■ Japan
Ominous metal a puzzle
Thousands of sharp-edged pieces of metal have been found protruding from roadside guardrails around the country and authorities are investigating the bizarre phenomenon, officials and media said yesterday. About 24,000 knife-shaped pieces of metal have been found stuck in guardrails in all of Japan's 47 prefectures in the past week, Kyodo News agency and major newspapers reported, quoting police and local officials. The Land and Transport Ministry's Web site said it will launch a nationwide investigation. The ministry also asked witnesses for information. Police are investigating the case on suspicion of assault and traffic law violations -- while also suspecting vehicle collisions as a possible cause -- one newspaper said.
■ Pakistan
Bomb plotter get death
A court gave the death sentence yesterday to a man for masterminding suicide bomb attacks on Shiite mosques in May last year that killed 45 and wounded 129 others. Gul Hassan was accused of organizing the May 7 and May 31 attacks on the mosques in Karachi in which both the suspected bombers, Ali Haider and Akbar Niazi, were killed. Hassan's lawyer said he would appeal against the decision.
■ Afghanistan
US troops killed in blast
A bomb exploded next to a US military convoy in eastern Paktika Province, killing two US troops and wounding a third, the military said in a statement yesterday. An Afghan interpreter who was in an armored vehicle with the victims was also wounded in the attack on Friday in Urgun district, it said. The wounded were evacuated by helicopter to a US base for treatment, the statement said.
■ North Korea
Envoy helps poor farmers
Britain's ambassador to North Korea planted rice on a farm, the official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday. Ambassador David Arthur Slinn and embassy officials "plucked and transplanted rice seedlings" on Friday to help farmers in Paeksong, north of Pyongyang. The World Food Program this week said the North is sending millions of people to work on farms each weekend, indicating the risk of famine is particularly high this year.
■ Nepal
Protesting attorneys beaten
Police beat lawyers with bamboo batons yesterday when 1,500 attorneys marched through the center of Kathmandu to demand the restoration of civil liberties after the king took over the government in February, the country's bar association said. The lawyers' march violated a government ban on protests in the area. When the group tried to march toward the royal palace, police blocked them and a few were clubbed in a scuffle, the president of the Nepal Bar Association said. Some received bruises and minor cuts, but there were no serious injuries, he said.
■ Cambodia
Captured geckos freed
Authorities have released about 380 gecko lizards back into the wild near Angkor Wat after rescuing them from a man who planned to sell them in Thailand as an ingredient for herbal wine and special dishes, a newspaper reported yesterday. Wildlife officials seized the lizards, a protected species, from a man in Siem Reap province earlier this week, a provincial deputy forestry chief, was quoted as saying by the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper.
■ Gaza Strip
Gunmen set up road block
Gunmen from the mainstream Fatah faction, demanding jobs in the Palestinian police force, blocked a Gaza road to the Egyptian border yesterday and detained a Palestinian diplomat hoping to cross. Shaker Abu Eida, the Palestinian ambassador to North Korea, told reporters by telephone he had not been harmed and that he would be allowed to return to Gaza City if he wished. The 35 gunmen, many of them masked, stopped the envoy as he made his way to the Rafah border terminal and said he and any other Palestinian officials would not be able to enter Egypt until their demands were met. "He is our guest and we have taken his diplomatic passport," one of the gunmen said. "Nobody from the Palestinian Authority will travel to Egypt today."
■ Brazil
Illegal loggers nabbed
The government mounted its biggest swoop against environmental criminals this week as 85 people, including 48 officials, were arrested and accused of allowing the illegal extraction of enough Amazon timber to fill 66,000 giant logging trucks. Those arrested included a forestry director with the national environmental agency and the environment secretary of the Mato Grosso, a state whose government has been accused of turning a blind eye to environmental devastation to feed a boom in soya farming and cattle ranching.
■ Norway
Millions given to royals
Taxpayers pay most in Scandinavia for the upkeep of their royal family, which is nearly twice as costly as that of neighboring Denmark, the business paper Finansavisen said yesterday. While Denmark's Queen Margrethe had to make do with a modest 7.9 million euros (US$9.7 million) contribution from the state last year, Norway's royals picked up 14 million euros. In addition, Norway's King Harald receives 937,000 euros in personal maintenance plus free protection and other perks, the paper said. Sweden's King Carl Gustaf got 10.5 million euros last year to make ends meet.
■ United States
Hostage taker gets life
An inmate who took two prison guards hostage in one of the longest prison standoffs in American history was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences. Ricky Wassenaar, 42, was convicted last month on 19 charges including kidnapping, sexual assault and aggravated assault for his role in last year's 15-day hostage standoff at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis. He was sentenced Friday. Wassenaar, who acted as his own attorney, was acquitted on one count of attempted second-degree murder. After the verdicts were read, Wassenaar repeatedly said, "worst verdicts I ever heard."
■ Germany
New Munch work found
An unknown painting by Edvard Munch found hidden behind another canvas at a German museum has been put on display. The picture, unveiled Friday, shows three mask-like faces looking down toward a naked, seated girl. It was found in the Kunsthalle, the main art museum in the northern city of Bremen. Restorers discovered it hidden on a second canvas behind the museum's only Munch work, "The Dead Mother," said director Wulf Herzogenrath. The museum has christened the find "Girl and Three Men's Heads" and dated it 1898.
■ United States
Al-Jazeera angers Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Arab news channel Al-Jazeera was encouraging Islamic militant groups by broadcasting beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq. "If anyone lived in the Middle East and watched a network like the Al-Jazeera day after day after day, even if he was an American, he would start waking up and asking what's wrong. But America is not wrong. It's the people who are going on television chopping off people's heads, that is wrong," he said. "And television networks that carry it and promote it and jump on the spark every time there is a terrorist act are promoting the acts," he told a security conference in Singapore. The station denies it is helping the militants' cause.
■ Austria
Mom charged in murders
Police on Friday found the bodies of four newborns, two hidden in a freezer and two encased in cement in garden sheds, and the mother now faces quadruple murder charges. The mother, 32, and her live-in boyfriend were arrested in the city of Graz after a tenant in her house discovered a dead baby inside a communal freezer. The woman had confessed to killing the babies, but she claimed she never noticed that she was pregnant until she gave birth in the bathtub and was unsure how the babies died because she was in "such a shock that she does not know what happened." Her lover claimed claimed the woman had for long periods refused to let him touch her or to undress in front of him.
■ United Kingdom
Girl, 12, is arrested
A 12-year-old girl was charged with seriously harming a five-year-old boy who was found alone earlier this week with ligature-type marks around his neck. The girl was charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on Anthony Hinchliffe and with attempting to pervert the course of justice in Dewsbury, west Yorkshire. She was one of two girls and three boys who were arrested in connection with the incident, but the four others were freed while she was re-arrested and kept in custody. Hinchliffe may have sustained his injuries through an attempted hanging.
■ Norway
Suspected art thief arrested
Police have arrested a fifth suspect in the theft of Edvard Munch's masterpieces The Scream and Madonna, and said a slew of recent tips from the public may be bringing them closer to recovering the priceless paintings. A man in his 20s was arrested in Oslo, and is suspected of being one of three armed robbers who snatched the paintings from an Oslo museum in a brazen daytime raid last August. Police have received dozens of recent tips about where the paintings may be hidden, after the city of Oslo on Wednesday offered a reward of 2 million kroner (US$310,000) for the return of the paintings.
■ West Bank
Elections to be delayed
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to delay upcoming parliamentary elections by several months, a move that would give him additional time to fend off a challenge by the Islamic group Hamas. The date would probably be pushed back to November from the current July 17 schedule, enabling Abbas to take steps to strengthen the ruling Fatah party against Hamas. The Islamic group has emerged as a formidable rival in local Palestinian elections in recent months, indicating a strong performance in the national vote. Abbas has also been squabbling with legislators over a proposed election law, whether to compete at national or district levels.
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In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
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