■VIETNAM
Refugees leave for Seoul
Nine North Korean asylum-seekers left the Danish embassy in Hanoi for Seoul yesterday, just hours before the South Korean president was to arrive for a state visit, a diplomatic source said. “The nine North Koreans left the Danish embassy this morning and they are now at Noi Bai International Airport checking in before flying to Singapore and then Seoul,” the Vietnamese diplomatic source said, asking not to be named. A Danish diplomat declined to comment. The South Korean foreign ministry and other agencies also declined, which is their usual position on North Korean refugees. The nine entered the Danish compound on Sept. 24 hoping to reach South Korea.
■PHILIPPINES
Militants seize principal
Muslim militants seized an elementary school principal on a southern island, a regional military spokesman said yesterday. Gabriel Canizares, 36, was seized late on Monday by 12 Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in Patikul on Jolo Island, 1,000km south of Manila, Major David Hontiveros said. Hontiveros said Canizares and several teachers were riding a passenger minibus when gunmen stopped the vehicle in the village of Tanum and forcibly took him hostage. The kidnapping occurred despite intensified military operations against the Abu Sayyaf rebels.
■AUSTRALIA
TV figure sorry for gesture
A TV presenter has apologized to a leading politician after being caught on-air making the “loopy” gesture to suggest he was crazy. ABC News Breakfast co-host Virginia Trioli was shown twirling a finger near her temple after a segment showing footage of Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce. “The senator was very gracious in accepting my apology,” Trioli told the Australian newspaper. Joyce, who was commenting on carbon emissions trading legislation, laughed off the incident. “Maybe I am crazy,” he said, according to the newspaper. “Maybe this isn’t parliament but an asylum. And if I’m not Barnaby, who am I? And then, who is Barnaby? If I am crazy, it would explain a lot about this place.”
■AUSTRALIA
Cat strangler goes to jail
A man who strangled his ex-lover’s cat and pelted her parents’ home with petrol bombs was yesterday jailed for almost 10 years. Paul Maher, 24, began stalking, harassing and threatening his former partner, Lynne Forehan, in August last year after they ended their relationship. He firebombed her parents’ home and, while on bail for breaching a restraining order, broke into Forehan’s North Melbourne apartment and strangled her four-year-old cat, Sox, with a telephone cord. It was a “calculated, callous and terribly cruel act,” judge Felicity Hampel said. Maher, who has a history of mental health problems and drug abuse, also slashed Forehan’s couch and clothes and urinated on her bed.
■AUSTRALIA
No hugs allowed at school
An elementary school has banned hugging and other displays of affection between preteen boys and girls, the principal said yesterday. Students at Largs Bay Primary School in Adelaide were spoken to about “inappropriate behavior” between boyfriends and girlfriends last week, Principal Julie Gale said. “We set strong standards of behavior for our Year 6 and 7 students, who are seen as role models by our younger students,” Gale said, referring to students aged 11 to 13.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Drawing may set record
Christie’s will offer for sale a drawing by Renaissance master Raphael that he used as a study for a figure in a Vatican fresco, and expects it to break the record for an old master drawing sold at auction. Head of a Muse will go under the hammer at the London sale of old masters and 19th century art on Dec. 8 and has been estimated at £12 million to £16 million (US$20 million to US$26 million). The existing record for an old master drawing at auction stands at £8.1 million, including buyer’s premium, for Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ in 2000 and for Leonardo da Vinci’s Horse and Rider in 2001. The Raphael drawing was a study for a figure in Parnassus, one of a series of four frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican commissioned by Pope Julius II and executed between 1508 and 1511. The Dec. 8 auction will also include Rembrandt’s Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo, estimated at up to £25 million, and St John the Evangelist by Domenico Zampieri, valued at £7 million to £10 million.
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