■ Shanghai
Tibetan confesses to blast
A Tibetan man has been detained in connection with an explosion near a military communications station outside the region's capital of Lhasa, a police official and a US-based broadcaster said yesterday. Penpa, who like many Tibetans uses only one name, confessed to setting off the May 20 blast, Radio Free Asia reported. It gave no motive, but a police official said the explosion was believed to have been set off by villagers trying to scavenge cables to sell as scrap. Such acts often are intended as protests against Chinese rule in Tibet. RFA didn't say whether the blast caused injuries or damage.
■ Hong Kong
Blackmail maids jailed
Two Indonesian maids who tied up an employment agent and snapped nude photographs of her in a blackmail plot have been jailed for more than two years, a newspaper reported yesterday. The maids stormed into the agent's office on Feb. 8 demanding a refund of money they had paid to get jobs in South Korea, but when the woman refused they attacked her, according to the South China Morning Post. They bound and gagged the agent, stripped off her clothes and took 19 nude photographs that they threatened to publish in a magazine if the agent did not repay the HK$22,600 (US$2,900) they had handed over in job-seeking fees, the Post said.
■ Philippines
Rights abuses worsening
Human rights abuses in the Philippines have escalated amid the government's intensified crackdown on suspected terrorists as well as Moslem and communist insurgents, Amnesty International said in a report released on Friday. The international human rights watchdog said arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions and "disappearances" were reported as government security forces hunted down suspected Islamic terrorists. In its 2004 report, Amnesty International said procedural weaknesses in the country's criminal justice system, such as unlawful arrests and lack of access to lawyers during extended custodial investigations, have facilitated torture and ill-treatment of suspects.
■ Vietnam
Puffer fish claim three lives
Three fisherman died in Vietnam after eating badly prepared puffer fish, a local official said yesterday. The three men caught the puffer fish on Wednesday and cooked it that evening with rice soup. They knew it was a puffer fish, but they ignored the danger, the official said. Thirty minutes after eating the fish, the three men developed headaches and began vomiting.
■ Australia
ASIO lashes out at Rand
Australia's top spy lashed out yesterday at a US think tank over claims that a turf war between Australian intelligence agencies prevented them from foreseeing the 2002
Bali bombing. Dennis Richardson, head of
the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), told a parliamentary hearing that the Rand Corporation report was sloppy and had damaged his agency. The Rand Corporation said ASIO had failed to share critical intelligence with the Australian Federal Police out of jealousy over the rival agency's anti-terror role. The report said the infighting resulted in ASIO disregarding information which could have prevented the bombing of a nightclub strip that killed 202 people, 88 of whom were Australian.
■ Jamaica
Fugitive arrested
Jamaican authorities have arrested the island's most wanted fugitive, a 40-year-old man investigators have linked to at least eight murders, police said on Thursday. Joel Andem, wanted by police in connection with murder, rape, extortion, kidnapping and robbery, was arrested early on Wednesday in Clarksonville, St. Ann, a remote rural village near the country's interior. Andem, who had been on the run
for four years, did not resist police who found him after months of investigating.
■ Thailand
Soldier killed by gunmen
A Thai soldier was shot dead yesterday morning
by three gunmen riding on motorcycles in Thailand's violence-wracked southern Pattani province. Corporal 1st Class Arom Srisuk, 50, was shot by the gunmen in front of Kanchanaphisek College in Nong Chik district after dropping his wife off for work at the college. Police said Arom died instantly from shots fired by an HK rifle and several 9mm bullets were found at the scene.
■ New Zealand
Toy dinosaur gains fame
A pink dinosaur that suddenly appeared on a volcanic island off New Zealand has become a global celebrity. Traffic on New Zealand's Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) Web site has averaged 700 hits per minute since news broke
a week ago that a dinosaur had mysteriously appeared
in front of a digital camera installed in the crater of the volcano on White Island, east of Auckland. "No one could have predicted that the appearance of a small plastic toy on a remote New Zealand island would have made such a splash internationally," GNS spokesman John Callan said yesterday. "In terms of outreach, Dino has been brilliant. His flair for promoting earth sciences
has amazed us."
■ Cambodia
Anti-theft tool kills owner
A man died after being electrocuted by a cage he designed and built himself to stop thieves from stealing his chickens after he forgot to turn the power off, police said yesterday. Bun Heang, 53, an official at the ministry of industry, mines and energy, died instantly on Thursday after he touched the electrified cage at his home on Phnom Penh's outskirts, Russey Keo district police chief Ly
Lay said. "He turned on the electric power to the cage every night to prevent his chickens and other belongings from being stolen, but forgot to turn off the switch when he got up in the morning," Ly Lay said. "Then he went to see his chickens in their cage and was electrocuted," he said.
■ Montenegro
Editor killed
The editor-in-chief of the daily Dan was shot and died of his wounds early on Friday, media in Montenegro reported. Unknown gunmen shot at Dusko Jovanovic from a car as he was leaving his office around midnight, the newspaper Vijesti said. He died of his wounds in hospital early yesterday. The motive for the killing was not immediately known. Dan is close to the opposition party in Montenegro, the Socialist People's Party which was an ally of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, now on trial in the UN war crimes court.
■ United States
Two killed over crack
A man was arrested and charged with strangling his aunt with a phone cord and stabbing her boyfriend to death because she wouldn't give him US$20 to buy crack cocaine, police said. Dwayne Kirk, 43, of Pittsburgh, was charged Thursday with criminal homicide in the May 10 deaths of Maryetta Cohen, 59, and William Wade, 65. Police also have charged Kirk's neighbor William Kenley, 49, with homicide in the slayings, alleging that he acted as a lookout. Police said they linked him to the slayings through an inmate at the Allegheny County Jail who said he overhead Kirk telling Kenley to stay quiet when they were jailed on other charges.
■ United States
Children decapitated
A woman arrived home to find a child decapitated and two others with their heads partially cut off in a Baltimore apartment on Thursday evening, police said. Police said the victims were two 9-year-old girls and a 10-year-old boy. One child was fully decapitated and two were partially decapitated, according to reports. Police said at least two of the children were related. "I've been around for about 35 years ... I've not seen anything as gruesome as this," Deputy Police Commissioner Kenneth Blackwell said. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, who visited the scene, called it a "brutal, tragic, unfathomably sad murder of three young children." Blackwell said a "person of interest" was being questioned in the case.
■ France
D-Day Zippo launched
The world-famous Zippo lighter arrived in Europe on D-Day, and 60 years on the US company is bringing out a special edition of the GI's friend complete with a memorial vial of sand from Omaha beach. Created in 1932 with its characteristic flip-top lid, the Zippo was an essential part of the American soldiers' kit, used for reading maps, lighting explosives, warming chow -- and occasionally stopping bullets. "We are going to bring out a numbered series of 10,000 lighters identical to the ones used in 1944. It's a homage we want to make to the sacrifices made in the landings," said Zippo spokesman Didier Karoubi.
■ Great Britain
Big-bottomed ants a hit
A British firm specializing in exotic food will sell half a tonne of big-bottomed, toasted Colombian ants -- best harvested in cemeteries -- to Europe, Australia and the US, after they became the rage in Britain. Edible Limited has inserted its latest gourmet item, Giant Toasted Ants, in its catalogue next to such scrumptious entries as chocolate covered crickets and scorpion potatoes. Todd Dalton, the 29-year-old British entrepreneur behind the ambitious culinary company, said he has just signed a three-year contract with a Colombian firm to export 500kg of the large Colombian ants.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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