■AUSTRALIA
Gorilla escapes enclosure
A gorilla used an overgrown palm tree to escape from his enclosure at a zoo, and keepers said yesterday they used bananas to lure him back to captivity. The nine-year-old simian named Yakini swung over the wall of his enclosure using overhanging palm fronds at Melbourne Zoo on Thursday, keepers said. Visitors were held in the gift shop and other buildings while staff attempted for 20 minutes to recapture the gorilla. “Must have either been wind or some other factor which dropped this palm frond just far enough into the dry moat for him to get a hand on it,” said Dan Maloney, the zoo’s general curator. “These animals are very bright and he’s learned a lot in his nine years,” Maloney said. Using bananas as bait, staff managed to bring Yakini into the elephant barn, where he was shot with a tranquilizer dart and returned to his habitat, which he shares with his father and brother, Maloney said.
■AUSTRALIA
Croc kills swimmer
Relatives saw a 20-year-old man taken by a crocodile yesterday in the Daly River in the country’s far north in the third fatal crocodile attack in as many months. The stretch of the river the man chose for his dip is a well-known crocodile haunt. Northern Territory police spokesman John Emeny said crocodile catchers were searching for what they believe to be a killer croc in the Daly River, 150km south of Darwin. “We have received information that there was a crocodile sighting in the area, so there is a likelihood the person has been subjected to a crocodile attack, but that has yet to be confirmed,” he said.
■HONG KONG
Peeping Tom numbers soar
The number of peeping Tom photographers in rail stations has soared 30 percent, a news report said yesterday. Ng Shan-ho, railway police deputy district commander, said there were 117 cases of people caught taking photos up the skirts of women last year, compared with 88 cases in 2007, the Hong Kong Standard reported. In 104 cases, police were able to catch the culprits, a success rate of 90 percent. Ng said the culprits were usually aged 13 to 35 and ranged from students to bank staff and teachers.
■CHINA
Protesters target professor
About 30 protesters tried to force their way into Peking University yesterday to confront a law professor who said 99 percent of the people petitioning the government with grievances are mentally ill. Sun Dongdong’s (孫東東) comments, published in China Newsweek last month, triggered outrage. Sun quickly issued a public apology, but his critics have dismissed it as insincere and many are now demanding he be fired. Sun is head of the university’s judicial expertise center, which helps court authorities evaluate the mental health of defendants.
■CHINA
Party chief kills official
The Communist Party chief of a village in the north of the country suddenly stabbed another top official to death in a bizarre killing during an official meeting, state media reported yesterday. Liu Junwen (劉軍文), party chief of Qijiabao village in Shaanxi Province, had called the director of the village committee, Qi Junping (戚軍平), and other officials to a meeting at local government headquarters on Thursday, the Beijing News said. To the horror of onlookers, Liu then pulled out a knife and stabbed Qi, who had been seated around a conference table with other meeting participants, it said.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Man granted SMS divorce
A man has divorced his wife by text message, a newspaper said on Thursday. The man was in Iraq when he sent the SMS informing her she was no longer his spouse. He followed up with a telephone call to two of his relatives, the daily Arab News reported. A court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah finalized the split — the first known divorce in Saudi Arabia by text message — after summoning the two relatives to check they had received word of the husband’s intention, the paper said. Saudi Arabia practices a strict form of Shariah law, and clerics preside over Shariah courts as judges. Under the law a man can divorce his wife by saying “I divorce you” three times. The Saudi man was in Iraq to participate in “what he described as ‘jihad,’” according to the Arab News.
■FRANCE
‘Bossnapping’ case resolved
A “bossnapping” incident in which workers angry at plans to restructure a factory southwest of Paris held three managers came to an end late on Thursday, a union source said. The managers were released after several hours, according to the union source. The incident took place at French auto parts maker Faurecia in Brieres-les-Scelles. Recent polls show that up to half of French people believe workers are justified in taking executives captive to seek better redundancy packages during the economic crisis.
■AUSTRIA
Stalker mother fined
A woman who bombarded her son with phone calls over a two-and-a-half year period was fined by a court for stalking him, Austrian media reported on Thursday. The 73-year-old woman, who phoned her son up to 49 times a day, was fined 360 euros (US$478) by the court in the southern city of Klagenfurt. “I just wanted to talk to him,” the woman told the court, according to Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung. “I can’t talk to my son, nor my daughter. I’ve never seen my grandchild — who is already 15 years old,” she said.
■FRANCE
Sarkozy mailed more bullets
A letter containing threats and two bullets arrived at President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office on Thursday, a judicial source said. The letter, posted on Wednesday in southern France, was similar to previous ones received in recent weeks by Sarkozy and members of his government, the source in the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Last month police arrested and then released without charge a man on suspicion of sending Sarkozy, several of his ministers and other politicians envelopes containing a 9mm cartridge and identical letters with threats including “you are all dead men walking.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Officer suspended over push
London’s police force says it has suspended an officer caught on camera pushing a man who later died at a G20 protest. Video footage filmed by a bystander shows an officer appearing to hit Ian Tomlinson, 47, with his baton before shoving him to the ground. Tomlinson, who was walking home from work when he got caught up in the protest, later died of an apparent heart attack. The Metropolitan Police said on Thursday that the officer, a constable, had been suspended. His name was not released. Britain’s police watchdog has ordered a second autopsy to see whether police behavior contributed to Tomlinson’s death. Thousands of people took part in protests against a meeting of the G20 nations in London last week.
■UNITED STATES
One dies in swordplay
A 77-year-old woman in Indianapolis suffered a fatal stab wound while trying to break up a sword fight on Thursday between her grandson and brother-in-law, police said. An autopsy determined Franziska Stegbauer died of a wound from one of the swords, police Sergeant Matthew Mount said. Both men were hospitalized with stab wounds and one was critically hurt. “We’re unsure yet who started this fight, how the swordplay got involved,” Mount said. One of the weapons was a World War II-era Japanese officer’s sword with a thin blade, and the other had a thicker blade, Mount said.
■UNITED STATES
Springsteen accused
A New Jersey man who is divorcing his wife has accused rock star Bruce Springsteen of having an affair with her. Springsteen, who is married to singer Patti Scialfa, was accused by Arthur Kelly of Red Bank, New Jersey, of having an affair with his wife, Ann Kelly, in papers filed in Monmouth County Superior Court on March 27. A spokesman for Springsteen told local media the musician stood by a statement he posted on his Web site in 2006 following rumors of infidelity. In the statement, Springsteen wrote of his marriage that “our commitment to one another remains as strong as the day we were married.”
■CANADA
Spears: ‘Don’t smoke weed’
The new and improved Britney Spears apparently isn’t a fan of cigarette smoke — or any other kind of smoke, for that matter — while she’s performing. The 27-year-old pop star left the stage for about 30 minutes during a concert in Vancouver on Wednesday night, apparently because of smoke in the audience. The Vancouver Sun said Spears’ concert was halted about 15 minutes into her performance and an announcer told concertgoers to put out their cigarettes. Some audience members grew impatient while waiting for Spears and her troupe to return to the stage, the Sun reported. After she returned and ended the show, Spears — who has been to rehab and is on the comeback trail after a long stretch of troubles — told the crowd: “Don’t smoke weed.”
■MEXICO
Water rationing begins
Some 2 million residents of Mexico City on Thursday began 36 hours without water under an emergency plan over Easter vacation to respond to a record drop in water supply and to work on repairs. The cuts in the city of some 20 million that once sat on lakes coincide with Semana Santa, Mexico’s second-most important holiday season when many leave the city. They are part of a five-month emergency rationing plan announced in January and include repairs to stop massive leaks in the distribution network of one of the main water supply systems. The Cutzamala supply system is at 47 percent capacity, its lowest ever level, because of low rainfall last year and serious leaks, national water commission Conagua said.
■UNITED STATES
Man steals 66-year-old bike
A thief in Maine stole a 66-year-old bicycle that belonged to an 83-year-old woman. Ruth Slovenski got the blue Huffy bicycle as a gift when she was a teenager in 1943. The bike was stolen after she left it unlocked on Saturday during a visit to a nursing home in Lewiston, a southern Maine city of about 35,000 residents where Slovenski lives. Police say Slovenski had left the bike near a mailbox. When she went back to it two hours later, the bike was gone.
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
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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