■NEW ZEALAND
Fake IDs seized by police
Hundreds of teenagers are using forged drivers’ licenses with false birth dates to show that they are 18 years old — the legal drinking age — police said on Monday after charging a student with forgery. Police said they had seized a computer from a 17-year-old and obtained a database with the names of hundreds of recipients of forged drivers’ licenses. They charged five students with using forged licenses and urged others to surrender the fake documents to avoid arrest. Police said the teens using forged licenses, which they allegedly bought for NZ$100 (US$74) to gain admission to bars and pubs, were almost all 17-year-olds from as many as 15 schools in the Auckland region.
■NEW ZEALAND
Police end cooler joyride
Three men were arrested after a joyride on a picnic cooler down the world’s steepest street, police said on Monday. One man sat in the big blue, plastic bin — known as a chilly bin — while a 17-year-old high school student drove a car towing him down Baldwin Street on Sunday morning in the South Island city of Dunedin. Baldwin Street, which has a gradient of 1 in 2.86, has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s steepest public road. Police Sergeant Craig Brown told the Otago Daily Times that the men were reported to have poured gasoline on another road, set it alight, and then ridden the lid of the chilly bin through the flames.
■HONG KONG
Chess players brawl
A 77-year-old chess player was hospitalized after squabbling with his opponent during a game in a public park, police said on Monday. The dispute broke out over a move in a game between a 60-year-old man and the 77-year-old in a park on Sunday morning in the North Point district. The older man was pushed to the ground as the row escalated and then called police, who interviewed both men. The 77-year-old was admitted to hospital for treatment, but no arrests were made. Public parks are popular places for the elderly to play games such as chess and mahjong in densely populated region, where most people live in cramped, high-rise apartment blocks.
■AUSTRALIA
Boy charged over chocolate
A 12-year-old Aboriginal boy appeared in court on Monday charged with receiving a stolen chocolate frog worth about A$0.70 (US$0.65), reports said. The boy, who cannot be identified, briefly faced Northam Children’s Court on charges of receiving the chocolate “Freddo,” allegedly shoplifted by a friend, and a small, inexpensive novelty sign reading “Do not enter, genius at work.” The boy’s Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer, Peter Collins, said it was scandalous that a young child could face such charges. “The fact of the matter is he’s 12, and these are the most trivial charges imaginable, and it can hardly be a justification for this kid to be brushed up against the courts to teach him a bit of a lesson,” he told local media.
■MYANMAR
Ferry collides with tugboat
At least 50 people are believed to have drowned when a wooden ferry packed with 178 people collided with a tugboat on a river in the southern Irrawaddy delta region, officials said yesterday. Thirty-one bodies were found after the single-deck ferry collided with a tugboat pulling a barge late on Sunday in the Ngawun River, and 21 people were missing, officials said. “There is very little chance of finding those missing alive. Most of them are women and children,” said an official in Pathein, capital of Irrawaddy.
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