■ China
Rock star misbehaves
Avant garde rock star Dou Wei (竇唯) is being investigated over an incident in which a newspaper office was trashed and a car set on fire, Beijing police said yesterday. A statement issued by the newspaper Beijing News said Dou, the ex-husband of pop star Faye Wong (王菲), came to the newspaper's offices on Wednesday morning to complain about an article on his relationship with girlfriend Gao Yuan (高原) and their alleged financial woes. After talking for two hours, Dou smashed office equipment and splashed employees with water, the paper said.
■ China
`Human zoo' opening
Shanghai is getting set to open a "human zoo." Four Australian men will live in a glass box on a downtown mall for two weeks in June, with the public able to watch them sleeping, eating and bathing, a news report said yesterday. The group, known as the Urban Dream Capsule, has drawn crowds with similar displays in London, Montreal, Hong Kong and other cities. "They won't turn off the lights or pull down the curtains. They show their whole life, from getting up to going to bed," Karen Chang, the event's organizer, told the Shanghai Daily newspaper.
■ China
Enrollments limited
The Cabinet has agreed to limit the growth of university enrollments in order to improve teaching conditions and make it easier for graduates to find jobs, a state newspaper reported yesterday. Cabinet officials agreed to the proposal at a meeting on Wednesday led by Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), the newspaper said. But it didn't give any details of how the limits would be imposed. Enrollments reached a record 23 million last year.
■ Australia
Hit man game hits market
Mark "Chopper" Read, the notorious self-confessed hit man whose criminal exploits have inspired books and a movie, has now lent his name to a board game. Players cavort through the criminal underworld, visiting brothels, attacking fellow gangsters, evading the police and finally making their way to Tasmania, where Read served several years in prison. Players risk small electric shocks at the roll of a dice. The game is the brainchild of four friends who are fans of Reid. "It's no longer illegal what I do these days, but it's bloody criminal what I get away with,'' Read told Channel Ten News at the game's launch earlier this week. ``But I haven't had a penny out of it so far.'' Read spent 23 years in jail and has written several books telling of his career of violence.
■ Sri Lanka
Air force bombs rebels
Sri Lanka's air force bombed Tamil Tiger territory near their northern headquarters yesterday after rebels attacked a naval transporter with hundreds of servicemen on board and sank two fast attack vessels. The air force scrambled fighter jets and helicopter gunships to the area in the worst outbreak of trouble since a 2002 ceasefire halted two decades of civil war, officials said. Military officials said 710 troops were aboard the transporter, which sustained light damage and moved to shelter in Indian waters.
■ Papua New Guinea
One hurt in clashes
Tensions were high in Bougainville after clashes between police and armed rebels in which one policeman was seriously injured, reports said yesterday. Three police houses were burned and a government office ransacked in the incidents, which involved at least two Fijian mercenaries working for self-proclaimed "king" Noah Musingku, the Post-Courier newspaper reported. The attacks, which included a heavy exchange of gunfire, were part of a plan by Musingku to take over all of the autonomous government's institutions in the province, acting assistant police commissioner Paul Kamuai said.
■ Philippines
Official wants to ban film
The government should ban the controversial movie The Da Vinci Code, Eduardo Ermita, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's executive secretary said yesterday, expressing his personal opinion as a "devout Catholic." He said the thriller as blasphemous. "I think we should do everything not to allow it to be shown," he said. He said the state's censors should take a closer look at its guidelines before giving the green light to the film, which is due to open in Manila's cinemas next week.
■ Australia
Whaling countries accused
Environment Minister Ian Campbell accused Japan and other pro-whaling nations yesterday of recruiting poor countries to back their push for a resumption of commercial whaling at an international conference next month. Campbell said he fears pro-whaling nations could get the numbers to push through their commercial goal at the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission. "We've met with nations who are on our side," he told ABC radio. "The news from those countries is that our worst fears about potential recruitment of pro-whaling nations is going on," he said. "We won't probably know how many nations have been recruited by the whalers until the eve of the conference," he said.
■ Russia
Chopper crashes into sea
A Russian helicopter crashed into the Sea of Okhotsk during joint rescue exercises with Japan yesterday, killing one of the 13 people aboard, emergency officials said. The Mi-14 helicopter went down off the island of Sakhalin when one of its rotor blades hit the water during exercises simulating an emergency response to an oil spill and aid to stricken ships, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said. All 13 people aboard were rescued from the aircraft, but three were injured and one of them, a pilot, died on the way to hospital, Beltsov said.
■ Ireland
Flying on wing and a prayer
Catholic priests illegally broadcasting Mass over the radio to housebound parishioners are suspected of creating a safety hazard for trans-Atlantic jets, officials said on Tuesday. Communications regulator ComReg has spoken to three churches in central Ireland to warn them that their unlicensed transmission of services might be creating problems for airliners as they flew overhead. "I knew it was sort of a gray area but I didn't know we were breaking the law," Father Brendan Quinlan, a Dublin parish priest, told the Irish Independent. The Irish Aviation Authority said that pilots on trans-Atlantic flights have complained to air traffic control for more than a year of hearing static on their radios.
■ Austria
Bear visits after 146 years
A young brown bear that emerged from dense forests in the southwestern province of Vorarlberg and attacked three sheep in a stall earlier this week has become the talk of the town in the region where the species last was spotted in 1860. Experts called this week's sighting a "biological sensation." Schertler said it was unusual for a bear to risk contact with humans, and that it appeared that acute hunger motivated the animal to go after the stabled sheep rather than hunt wildlife in its mountainous habitat.
■ Sweden
Elephants surprise motorists
Motorists approaching Stockholm on Tuesday were met with the sight of three elephants grazing by the highway, Swedish radio reported on Wednesday. Escaping from a circus van towed by a lorry which had overturned on a sharp bend just north of the capital, the animals dispersed across the field. A fourth elephant and the lorry driver were slightly injured but recovered quickly, rescue service spokesman Anders Karlsson said. "I suppose they could have run away but they were very complacent and stayed on the meadow, close to their keeper," he said. After a couple of hours, the four elephants were loaded into a new van and hauled away.
■ United Kingdom
Rider celebrates bike return
A German cyclist who has ridden 539,000km in almost 44 years on the same bike and then had it stolen in Britain celebrated on Wednesday after it was recovered. Heinz Stucke had just arrived in Portsmouth on the latest leg of a global cycle ride which he began in 1962 when thieves stole his bike as he slept in his tent. Distraught, he appealed to police and media, telling the Portsmouth News: "I would do anything to get my bike back, I'm emotionally attached to it." He told BBC radio on Wednesday he was rejoicing after police told him the bike had been found abandoned in a park. "I ... expected it to be found, because it's not a flashy one, it's not an expensive one," he said.
■ United States
Baby's arm found in sewage
Sewage treatment plant workers discovered a baby's arm in the muck, and authorities said the remains could have come from any of 21 communities near Boston. The arm found on Tuesday was several centimeters long, Suffolk County spokesman David Procopio said. It was taken to the medical examiner's office to determine how old the baby was and when the infant died. The remains could have entered the wastewater system through a toilet, sewer, or catch basin, Procopio said on Wednesday. The State Police and Suffolk district attorney's office appealed to the communities for information on anyone who was recently pregnant but does not have a baby.
■ United Kingdom
Guantanamo `should close'
In the most explicit British condemnation of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith called for it to be closed. "The existence of Guantanamo remains unacceptable," Goldsmith said in a speech on Wednesday evening. "It is time, in my view, that it should close. Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantanamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many -- right or wrong -- of injustice ... The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol," he said.
■ Colombia
Arrest shocks official
Colombia's top criminal investigator, a key official in the US-backed war on drugs, said on Wednesday that his younger brother had been arrested in Germany for possession of narcotics. "I never thought that the curse of drug-trafficking, which I've fought against tirelessly in 30 years of public service, would reach my own doorstep," said General Oscar Naranjo, head of Colombia's judicial police, reading from a statement. Dressed in civilian attire at what he called the "saddest press conference in my life," Naranjo said he learned on May 3 of the arrest of his brother, Juan David Naranjo.
■ Venezuela
Alleged separatists charged
Venezuelan prosecutors filed treason charges against the leaders of an organization pushing for regional autonomy in the oil-rich state of Zulia, the Attorney General's Office announced on Wednesday. The treason charges against Nestor Rafael Suarez Bohorquez, Alberto Anibal Mansueti, Natalia Carolina Fernandez and Gustavo Miguel Pineda Reina -- the leaders of a group called Own Road For Zulia -- stem from the organization's alleged push for Zulia's secession from Venezuela. Mansueti has rejected allegations that the organization is pushing for secession.
■ United States
Falling trees close highway
Falling trees caused by brush fires have forced the indefinite closure of a 19km stretch of a main highway in Florida, authorities said. Smoke from several fires around the state caused periodic morning closures on Wednesday, but Florida Highway Patrol trooper Kim Miller said Interstate 95 would be closed from Port Orange to Edgewater likely for at least several days as crews work to clear the debris. "What's happened is that the root bulbs have burned so that the trees are now unstable and are falling into the roadway," Miller said. Miller said it was too early to tell how long the work could take, and it was complicated by still-smoldering trees.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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