Sat, Apr 21, 2012 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  HONG KONG

  Air rage on Cathay flight

  Police charged a man after he allegedly assaulted crew on a Cathay Pacific flight and needed to be subdued with the help of passengers, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The 52-year-old foreigner, whose nationality was not revealed, was detained after the flight from Bangkok carrying 398 passengers landed at Hong Kong International Airport on Monday evening, the police spokeswoman said.The incident came to light after media reports claimed the incident could have been a “terrorist attack.”

  THAILAND

  Five alleged militants killed

  Security forces killed five suspected insurgents including a wanted leader during a 15-minute shoot-out in a village in the Muslim-majority deep south, the army said yesterday. About 40 soldiers, paramilitary rangers and police sealed off the village in Yala Province on Thursday after a tip-off that more than a dozen suspected militants were hiding there. After an exchange of gunfire, the bodies of five men were found including Sakueri Japakiya, 38, who was believed to be a senior member of the Runda Kumpulan Kecil insurgency group, the military said.

  JAPAN

  Bears escape, maul woman

  At least one woman was thought to have died and another was missing after bears escaped from their enclosures in a park in the north, police said yesterday, as they struggled to contain the situation. An unknown number of creatures were on the loose in the snow-covered Hachimandaira bear park in Akita Prefecture, which keeps 38 animals, most of them brown bears. “We cannot go close to the park because we don’t know which cages are open, and how many bears are on the loose,” a spokeswoman for Akita police said. Emergency services were alerted at 10am to bear attacks in the park, which was closed to tourists for the winter. Of the three staff who were there at the time, one man managed to escape, but one woman was known to have been badly mauled and another was missing, the spokeswoman said.

  SRI LANKA

  Hen produces live birth

  A hen produced a live chick in a freak birth at a poultry farm in central Sri Lanka, a veterinary surgeon said yesterday. The vet in charge of the town of Welimada, P.R. Yapa, said the egg appeared to have incubated inside the hen for 21 days and the hen died when it gave birth to the chick. He said the free-range farm owners alerted the local veterinary authorities after the highly unusual phenomenon and he performed a post-mortem examination to confirm the cause of death. “There were lacerations and a tear of the reproductive tract that caused the death,” Yapa said. “The baby is doing well.”

  VIETNAM

  Mystery illness kills 19

  Vietnam has asked international health experts to help investigate a mystery illness that has killed 19 people and sickened 171 in an impoverished district in central Vietnam, an official said yesterday. The infection has mostly affected children and young people. It begins with a high fever, loss of appetite and a rash that covers the hands and feet. Patients who are not treated early can develop liver problems and eventually multiple organ failure, said Le Han Phong, chairman of the People’s Committee in Ba To District in Quang Ngai Province. Nearly 100 people remain hospitalized, including 10 in critical condition.

  BRAZIL

  Killings linked to cannibals

  The trio that allegedly killed at least two women and ate parts of their bodies might have murdered another five people in the northeast, police said on Thursday. Police spokesman Carlos Leite said by telephone that investigators suspect the trio murdered four other women in Pernambuco State and one in neighboring Paraiba. A man and two women were arrested last week for allegedly killing two women, eating parts of their bodies and using their flesh to make stuffed pastries known as empanadas that they sold to neighbors. Police inspector Wesley Fernandes said last week that they belonged to a sect that preached “the purification of the world and the reduction of its population.”

  MEXICO

  Townsfolk lock up police

  Residents of an indigenous town in the west where eight townsfolk were killed temporarily locked 16 police officers in an office to demand an investigation, authorities said on Thursday. Michoacan State Secretary of Government Jesus Reyna said the officers were held late on Wednesday in the town of Cheran after arriving to check on an attack hours earlier that killed eight and wounded two. A statement from Reyna’s office said 13 officers were released late on Thursday. The other three were freed earlier in the day.

  BRAZIL

  Slum residents burn bus

  Authorities in Rio de Janeiro say dozens of shantytown residents burned a bus and blocked a highway because a 10-year-old girl was grazed by a bullet during a police action that put an armed 18-year-old man in the hospital with three wounds. The Wednesday evening protest on the city’s north side shut down a highway tunnel for about 90 minutes after angry residents set the bus on fire. Police say the driver had minor injuries, but no passengers were hurt. Five other buses were stopped, then released undamaged. Police say officers were pursuing drug dealers in the shantytown when they confronted the armed teenager and wounded. Officials say a stray shot grazed the young girl’s stomach.

  MEXICO

  Cartel-linked mayor detained

  The army says troops have detained a small-town mayor in the company of heavily armed drug cartel gunmen, leaving the ruling party officials scrambling to distance themselves from a man who had run for office on their ticket. The Defense Department said late on Wednesday that soldiers detained Chinameca Mayor Martin Padua on Tuesday along with five alleged members of the Zetas drug cartel carrying rifles and hand grenades.

  PERU

  Dolphin deaths investigated

  Scientists and officials are investigating a mass die-off of hundreds of dolphins along the South American country’s coast. A total of 877 dolphin carcasses have been counted recently along the shore in the northern regions of Piura and Lambayeque, Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria said on Thursday. Officials have been studying possible factors in the dolphins’ deaths including a virus or seismic oil exploration that has recently been carried out off northern Peru. An analysis of the beached dolphins’ internal organs has not found the sort of symptoms seen in other cases when dolphins have been affected by seismic tests, Quijandria said. He said experts were studying whether the animals could have succumbed to a virus. “So far, it’s the most probable hypothesis, and it isn’t the first time it’s happened. There have been cases in Peru, in Mexico, the United States,” Quijandria said.
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