■ South Korea
Stolen assets recovered
South Korean prosecutors said yesterday they had seized more than US$7 million from ex-president Roh Tae-woo in a continued drive to recover his hidden illegal assets. Prosecutors confiscated a bank account containing 7.4 billion won (US$7.4 million) which Roh had secretly kept under a false name over the past 12 years, prosecution spokesman Chung Dong-min said. Roh served as president from 1988 to 1993. He was later prosecuted for corruption, and in 1997 was ordered by the supreme court to repay 262 billion won in illegal funds amassed while in office. Roh, 73, had declared himself bankrupt.
■ Thailand
Man found eating corpse
A 50-year-old ex-convict found eating a partially cremated corpse in northeastern Thailand was arrested but freed without charge because police could not find a law against cannibalism, police said yesterday. Sakorn Piengphon was arrested and questioned after he was found two weeks ago eating the body of Kote Nonthasorn, who had been cremated but whose body had not completely burned, police Major Suphakorn Hiengboon said. But because Thailand has no law specifically banning cannibalism, Suphakorn said the man was released.
■ Japan
Five found dead in car
Five people were found dead in a car in western Japan yesterday in what is suspected to be the latest in a rash of group suicides using antiquated charcoal burners, police said. The bodies of four young men and one woman were found around 8:20am in a car parked at a roadside in Shiga prefecture. Four charcoal burners were also found inside the vehicle, whose doors were sealed with adhesive tape, a police spokesman said. "Autopsies are taking place now. We suspect it was a group suicide. Though we have not found a suicide note, there is nothing indicating a criminal element in this," he said.
■ North Korea
Bird flu expert to offer aid
A UN veterinary expert has been sent to North Korea to assess a bird flu outbreak there and offer assistance in trying to prevent the spread of the virus, the world body's agricultural agency said yesterday. North Korea acknowledged an outbreak of bird flu for the first time on Sunday, saying hundreds of thousands of chickens were killed to prevent its spread, but no humans have caught the disease. It didn't give other details, including the strain of the disease. Authorities in North Korea, have informed the UN Food and Agriculture Organization about bird flu outbreaks on two or three farms, the agency said in a statement released in Bangkok.
■ China
Web game trial begins
An online game player has been charged with killing a competitor in a dispute over a virtual weapon used in the fantasy game, a news report said yesterday. Qiu Chengwei, 41, went on trial Tuesday in a Shanghai court on charges that he stabbed to death Zhu Caoyuan, a fellow player of a popular game called Legend of Mir III, the China Daily newspaper said. If convicted, Qiu could face a possible death sentence, the report said. Qiu confronted Zhu after learning that he sold the virtual weapon lent to him by Qiu to another player, the newspaper said. It said Qiu reported the loss of the "Dragon Saber" to police but they said it wasn't real property protected by the law.
■ United States
Fetus stolen from exhibit
Two women stole a preserved 13-week-old fetus from an acclaimed exhibit at the California Science Center. The fetus, its tissues infused with polymers in a process called plastination to prevent decay indefinitely, was part of a traveling display, Body Worlds 2. A surveillance camera captured the women removing the fetus from an unlocked display case during the round-the-clock closing weekend of the exhibit. Other people were inside the room at the time but they may not have been aware of the theft, police said.
■ Spain
Seduction class offered
A university on the island of Tenerife will stage a workshop on how to seduce potential sexual partners. The workshop titled "The pleasure of seduction" will form part of a master's degree program in sexual education and therapy at La Laguna University. The course involves "making an adequate display of one's virtues and assuming what we cannot change," program director Fernando Barragan said. The workshop will teach how to make use of one's looks and gestures through techniques including role play, group discussion and dance.
■ France
Terrorism suspects on trial
Four suspected Islamist radicals went on trial in a Paris court Tuesday for allegedly helping the men who killed Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. French prosecutors believe the four men helped the two Tunisians traveling with fake Belgian passports. Posing as journalists, they detonated a bomb hidden in a camera on Sept. 9, 2001, killing Masood.
■ France
Marriage law changed
The parliament's upper house Tuesday backed a proposal to raise the minimum age at which women may marry from 15 to 18, amending a century-old law that experts say encourages the misery of arranged marriages. "As it stands, French law on this point is archaic in the extreme," said Joelle Garriaud-Maylam, who submitted the bill. "It is discriminatory, but above all it represents a real danger for young girls who see marriages imposed on them that they are unable to challenge." According to article 144 of France's civil or Napoleonic code, "The man who is not yet attained the age of 18, and the woman who is not yet 15, may not enter into wedlock." Civil rights lawyers in France have argued that its civil code breached the UN convention on the rights of the child.
■ United States
Used car yields cocaine
A reliable family car suddenly developed a tendency to decelerate, leading to the discovery that it had been driven for years with US$40,000 worth of cocaine stashed in the gas tank. A family had bought the 1996 Toyota Camry from a used car lot in 1997. "They hadn't had any major mechanical difficulties with it until last week," the sheriff's spokesman James Hartman said. When the car started losing speed, it was taken to a mechanic, who discovered two bricks of cocaine wrapped around the vehicle's fuel line. The wrapping had apparently come loose. The car's owners are not involved in drug trafficking, Hartman said. Their names were withheld in case the owners of the stash come looking for them. "Our investigators will now attempt to work backward and see where that vehicle originated," Hartman said.
■ Vatican City
Pope may get feeding tube
Pope John Paul II may have to return to the hospital to have a feeding tube inserted since he is having trouble swallowing with the breathing tube that was inserted last month, an Italian news agency reported. News agencies stressed on Tuesday that no decision had been made and that the insertion of a feeding tube was a hypothesis that was being considered to help the pope improve his nutrition and regain his strength. Agencies said the pope's doctors were considering the procedure, which involves inserting a feeding tube through the throat and into the stomach.
■ United States
Boy Scouts man charged
A longtime Boy Scouts of America official who directed a national task force to protect children from sexual abuse has been charged in Dallas with possession and distribution of child pornography. Douglas Sovereign Smith, 61, was accused of receiving images over the Internet in February of children engaging in oral sex, intercourse and other sexually explicit conduct. According to court documents, Smith possessed and distributed computer images of children engaged in "sexually explicit conduct, including the lascivious exhibition of the genitals, oral-genital intercourse and genital-genital intercourse."
■ United Kingdom
Brits bid on balcony views
Bidding is intensifying, albeit slowly, on the Internet for a clear balcony view on the wedding of Prince Charles to his longtime partner Camilla Parker Bowles. Real-estate agency Nelson Bakewell put the corner balcony in Windsor, west of London, up for auction on eBay last Friday with a starting bid of just ?1 (US$1.88). By 9:30am yesterday the bidding had gone up to ?26, but a higher price is expected before the auction winds up tomorrow -- exactly one week before the nuptials. "The package includes a private room that can accommodate up to 20 people. The balconies [sic] provide excellent views to The Guildhall where the royal couple will be married," said the description on eBay (www.ebay.co.uk). "To enhance your viewing experience, we advise that you may want to bring binoculars," it said.
■ United States
O.J. Simpson lawyer dies
Johnnie Cochran, the charismatic attorney famed for his successful defense of football star O.J. Simpson on murder charges, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles of a brain tumor, a representative said. Cochran, 67, was a longtime crusader against police abuses, often in cases involving black clients. He is best known for his role in the controversial acquittal for Simpson on murder charges in 1995. Simpson was accused in the June 12, 1994, stabbing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
■ United States
Chemical arms destroyed
The Pine Bluff Arsenal began destroying its stockpile of 3,850 tons of chemical weapons, incinerating two rockets laced with sarin nerve gas. ``We are making chemical weapons history by destroying weapons stored here more than 60 years,'' Dale Ormond, deputy assistant secretary of the US Army, said on Tuesday. Another 28 rockets were scheduled to be destroyed yesterday. Twelve percent of the US' chemical weapons are stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, and the military plans to incinerate all of them by 2010.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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