Sat, May 29, 2004 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ 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.
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