2012 have to be fingerprinted to tighten immigration controls and prevent criminals entering the country, officials said yesterday. The justice ministry said a bill to be submitted to parliament next month requires foreigners aged over 17 to provide prints of their index fingers and an identity photograph upon entry. Those intending to stay more than three months must provide full fingerprints in addition to the photo.
RSS