Wed, Aug 20, 2003 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Hong Kong
  Pub removes Hitler photos

  A karaoke pub in Hong Kong which outraged the German and Israeli consul-generals by plastering its walls with pictures of Hitler and his Nazi troops said yesterday it will remove the offending photographs. The display inside Bar Pacific in the city's Hunghom district originally included a print of a terrified prisoner being executed over a pit full of dead bodies along with prints of Hitler delivering speeches and Nazi troops marching through Europe. The bar's owner at first agreed only to remove the photograph of the execution but a spokeswoman for the businessman said yesterday he had decided to take all of the pictures down because of the outcry.

  ■ New zealand

  Farmers think tax stinks

  A group of farmers driving about 60 trucks stopped traffic in the heart of the nation's biggest city Auckland yesterday to protest government plans to introduce a "flatulence tax" on sheep and cattle. The demonstration, called the "Fight Against Ridiculous Taxes" (FART), was one of a series being organized throughout the country to protest a government proposal that would require farmers to pay for research into global warming. The government claims that more than half of all New Zealand's greenhouse-gas emissions come from methane gas emitted from the country's 39 million sheep and 10 million cattle. Authorities expect the farmers to share the costs of researching ways to reduce the odorous animal gases. One protest rally in the South Island ended at a local hotel where a farmers' group posted signs reading, "For baked beans and pickled onions -- all welcome."

  ■ China

  Glitch grants degrees

  A police computer error has turned more than 100 people in a small village into holders of postgraduate degrees on their residency certificates, a news report said yesterday. The computer glitch in Weinan county, Shaanxi Province, even gave a degree to a 10-year-old boy, according to the South China Morning Post. Police have told villagers they must pay a fee if they want the certificates corrected.

  ■ Hong Kong

  Man gets deadly revenge

  A man disfigured by a stabbing in northern China when he was seven years old has hacked to death his attacker 18 years later, a news report said yesterday. The killer, from Changtu, Liaoning Province, was badly scarred in the 1985 attack and his injuries had been a source of acute embarrassment for him as he grew up, according to the South China Morning Post. When he could no longer endure the shame of his injuries, the man decided to seek revenge by tracking down his attacker and hacking him to death, the newspaper said.

  ■ Cambodia

  Student chokes on fish

  A 17-year-old Cambodian student choked to death after a small fish he had just caught allegedly jumped from a basket and into his mouth, police said on Tuesday. Lim Vanthon, who lived on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, had returned home after fishing in a nearby lake and was holding the basket, telling his parents about his catch, when the fish leaped into his mouth and wriggled down his throat, police said. Police said the student's father took him to two clinics for treatment before he died, but medical staff at both facilities were on lunch break.

  ■ Mexico
  Clowns rob bus

  Two teenagers dressed as clowns climbed aboard a microbus near the Mexican capital's airport, did a song-and-dance routine and then robbed everyone on board, authorities said on Monday. The incident occurred Sunday on a bus in the eastern borough of Venustiano Carranza. Two teens with their faces painted white and wearing goofy costumes hopped on the bus at a stoplight and put on a show. When none of the 20 passengers gave them spare change for their efforts, the pair pulled out knives and demanded money, said a Venustiano Carranza spokesman.

  ■ United States

  Hemingway case closes

  A judge refused to accept a competing will in a dispute over the US$7.5 million estate of Gloria Hemingway, the transgendered child of novelist Ernest Hemingway. Judge Arthur Rothenberg on Monday asked attorneys to draft legal briefs on the "cutting-edge issue" of same-sex marriages because of one-time wife Ida Hemingway's claim that they married again after Gloria Hemingway's gender-changing surgery. Children contesting Ida's claim to an inheritance say the claimed 1997 same-sex remarriage in Washington is irrelevant and not recognized in Florida or Washington. "The basic issue was whether she was a spouse or not," the judge said.

  ■ United States

  Guard jailed for urinating

  A former guard was ordered to scrub toilets while serving 15 days behind bars for urinating from a roof onto inmates playing basketball. Greene County Circuit Judge Don Burrell said on Monday he hoped the sentence would help Justin Hastings better understand what it was like to be dependent on those with power. Hastings, 23, also was given two years of probation and 150 hours of community service. He was convicted in June of four counts of assault. Four inmates said they were splashed by the urine as they played basketball in July 2001 at the Greene County Jail.

  ■ United States

  `Jack the Snipper' nabbed

  A male university student in the US was detained in the "Jack the Snipper" cases, in which a man crept into the apartments of female students and cut off their clothes, news reports said Monday. Gregory Ray, 21, a University of New Hampshire student, was first arrested July 30 when a woman said she awoke to find him peering at her through the window of her off-campus flat in Durham, New Hampshire. Police said they released him later that day but, upon further questioning, issued an arrest warrant for Ray in the "Snipper" cases and he was taken into custody Friday. The engineering student has yet to be charged in the home invasions, which began June 25 and put the small university town on edge.

  ■ Canada

  Girls guilty of poisoning

  Three teenage girls pleaded guilty Monday to poisoning a frozen drink that sickened two of them and several others. The three girls, one aged 15 and the other two aged 14, were accused of lacing the drink last April with powdered copper sulfate taken from a school science laboratory. Seven girls, including two of those charged, were hospitalized with symptoms including vomiting, shaking and headaches. Copper sulfate comes from refining the metal and is used as a fungicide. Local media reports say the poisoning may have been motivated by a fight over a boy.

  ■ Greece
  Briton jailed for stabbing

  A Briton charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of a British teenage tourist in Rhodes was jailed on Monday pending trial. The suspect, 20-year-old Peter-Mark Navarro, was jailed after a closed-door arraignment on the resort island. Seven other Britons charged with complicity in last week's stabbing of the 17-year-old in the resort town of Faliraki were released on bail pending trial. A trial date was not set. Navarro was charged with murder after he allegedly admitted killing the teenage British tourist by stabbing him in the neck with a broken bottle.

  ■ Spain

  Police arrest sorry mugger

  Police in Barcelona say they've arrested a well-dressed serial mugger who would target women, express remorse and ask them to spit at him. The 29-year-old man was arrested last week and is suspected of robbing 19 women in one month to finance a slot-machine addiction, the National Police in Spain's second largest city said. The suspect always used the same tactic: corner women in apartment building doorways or elevators and hold a box cutter to their throat, inspector Benjamin Blanco said. After taking money, the man would apologize, say he knew he was doing something bad and ask the women to spit at him, Blanco said. Some did, he added.

  ■ Ireland

  Officials ban happy hour

  It's official: There's no more "happy hour" in Ireland. Legislation designed to suppress heavy drinking in Irish pubs went into effect Monday. Among a range of new rules and penalties, it outlaws promotional discounts on alcoholic beverages that encourage excessive drinking. The Intoxicating Liquor Act -- drafted to address a steady rise in alcohol-fueled street violence -- also gives police new powers to impose fines on publicans and customers. For the first time, plainclothes police officers will we allowed to record whether bars are serving people who are obviously drunk, or refusing to serve them further drinks. Any bar deemed guilty of promoting drunkenness could be fined US$2,200 per offense.

  ■ Colombia

  Guerrillas kill mayor

  Suspected guerrilla fighters posing as police officers stabbed to death a mayor in southwestern Colombia, the nation's chief of police said on Monday. General Teodoro Campo said that the incident occurred early on Monday in Suaza, where four men wearing police uniforms arrived at the mayor's home. The Suaza mayor, Gentil Bahamon, let them in. He had received death threats from members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Colombia's largest guerrilla group, and hired bodyguards, who were absent when he was killed.

  ■ Russia

  Hostages' families appeal

  Lawyers for the families of people who died in last year's hostage-taking in a Moscow theater on Monday appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of 27 plaintiffs seeking compensation from the Russian authorities. The families are each seeking 50,000 euros (US$56,000) in damages for a breach of their right to justice, rather than for moral damage arising from the crisis itself. The three-day ordeal left 129 hostages dead, out of a total of around 800 -- most of them poisoned by a deadly gas pumped into the theater to subdue the hostage-takers before a pre-dawn raid on Oct. 26.
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