■AUSTRALIA
Camels are a big hit
Producers are being swamped with requests for live camels and camel meat, especially from the Middle East, after a soaring wild population prompted a government cull, companies said yesterday. Garry Dann, managing director of Territory Camel, said he had received more than 100 inquiries from Middle Eastern countries and the US in the last couple of months. “There’s been hundreds of requests like that, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to come up with a boat to ship them, that’s the big problem,” Dann said. Producers say many companies have underestimated the cost of rounding up wild camels in Australia’s vast Outback, then transporting them to port and shipping them abroad.
■CHINA
Cop sentenced to death
A former police officer was sentenced to death yesterday in the latest court verdict following a huge mafia crackdown that has lifted the lid on official collusion with gangsters. Yue Cun (岳村) was convicted of crimes including operating a range of illegal businesses and causing intentional injury in the huge municipality of Chongqing, the official China News Service said. At least six people have already been sentenced to death in the sensational trials in Chongqing, home to 30 million people, but Yue appeared to be the first police officer given the death penalty.
■NEPAL
Stray dog to receive salary
The Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) has voted to pay a monthly “salary” to a wounded stray dog that has taken on the job of guarding its office. NRCS president Man Bahadur Budathoki said the dog had turned up at the organization’s premises in the east of the country last month and remained there ever since, barking at any stranger who approached. The NRCS working committee voted on Sunday to pay it 1,000 rupees (US$14) a month — plus overtime for weekends. “The dog is doing such a great job that we might even get rid of our night guard,” Budathoki said yesterday. “We will use the money to buy it good food and it will have meat at least once a day. It will also be given milk and biscuits, which it seems to really like. We want to inspire other people to treat dogs well.”
■AUSTRALIA
Population set to hit 36m
The nation’s population is projected to grow by more than a half to 36 million by the middle of the century — mainly through immigration, a government report said yesterday. The additional 14 million people that it anticipates adding to its current population of 22 million by 2050 is cited in a report aiming to help lawmakers plan for the future challenges of an aging population, escalating health costs and urban overcrowding. In releasing the report, Treasurer Wayne Swan said that while a population of 36 million was not a target, such population growth could help pay for upcoming generations of retirees.
■MALAYSIA
Court fines couple for affair
A news report says a court has ordered two lovers to pay a fine of four buffaloes and a pig after they were found guilty of having an illicit affair. The Star newspaper says the Native Court in Penampang district on Borneo ruled on Friday that the man and woman must compensate their communities with the animals, valued at about 6,000 ringgit (US$1,800), for their tryst. They were also fined 1,000 ringgit each. The man’s wife filed a complaint last year after finding her husband in shorts and her colleague in a sarong at the man’s second home.
■TURKEY
Teen gets eight years
A 15-year-old girl who was arrested at a demonstration in support of a banned Kurdish group has been jailed for nearly eight years after being convicted of “terrorist” offenses, including throwing stones at police. The case comes amid renewed scrutiny of the country’s human rights record after it was named as the worst violator of the 47 signatory states to the European Convention on Human Rights. The girl, who has been named only as Berivan, was detained in Batman in October at a rally for the banned Kurdistan People’s Party, which is regarded by Ankara, the US and the EU as a terrorist group. A court in Diyarbakir found her guilty of “crimes on behalf of an illegal organization” after prosecutors alleged she had hurled stones and shouted slogans. She was also convicted of attending “meetings and demonstrations in opposition to the law” and “spreading propaganda for an illegal organization” despite claiming in court that she did not know what the word propaganda means. In her defense, the girl denied throwing stones or being part of the demonstration, but said she had only stopped to watch it out of curiosity, while on her way to visit an aunt. She was arrested after police mistook her for a demonstrator, she said. She had confessed to the crimes only after being beaten in custody.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Court allows couple to marry
A couple had their marriage restored more than four years after a court ordered them to be divorced because they were from incompatible tribes, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The Supreme Judiciary Council in Riyadh on Saturday accepted a request by Mansour al-Timani and his wife Fatima to overrule the June 2005 decision that annulled their marriage against their wishes, Arab News said. “The divorce ruling is void, therefore the return of the couple together is inevitable now and does not require [another] marriage ceremony,” their legal representative Ahmad al-Sudairi told the newspaper. The original complaint about the marriage had been lodged in court by Fatima’s half-brothers, who said that Timani had lied to their father about his tribal roots when he married Fatima in 2002.
■MALAYSIA
New faucet to save water
A company has invented a machine it says will help Muslims purify themselves before prayers without excessively wasting water. The ornate, green-colored machine comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during wudu, an Arabic word used to describe the act of washing the face, arms and legs before prayers. The wudu, or ablution, rite precedes the five daily prayers Muslims are obligated to perform. There are more than 1.7 billion Muslims in the world, with the majority in Africa and the Middle East where water is scarce.
■SOMALIA
Fire exchange kills 16
Islamist insurgents fired mortar bombs at the presidential palace in the capital overnight, prompting return fire by troops that killed at least 16 people, medical officials and residents said yesterday. Violence has killed an estimated 21,000 people or more in the failed Horn of Africa nation since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, helping trigger one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies. Rebels from the hardline al-Shabaab group, which Washington says is al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, routinely fire at the hilltop Villa Somali palace from other parts of Mogadishu. Troops at the palace often launch shells back.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not