■ Sri Lanka
Peace talks to continue
Peace talks between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan government are likely to resume in August, after President Chandrika Kumaratunga agreed to discuss the guerrillas' proposal for self-rule, a major Tamil political alliance said yesterday. The rebel proposal has been a major stumbling block in restarting talks on ending Sri Lanka's 20-year civil war. Negotiations have been stalled since April last year. Kumaratunga met with members of the Tamil alliance on Thursday to discuss how to revive peace talks with the Tigers.
■ India
Thieves' school raided
Delhi police busted a gang of thieves last week and unwittingly unearthed a "school" which taught young boys the art of picking pockets and snatching mobile phones, a report said yesterday. Located in south Delhi, the school was run by two Sri Lankans who had arrived in the Indian capital 20 years ago, the Hindustan Times reported. The school for boys aged 11 to 15 had been operating for two years and was run like other educational institutions, complete with strict rules. A student would start by stealing vegetables from shops and graduate to bag lifting and mobile snatching.
■ Australia
Mouse-eating condemned
A competition at a pub where contestants chewed live mice in order to win a holiday was condemned as outrageous cruelty by an animal welfare group yesterday. The RSPCA said it would seek the maximum penalty against the two participants in the competition at the Brisbane pub where the incident occurred. RSPCA chief inspector Byron Hall said patrons were invited to put a mouse in their mouth and bite off its tail to win a US$500 holiday. Two men took up the dare and after they bit off the mice tails the compere egged them on by allegedly saying "the first one to eat it wins." Hall said one of the men then chewed up his mouse and spat it out onto the hotel floor.
■ China
Waiters bill for cellphones
A pair of Shanghai waiters were arrested after taking off with a customer's credit card and using it to buy cellphones while he sat in their restaurant, the Shanghai Daily reported yesterday. The diner, identified only by his surname, Zhu, had paid for lunch and was waiting for a receipt when the credit card company called. Had he just spent 25,000 yuan (US$3,000) on new cellphones? Waiters Ling Hong and Wang Luole were arrested soon afterward and charged with theft. They had told Zhu there was a problem with his invoice and asked him to wait for a few minutes, then took the card to a nearby electronics mart.
■ United States
Jackson: I was used
US singer Janet Jackson said the outrage she provoked by baring her breast on television was used politically to distract people from the occupation of Iraq. Jackson spoke to the press in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. Jackson made headlines in January after singer Justin Timberlake tore off part of her top on the Super Bowl show, exposing one of her breasts. Artists have always done provocative things, Jackson said, adding that she felt used and that she had been "the perfect vehicle" for averting public attention from political questions such as the war.
■ Russia
6 acquitted in murder
A military court Thursday acquitted six defendants in the 1994 killing of an investigative journalist who had uncovered graft in the Russian armed forces. The suspects, mostly former military officers, were already acquitted in the killing of Dmitri Kholodov by a court in 2002, but the case was retried on appeal from prosecutors and the victim's family. Kholodov, who was 27, died after opening a booby-trapped briefcase he had picked up on an anonymous tip.
■ Australia
Ad-muting TV service seen
Viewers could soon be watching advertisement-free commercial television for just a few dollars a week, an Australian com-puter whiz said yesterday. Software developer Peter Vogel said his Intelligent Content Engine can turn down the volume of commercials or even blank the screen when they are on. The inventor expects his service, delivered by a pri-vate digital radio network, to be on many sets when Australia switches from analogue to digital tele-vision in 2008. "I've got it set so it doesn't actually mute the commercials complete-ly, but turns it down to about a quarter," Vogel said.
■ United States
Eternal messages for sale
Forget Internet postings, mobile phone calls, greeting cards and newspaper ads. There's a new way to get your personal message to the whole universe -- and perhaps even the afterworld -- for less than US$25. Through radio waves that carry voice messages to outer space, a Pennsylvania company is enabling people to launch belated goodbyes intended for lost loved ones or words of comfort to missing pets. Pennsylvania-based Endless Echoes, began operation this month to allow people to record a one-minute message to be sent to space on radio waves.
■ United Kingdom
Buzzard terrorizes road
An angry buzzard is terrorizing an English country road by attacking cyclists, newspapers reported yesterday. Paul Taylor, 71, said the bird used its beak and claws to rip a three-inch gash in his head as he cycled in Devon. "I thought at first it was a lorry passing and the wing mirror had somehow caught my head," he told the Daily Mail. "Then I saw the buzzard swooping in front of me." Last weekend 22 cyclists suffered head injuries or had gouges taken out of their helmets by the same bird. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds suggested the bird was probably nesting nearby and was defending its chicks. "We would suggest that people avoid the road for a few weeks, but if cyclists do want to use it we would advise them to paint a pair of eyes on their helmets," a spokeswoman said.
■ Northern Ireland
Bombing follows voting
Police removing ballot boxes from polling stations were pelted with petrol bombs during late-night disturbances in Northern Ireland's second city, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The violence broke out in a number of districts in Londonderry as police were carrying ballot boxes and escorting electoral officers out of polling stations after voting ended in European Parliamentary elections on Thursday night. "Overall it is estimated up to 50 petrol bombs and 16 paint bombs were thrown during the course of the night," the spokeswoman said. In one incident, a man in the crowd was set alight after being hit by a petrol bomb. He left the scene before an ambulance arrived, the spokeswoman said.
■ Iraq
Sabotage foiled
US soldiers have foiled a sabotage attempt against Iraq's key oil sector following three successful attacks earlier in the week, the US military said yesterday. Troops in the town of Qayyarah were alerted to a bomb at a nearby refinery by a local resident, the army said. "Soldiers quickly discovered the device, which was connected to a timer, and notified the explosive ordnance disposal team, who destroyed the device." Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Thursday that the country had lost more than US$200 million over the past seven months due to attacks on its pipeline network.
■ United States
Abuse ad to show on Arab TV
American spiritual leaders from various faiths condemn the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in a 30-second advertisement to be broadcast on the Arabic television networks al Jazeera and al Arabiya. "The impetus for this ad was from the deep sense of moral regret that we were hearing from people of faith across the country," said Tom Perriello, co-director of FaithfulAmerica.org, a month-old nonprofit advocacy group. "We believe that the abuses are both sinful and systematic and that the moral damage of this around the world will last a long time," he said. FaithfulAmerica.org -- raised about US$36,000 from more than 1,000 donors for the ad.
■ United States
Libel victory for pledge man
A man who challenged the reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance in court won a US$1 million judgment Thursday against a minister who libeled him in an article on the Internet. Michael Newdow said he does not expect to receive any money from the Reverend Austin Miles. In 2002, Newdow won a suit on behalf of his daughter claiming that it was unconstitutional to force public school students to recite the pledge because of the phrase "under God." In an Internet posting shortly after the ruling, Miles accused Newdow of perjury, saying he lied about his daughter suffering "emotional damage" because of not reciting the pledge at school.
■ France
Dogs may sniff airport site
Nearly three weeks after a Paris airport terminal collapsed, killing at least four people, the judge investigating the accident may order sniffer dogs to the site to see if more bodies are hidden in the debris, the daily France Soir reported yesterday. According to the newspaper, the unusual amount of luggage that remained unclaimed on the day of the accident, May 23, at Charles de Gaulle Airport has led the judge, Roger Le Loire, and police investigators to harbor doubts that the official death toll is accurate. "Six or seven people could be missing," a source said.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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