■ China
'Red tourism' promoted
The government has declared this year the "Year of Red Tourism," promoting visits to historic communist sites to polish the ruling party's image and boost development in rural areas where Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) guerrillas waged their revolution. The National Tourism Administration has issued a list of "30 choice red tourism routes" and "100 classic red tourism sites," the official Xinhua News Agency reported. They include Yan'an, the western hill town where communist forces lived in caves in the early 1940s, according to the tourism agency's Web site. "First, it will guide the public to remember great historical figures and their contributions," said an unnamed administration official quoted by Xinhua.
■ Singapore
Jail time for sexual assaulter
A laundry collector was sentenced to a year in jail and six strokes of the cane after assaulting a Vietnamese national who agreed to have sex with him for 100 Singapore dollars (US$62), news reports said on yesterday. Wee Teck Poh, 46, pleaded guilty to voluntarily causing hurt and theft, The Straits Times said. A district court was told on Thursday that Wee met the 33-year-old woman last Nov. 10 a month after she arrived in Singapore. She accepted his 100 Singapore dollar offer for sex and they went to a hotel, but Wee became violent during their encounter. "When she refused to remain still on the bed, Wee hit her head and slapped her face," the report said. "And when she refused to engage in anal intercourse, he assaulted her sexually."
■ Hong Kong
Dads not interested in kids
Fathers spend their leisure time reading newspapers and watching television rather than playing with their children, according to a survey published yesterday. The time they do spend with their children is largely spent checking homework, according to the study by the Hong Kong Committee on Home-School Cooperation. Mothers interviewed by researchers said they spent more than eight hours a day in the company of their children while fathers spent an average of three and a half hours. More than 500 parents were interviewed for the study.
■ South Korea
Koreas set up phone line
Korean telecommunications companies agreed yesterday to install a phone service between South Korea and an industrial park in the North -- the first direct line between the two sides since they were divided by war in the 1940s. South Korea's main telecommunications provider KT Corp said it had agreed with the North's Korea Post and Telecommunication Corp to charge US$0.40 per minute for fixed-line phone service to Kaesong industrial complex in the North starting May 31.
■ Greece
Plane defect sounds alarm
A small private plane flying in radio silence over Greek airspace set alarm bells ringing with the Greek air force. The plane's pilot that had started its journey in Italy made no radio contact with the airport control tower in Athens. Fearing a terrorist attack, Greek civil aviation authority staff sounded the alarm at air force headquarters in Athens. Two Greek air force F-16 fighter aircraft accompanied the plane and kept it under close observation. The pilots established during their observation that the aircraft's radio equipment was defective.
■ United Kingdom
Blair pressed for answers
A House of Commons committee faulted Prime Minister Tony Blair's government for not saying whether it uses information extracted through torture in other countries. "We find it surprising and unsettling that the government has twice failed to answer our specific question on whether or not the UK receives or acts upon information extracted under torture by a third country," the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in its annual report. Amnesty International shared the committee's concern: "It is difficult to avoid concluding that the Government is chillingly indifferent over the question of using blood-stained information. We have repeatedly emphasized that information extracted by torture is not only morally repugnant but also totally unreliable and effectively useless."
■ Afghanistan
Teen kidnapped
Sixteen-year-old Taj Malook may be killed for a crime he didn't commit. Elders in the village of Ghulang in Khost province have abducted the teenager and threatened his life if they don't find the body of a man allegedly murdered by Taj's father Gull Malook. "If the body doesn't turn up, then we will kill the boy in the coming days," Haji Hazrat Mangal, an elder of the Ayoubi tribe said without setting an exact deadline.
■ Italy
Six illegal Chinese dead
At least six Chinese illegal immigrants died off the south coast of Sicily and three others were still missing after people smugglers threw them off a boat, possibly to evade capture by police. Rescue teams alerted by a passing merchant ship found six survivors struggling in the water nearly 23km south of Sicily. Said one official, "It seems that they were dumped in the water." The survivors said they boarded a boat in Malta for the trip to Italy but were forced to jump into the sea, kilometers from the coast. Rights groups have accused the government of deporting refugees without properly considering appeals for asylum.
■ Italy
Man fined for refusing sex
Seven years of withholding sex went too far in the eyes of an Italian court, which ordered a Sicilian man to pay alimony to his wife for refusing conjugal relations. The man decided to punish his wife after she opposed him in a family argument -- a punishment that lasted seven years. The highest Italian appeals court ruled that "The refusal to have sexual and affectionate relations over seven years with his wife constitutes a very serious offense to her dignity." The court also ordered him to pay alimony to his now former wife and their children, born when their marriage saw happier times, and carry the legal costs of the case. Article 143 of the civil code imposes a duty of moral and material assistance between husband and wife.
■ Angola
Marburg death toll rises
The death toll in an outbreak of the deadly Ebola-like Marburg virus in Angola has risen to 113, with 111 deaths in the northern Uige province and two in the capital, Luanda, health officials said yesterday. "The death toll is 111 ... in the Uige provincial hospital," said Carlos Alberto, a health ministry spokesman in Uige, about 300km north of Luanda. The provincial health director for Luanda, Vita Mvemba, said a 15-year-old boy and an Italian doctor, who had both been to Uige, died on Thursday night in the capital.
■ United States
Woman finds finger in food
A woman bit into a portion of a human finger while eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy's fast food restaurant in San Jose, California, health officials said. Officials said the fingertip was about 4cm long and contained part of a manicured nail. The woman immediately spit it out, Santa Clara County Health Officer Martin Fenstersheib said. "She was a bit grossed out it was described to me, and vomited a number of times," he said. Health investigators seized all the ingredients at the restaurant and are tracing them back to their manufacturer. "All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's International.
■ United States
Tube woman hype continues
The US Supreme Court rejected a plea from the parents of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead "tube woman," to restart her feeding on Thursday, leaving them nearly out of options and time in the seven-year legal fight for their daughter's life. The highest US court turned away Bob and Mary Schindler's request for an emergency order to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube, which was removed six days ago. The court did not explain its decision to stay out of the Florida family drama, which has been at the center of a hyped-up US media frenzy.
■ Canada
Dallaire joins Senate
Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda who tried valiantly to stop the 1994 genocide, was appointed to the Canadian Senate upper chamber on Thursday. The announcement means that Dallaire, 58, is out of the running to become Canada's next governor-general, or acting head of state. Current incumbent Adrienne Clarkson is due to step down in September and Dallaire had often been mentioned as possible successor. Dallaire rose to prominence for his role in trying to prevent the genocide, in which around 800,000 Rwandans died. As the killings started Dallaire battled for a more robust peacekeeping mission with a mandate to stop the killing. But UN Security Council members voted instead to slash his force from 2,500 troops to 450 poorly trained and ill-equipped men.
■ Brazil
Drugs supplied to FARC
Colombian rebels may have acquired government-supplied medical drugs in Brazil, possibly from health workers, to treat a disease plaguing their forces, Brazilian federal police said on Thursday. Nearly 3,000 capsules of the scarce drug Glucantime were recovered after three men thought to be Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas had a boat accident last October in Brazil's far northwest Amazon, federal police said. "We are almost certain they were FARC ... this drug is worth its weight in gold to the guerrillas," said superintendent Sergio Fontes, who is leading the investigation.
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