■ Thailand
Joint visa to be offered
A single tourist visa for both Thailand and Cambodia in hopes of boosting tourism in Southeast Asia. Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam will join the scheme once Thailand and Cambodia sort out details of the joint visa, the five countries agreed at a meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia that ended on Friday. Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Supamongkhon said Thailand would discuss the details with Cambodia in the near future.
■ India
10,000 chickens killed
About 10,000 chickens at a poultry farm in southern India were killed yesterday in a fire caused by sparks from electrical wires. "Heavy monsoon winds caused two wires to come into contact," said the police chief of Dindigul district in Tamil Nadu state, where the accident occurred. A rope factory first caught fire before it spread to the poultry farm. No one was injured but property worth US$23,000 was destroyed.
■ India
Bounty offered for cows
Catch a stray cow from the hundreds roaming the streets of New Delhi, haul it to a state shelter and you will be given 2,000 rupees (US$46) for your pains. The Delhi High Court passed an order instructing city authorities to offer money to rid the Indian capital of the cattle menace. An estimated 35,000 cows and buffaloes roam free in the capital, sharing space with hordes of monkeys, camels and stray dogs. Traffic routinely comes to a halt to allow animals to amble across highways, leading to accidents and sometimes deaths. Cows are sacred to Hindus, who make up a bulk of India's population, and just a rumor of mistreatment can prompt angry mobs to attack people in revenge.
■ Malaysia
Fishermen paddle 150km
Thirteen Chinese fishermen survived a nearly three-day ordeal at sea after their trawler sank in the South China Sea, paddling some 150km in a small lifeboat before reaching Malaysia. The Qiong Quong Hai went down before dawn Tuesday in international waters near the Spratly Islands, an uninhabited archipelago. The crew scrambled into the lifeboat when the vessel sank and spent more than 60 hours trying to find land before making it to the Borneo coastal town of Kota Belud late Thursday. The fishermen -- from China's Hainan island -- said the vessel sank after water began leaking into the engine room. Malaysia's navy and air force launched search and rescue operations when the crew sent a distress call before their vessel sank, but failed to locate the lifeboat.
■ Thailand
Children forced to beg
A public foundation has launched a campaign to stop the public from giving donations to child beggars after a study found that children are being forced to beg by adult gangs. The Mirror Foundation recently completed a four-month study that found adult gangs were forcing poor children to beg for them, and launched a campaign to confront the problem. "People give money to child beggars out of pity, believing it will help them. We need to change that attitude. By giving money, we only contribute to the problem," Mirror Director Sombat Boon-ngarm-anong said. Most of the child beggars are impoverished ethnic children from northern Thailand or from neighboring Cambodia, all forced to travel to Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Pattaya to beg. The study sites the example of one 10-year-old boy who would be beaten if he failed to earn 800 baht (US$20) a day.
■ Canada
Americans stay home
In the days after US President Bush won a second term, the number of US citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north. But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election. On the face of it this is not good news -- Canada is one of the few major nations seeking to attract immigrants -- but Immigration Minister Joe Volpe was philosophical. "We'll take talent from wherever it is resident in the world. I was absolutely elated to see the number of hits and then my staff said `You know what? A hit on the Internet is after all just a hit'," he said.
■ United States
Robbery broadcast on TV
Viewers of a late-night cable TV program called police when they realized that instead of Shopping Mania they were hearing an attempted robbery, and had caught a glimpse of at least one of them as they left. Gary Spirito, the auction's owner, said. "He said, `Give me your car keys.' And I said `Well, they're out there in the car.'" The men fled when police were summoned by viewers, but officers caught up with the two suspects. Eddie Crisp Jr., 23, and Timothy Suggs, 22, were both on parole for prior theft and other convictions.
■ United States
Man sentenced to crochet
An ex-convict who pleaded no contest to sexually abusing his daughter was sentenced to 320 hours of community service crocheting blankets. The prosecutor said he had been ready to dismiss the case against Robert Wayne Thompson for lack of evidence. The charges surfaced during a dispute over custody of the child, when Thompson's ex-wife accused him of sexually abusing their 8-year-old daughter. Thompson had earlier served five years in a Virginia prison for sexual assault. The criminal case became shaky after the girl told the judge in the civil case that her mother had told her to say Thompson abused her. So the judge agreed last week to a plea bargain that requires Thompson to register as a sex offender, be under probation -- and spend 320 hours crocheting afghans.
■ United States
Passenger jailed for assault
A business executive was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a sleeping woman seated next to him on a flight from Dallas to Boston. On April 5, Deepak Jahagirdar, 55, laid a blanket over the 22-year-old woman who was returning from a vacation, unfastened her seat belt, unbuttoned her pants and assaulted her by touching her genitals. The woman pulled Jahagirdar's hand from her pants and fled to the rear of the aircraft where she reported the assault to the flight crew. The crew alerted four US Secret Service Agents who were on board the flight, returning from an assignment in Texas. Jahagirdar briefly tried to escape state police by trying to flee in the walkway between the plane and the Boston airport.
■ United States
Strip club tries hard sell
The Century Lounge has for years wooed passing trade with the sign, "Live Nude Nude Nudes." But last week it stepped up the rhetoric with the new sign, "Vaginas 'R Us." "We don't approve of the signage and we don't appreciate it," said Laurie Hughes, executive director of Gateway to LA, a local business group. Club operator Howard White said, "In sort of a naive way, I felt that there was nothing terrible about it since The Vagina Monologues was on Broadway forever."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
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