■ Hong Kong
Cruise passenger kills self
A passenger has jumped to his death from a luxury cruise ship sailing into Hong Kong, police said yesterday. The 54-year-old man left his shoes and a suicide note on the deck of the Star Pisces ship at 4am Tuesday before leaping overboard 40km southeast of Hong Kong. A crew member found the shoes and the note and alerted the captain. An air and sea search was mounted but no trace of the man was found, a police spokesman said.
■ Thailand
Sex tape fight ends in arrest
Thai police arrested a German national at Pattaya beach resort after the 53-year-old man refused to hand over a home-made sex tape to an irate bar hostess, media reports said yesterday. Pattaya bar hostess Ratchanok Sanehchan and her friend Samart Sanram on Tuesday attempted to get Friedrich Fischer to return a video he had taken of himself and Ratchanok having sex six months ago, but the German refused to hand over the tape, prompting a scuffle, said the Thai Rath newspaper. Police, who were called to the scene after Samart punched Fischer, arrested Samart for assault and Fischer for producing pornographic pictures for commercial purposes.
■ Indonesia
Refugees sew mouths shut
Afghan asylum seekers who are on hunger strike in Indonesia to protest their rejection as refugees continued to sew their mouths shut yesterday, with almost half of a group of 40 strikers having already stitched their lips together. Aid workers monitoring the condition of the would-be refugees, who were on strike at a camp in Bogor, some 20km south of Jakarta, said the number of strikers having sew their mouths had increased to 18.
■ Philippines
Wedding party goes bad
Filipino police have arrested four people for murdering a wedding guest, roasting and eating parts of the body and serving some of the remains at the reception, they said Wednesday. Narra town police chief Senior Superintendent Perla Bacuel said they were looking into the possibility that some of the suspects may have been involved in other disappearances. Farm laborer Eladio Baule, his son Gerard Baule and nephews Sabtuary Pequi and Johnny Buyot allegedly killed the victim, Benjie Ganay, on July 17 after Ganay accidentally touched Eladio Baule's daughter's bottom during her wedding party, Bacuel said. The four suspects, who were drunk at the time, then set fire to Ganay's body and Bacuel said the aroma of roasting flesh may have tempted the group to eat parts of the burnt body. The father and son then allegedly served some of the roasted flesh to other drinkers at the wedding party.
■ India
Baby sold to feed family
A starving Indian sari weaver sold his four-month-old son for 500 rupees (US$11) so the rest of his family could eat, it was reported yesterday. The Benarasi silk sari from the northern Indian city of Varanasi is famous all over the world for its intricate embroidery. But few know that many of the sari weavers are starving to death, unable to compete with the flood of cheaper Chinese silks. Bansaraj Ram, 45, has four sons between the ages of four and 10 from his first wife and a four-month-old baby from his second. The infant was constantly unwell and Ram could no longer afford medical care, a newspaper reported.
■ Italy
Faulty fax leaks Blair plans
A malfunctioning police fax machine in the Tuscan town of Siena was blamed on Tuesday for sending out the travel schedule of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's family holiday in Italy to the media. Police said the leak occurred because the machine automatically circulated the fax to its usual mailing list of local Italian media organizations instead of a list of local police stations. The Siena police were quick to insist that the distribution of the five-page fax, confirming the changed dates and logistical and security details of the family's trips to Tuscany and Sardinia at the end of this week, did not jeopardize the Blairs' holiday plans.
■ Dominican Republic
Missing migrants found
After more than a week at sea, 33 missing migrants were found alive on Tuesday, but dozens of others thought to have been aboard the same boat were still missing and presumed dead, according to US coast guard and Dominican officials. The boat was reportedly carrying about 78 people, said Lieutenant Eric Willis, a spokesman for the US Coast Guard. The group was found outside Nagua, a poor fishing village on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. The migrants went missing on July 29, when they left the Dominican Republic's northeastern coast en route to the nearby US territory of Puerto Rico.
■ South Africa
Mutilated boy dies
A South African boy has died more than a week after assailants hacked off his hand, ear and penis in a savage attack police suspect may be linked to the "muti" trade in body parts for witchcraft. Ten-year-old Sello Chokoe was searching for stray livestock in hills near his home in the northern Limpopo province when his attackers struck, slashing off parts of his body and leaving him for dead, police said after the attack late last month. "Muti" murders, to obtain body parts for traditional cures and spells, happen on a regular basis in South Africa and often go unreported, police say.
■ Mexico
Migrants die in desert heat
A dozen Mexican migrants have perished in the brutal heat of the Arizona desert in recent days, authorities said on Tuesday. The US Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona, said five men died of heat-related causes on Sunday in the remote Gila Bend sector of the desert, which had previously been regarded as too dangerous to cross. "The five people in that group died because the smugglers chose a route where nobody goes because it is just too dangerous," Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said. Another seven illegal migrants have died in various incidents since the end of July.
■ United States
Storms menace Jamaica, US
Tropical Storm Charley powered toward Jamaica and other Caribbean islands as it rapidly gained strength after forming on Tuesday, while the smaller Tropical Storm Bonnie made a beeline for the Florida panhandle. Jamaica and the Cayman Islands offshore banking center issued hurricane watches and Haiti issued a tropical storm warning as Charley sprinted west-northwestwards with winds of 105kph. Its trajectory was predicted to take it over or near Jamaica yesterday, then the Cayman Islands before heading to Cuba and Florida, the US National Hurricane Center said. Bonnie disrupted gas supplies in the Gulf of Mexico even as it weakened marginally on its way toward Florida.
■ Egypt
Web site shows beheading
An Islamist Web site carried a videotape on Tuesday that purported to show the beheading by a militant group in Iraq of a man identified as an "Egyptian spy" working for US forces. The tape, purportedly made by the Tawhid and Jihad Group of al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, showed the Egyptian giving his name as Mohammed Mutawalli and saying he had helped US forces pick targets for their attacks on insurgents. Masked men were then seen to push him to the ground and decapitate him with a knife. His severed head was later held up for the camera. Karim Sharaf, the acting head of the Egyptian interests section in Baghdad, said he had no information about Mutawalli's kidnapping, Egypt's Middle East News Agency reported.
■ The Netherlands
Coffee ad gets flak
The Netherlands is famed for its tolerant attitude toward drugs, but some Dutch say a commercial for a new iced cappuccino drink glorifies cocaine use and has gone too far. The commercial features three young women in bikinis gathered around a silver tray, with straws in their hands. They slurp up small, thin "lines" of the drink from the tray, and are then shown with expressions of ecstasy spreading across their faces. The drink, called "Caffiato," targets young adults with the slogan "Caffiato: Too Cool for You?" Douwe Egberts, the company which makes Caffiato, said the reference to cocaine was intentional, but "done with a wink."
■ United States
Video cameraman arrested
Federal authorities on Tuesday took custody of a Pakistani man who had videotape footage of landmark buildings, dams and transit systems throughout the southeastern US. Buildings included the Bank of America and Wachovia bank -- two of the largest financial institutions in the country -- in Charlotte, as well as the Texas state Capitol, the Texas governor's mansion and key business and financial buildings in Dallas, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, and New Orleans. After police questioning Akhtar was handed over to immigration agents, who found that in 1998 a New York City immigration court ordered him to leave the country.
■ United Kingdom
Lifer wins lottery
A rapist and serial sex attacker serving life in a British prison has won ?7 million (US$12.8 million) in the country's National Lottery, a report said on Tuesday. Iorworth Hoare, 52, was on temporary weekend release at a bail hostel when his lucky numbers came up in Saturday's draw, the Sun newspaper reported. Before the huge win, Hoare -- who was jailed for life in 1989 -- was considered a low-security detainee and was allowed to spend weekends away. However, now that he was rich, Hoare had been moved to a higher-security jail and refused leave, the Sun reported.
■ Germany
Al-Qaeda captive cleared
A key al-Qaeda captive in US custody told interrogators that a Moroccan on trial for helping the Hamburg-based Sept. 11 suicide pilots had no knowledge of the plot, according to a summary read out in a Hamburg court yesterday. Mounir el Motassadeq, accused of providing logistical help to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell that included hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan el-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, is being retried after having his conviction thrown out in March by an appeals court.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
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