■INDIA
Tourist gets ride, husband
A 26-year-old US tourist hitched a ride in a rickshaw last week and married the driver a few days later, a report said yesterday. Whitney from Chicago, whose surname wasn’t given, met her prince charming in Jaipur after hailing a motorized rickshaw and hiring the driver for her stay in the city, the Mail Today newspaper said. “On the third day, he surprised me by popping the question,” Whitney told the paper. “‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you’, he told me. I fell in love.” After meeting last Saturday they were married on Wednesday in a simple ceremony. Whitney was pictured in the paper, standing with new husband Harish Hotala, wearing a traditional sari that covered her head. The paper said Hotala was “a cabbie with a difference,” however. “Though a school dropout, he is fluent in English and owns three autorickshaws,” it said. “My father was surprised but my mother took it sportingly,” she said.
■NEPAL
Maoists protest pageant
Scores of Maoist activists protested outside the venue of the “Miss Nepal” contest on Thursday, saying the beauty pageant was an insult to women. They chanted “you can’t expose the women” as they sat on the street outside a high security army club in Kathmandu. Many protesters waved black flags in protest as 15 contestants took center stage on the catwalk. “The contest is a forum where women are used by companies to popularize and sell their products,” said Manu Humagain, head of an anti-pageant Maoist panel. “It is a blow to the dignity of the women. We oppose it.” Contestants said the event helped them forge a “separate identity” for themselves. The winner will represent Nepal at the Miss World contest in Johannesburg in December, organizers said.
■AUSTRALIA
Muslims approve guide dogs
Twenty-five Muslim leaders visited a Brisbane school for guide dogs on Thursday to show blind Muslims that there was no religious prohibition against companion animals. The groundbreaking visit was organized by Guide Dogs Queensland and came after complaints that Muslim taxi drivers were refusing to allow seeing eye dogs in their cabs. “If a person has a dog for a valid reason there’s no problem at all,” Islamic Council of Queensland spokesman Imam Mohammed Akram Buksh said. “God Almighty has created the dog and without a doubt this certain breed has changed many things in many people’s lives and is a great benefit in society.”
■HONG KONG
Police arrest triad boss
A triad gang leader has been arrested for the killing of a feared rival who was hacked to death outside a luxury hotel, police said yesterday. The man known as Ah Ting was ambushed by police on Thursday after failed attempts to flee Hong Kong following the Aug. 4 killing of Lee Tai-lung, 44. Lee, known as the “Baron of Tsimshatsui East,” was run down by a van and then hacked to death outside the five-star Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel by three knifemen. Lee was a senior member of the Sun Yee On triad faction in Tsimshatsui with a reputation as a ferocious fighter who often played the role of enforcer on behalf of his gang. His killing appeared to be linked to a long-running battle between Lee’s Sun Yee On and the Wo Shing Wo triad factions for control of the entertainment district in Tsimshatsui. A report in the South China Morning Post said police believe Ah Ting and an accomplice called Tattoo Chung, were key figures in the plot to kill Lee. Chung is still being sought by police.
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