■ Bangladesh
Bombs strike movie theaters
Two near-simultaneous bomb explosions outside movie theaters killed a 13-year-old boy and injured seven other people in a northeastern Bangladeshi city, and police said yesterday they were questioning six men
about the attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts Thursday night in Sylhet city, 190km northeast of the capital Dhaka, and police gave no word on a possible motive. The unidentified boy was killed instantly by a bomb outside Rangmahal cinema, said Ali Imam Chowdhury, a senior police official in the area. A second bomb injured at least seven people outside Monika, another movie theater in the same city, Chowdhury said.
■ Japan
Possible West Nile case
A Japanese woman who recently returned from a trip to the US is suspected of having West Nile virus in what would be Japan's first case of the mosquito-borne illness, an official said yesterday. Pre-liminary results from blood tests and a spinal tap on the 42-year-old women, from Japan's southernmost island of Okinawa, were positive for the disease but more precise tests were being carried out at an institute in Tokyo, Health Ministry official Tatsuhiro Isogai said. Test results are expected as early as Monday, he said. Japanese media reported there was a possi-bility that the woman has Japanese encephalitis, which also is spread by mosquitos. Isogai said Japan has had no cases of West Nile, and that even if the woman had the virus, an outbreak here would be very unlikely because
the disease is normally transmitted to humans by mosquitos that have fed on infected birds. "It's very likely that she became infected in the US, not on the plane or in Japan," he said.
■ Vietnam
Fish bomber killed
A man was killed on Tuesday while using explosives to fish in northern Vietnam, a police officer said yesterday. Nguyen Ngoc Hien, 30, and two of his relatives were fishing by throwing homemade mines into a stream near their home, said Dinh Van Chuc, chief of Dan Ha commune police. The 300g mine exploded in Hien's hand when he was about to throw it into the water, the police official from Hoa Binh province, 80km west of Hanoi said. Hien lost his right arm and suffered severe head and chest injuries. He was rushed to hospital by his relatives but died 36 hours later.
■ New Zealand
Drugs in lava lamps
Customs officers discovered crystal methamphetamine with a street value of US$5.75 million in five lava lamps imported from China, the New Zealand Herald Web site reported yesterday. Police said it was thought to be the biggest seizure of illegal drugs ever made in New Zealand. About 9kg of illicit drugs were suspended in the liquid inside the lamps. Police arrested and jailed a 23-year-old Chinese student at the Auckland address the lamps were consigned to.
■ Indonesia
Model banned from prison
An Indonesian model has been banned from visiting the son of former president Suharto in a maximum-security prison after a recent visit turned into a three-day stay, news reports said yesterday. Officials ordered the prison to blacklist Sandy Harun from visiting former billionaire playboy Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy, the Jakarta Post said. Tommy is serving a 15-year sentence in an island prison off Java for graft and arranging the killing of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of corruption in a land deal.
■ Canada
Skating thief on the loose
Police were on the lookout on Wednesday for a rollerblading criminal who robbed a woman while she waited in her car at a fast food restaurant's drive-through lane. The woman told investigators in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby that the man rolled up to her car window on in-line skates late on Tuesday, brandished a knife and demanded cash. She complied and the man skated away with the money. "The female victim clearly remembers that this male smelled strongly of liquor," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also noted in a press release.
■ United Kingdom
Murder sparks sales spree
Sales of a violent video game, linked to the brutal murder of a British teenager, were soaring on Thursday across the UK as buyers rushed to buy their copy before the game is banned. Publicity surrounding the Manhunt game has sparked a consumer frenzy in the UK, with copies flying off the shelves in stores where it is still available. Many multi-media retailers withdrew the game from their stores last week in the wake of media coverage about the murder of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah, killed in February by his friend, Warren Leblanc, 17, who was said to be obsessed with the game.
■ United States
`Lez' in Scrabble shocker
It wasn't a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship in New Orleans. In the final round on Thursday, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word "lez," which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament. Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on cable sports channel ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian. "There are words you just can't show on television," Scrabble Association executive director John Williams said.
■ United States
Hiker drives off bear with ax
Officials closed a back-country area of Denali National Park in Alaska after a hiker told rangers he had driven off an attacking grizzly bear by burying his ice ax in the animal's back. Park Service spokeswoman Kris Fister said Roberto Cataldo, 29, of Modena, Italy, reported the encounter on Monday. A 130km2 tract where Cataldo said he had hiked was closed indefinitely. Fister said much of what he told rangers has not been corroborated, but the park had to take protective measures. A wounded bear "poses a threat to anyone going into the area," she said on Thursday.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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