■AUSTRALIA
Treat-stealing thief done in
A thief has been undone by his habit of stealing treats from his victims’ fridges, after police used the DNA he left on a half-eaten doughnut and empty bottles to catch him. Jamie Scott McKillop left an empty can of Coke in one house he robbed, the remains of a Krispy Kreme doughnut in the kitchen of another and empty bottles of pre-mixed alcoholic drinks in another, the Sunday Telegraph reported. Police were able to match DNA traces from the litter to him, the report said. “Frankly, it is not surprising that Mr McKillop was not concerned about leaving his DNA at the scene. After all, he had committed 154 offences without apprehension,” Justice Peter McClellan said.
■MALAYSIA
Pygmy elephant calf dies
An endangered pygmy elephant calf rescued on Borneo early this month has died, a minister said yesterday. Sabah state environment minister Masidi Manjun said the two-year-old female calf died from severe internal bleeding. On June 4, the wildlife rescue unit saved the highly dehydrated pygmy elephant from a moat at an oil palm estate. “The lesson we learn from this tragedy is that the best place for the animal to survive is in its natural habitat and not in human captivation,” Masidi said.
■SRI LANKA
Senior Tiger to aid Colombo
A senior leader of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels has agreed to help the government in its post-war reconstruction efforts, a state-run newspaper reported yesterday. The Sunday Observer said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, formerly the chief arms smuggler for the rebels, had already been working to convince Tiger sympathizers abroad that the fight for an independent Tamil homeland was over. Government troops defeated the Tamil Tigers last year after decades of bloody separatist warfare. “Pathmanathan told the Sunday Observer that several Tiger activists living abroad had now begun to understand the ground realities,” the paper said. Pathmanathan was appointed chief international representative of the Tigers by rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran shortly before Prabhakaran was killed in the last days of the war.
■BANGLADESH
Riots shut down university
One of the country’s leading universities closed indefinitely yesterday after five people were injured in riots by students demanding time off to watch the 2010 World Cup. Students carrying sticks rampaged through the University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka on Saturday demanding term be cut short so they could see World Cup matches, local police chief Rezaul Karim said. “The junior students wanted the campus to close so they can watch the World Cup. But some senior students, who have exams, didn’t want that — so there were some very tense clashes,” Karim said.
■INDIA
Protestor killed in Kashmir
One demonstrator was killed and five injured yesterday in Kashmir when troops fired bullets to disperse violent protests over the death of a Muslim youth, police and witnesses said. Rafiq Bangroo died on Saturday, days after being injured in the Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar in what his family allege was a beating by paramilitary forces. Enraged by Bangroo’s death — the second in less than 10 days of a civilian allegedly at the hands of security forces — hundreds of Kashmiris took to the streets yesterday. Protesters attacked a paramilitary bunker, prompting the soldiers to open fire that left one person dead, police said.
RSS