Sat, Apr 23, 2005 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Nepal
  Political prisoners released

  Authorities have freed a former deputy prime minister from house arrest and released 59 other political prisoners from jails across the country, police and the state news agency said yesterday. The move comes a day after human rights group Amnesty International accused Nepal's government of detaining more than 3,000 political prisoners since King Gyanendra sacked the government and seized power in February. Bharat Mohan Adhikari, the deputy prime minister up until February, had spent 81 days under house arrest.

  ■ Hong Kong

  Chinese men `measure up'

  Chinese men have no reason to feel inferior about the size of their penises, according to a Hong Kong study which showed local men measured up to others elsewhere in the world below the belt. "Our conclusion is that Hong Kong people are no smaller than Western men, where their penises are concerned," said Chan Lung-wai, director of the Urology Center at the Union Hospital, who headed the study. "There has always been the myth that westerners have bigger penises and their [sexual] ability is better." A group of scientists in Hong Kong spent five months from October last year measuring 148 ethnic Chinese volunteers aged between 23 and 93. The average length of their flaccid penises was 3.33 inches, which compared favorably with similar studies on other men overseas.

  ■ Bangladesh

  Woman puts eye on sale

  A Bangladeshi woman desperate for money after she was abandoned by her husband has offered to sell one of her eyes. "I desperately looked for a job to live with my two-and-half-year-old daughter, Meem," the woman, 26-year-old Shefali Begum, told reporters Thursday at her slum dwelling in Dhaka. "But I could not find any ... and decided to sell one of my eyes. What do I do with both eyes while my daughter will die for want of milk and food?" She did not set a price in a newspaper advertisement she placed, but said she hoped to get enough to set up business as a street vendor or toy seller.

  ■ Australia

  Help woman on trial: Crowe

  Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe chided Prime Minister John Howard yesterday for not doing more to save a 27-year-old Australian woman facing life in prison in Indonesia for alleged drug smuggling. Schapelle Corby, a student beautician from Australia's Gold Coast resort area, is on trial after being caught arriving on the Indonesian island of Bali in October with 4kg of cannabis hidden in her carry-on bag. Corby, who has become a cause celebre in Australia, has pleaded innocent, with her lawyers saying the cannabis was planted in her luggage by a gang trying to smuggle it on a connecting flight to Sydney, where the drugs were supposed to have been intercepted.

  ■ Zambia
  Copper mine blast kills 51

  A blast that ripped through a Chinese-owned explosives manufacturing plant at a copper mine killed at least 51 people and 26 others are missing and feared dead. A crowd of weeping and shouting relatives pleaded with police to let them into the blast area to help identify loved ones as workers from nearby mines searched through the smoldering rubble for survivors. The plant was owned by BGRIMM Explosives of China. The cause of the blast was not immediately known, although locals blamed the government for the tragedy, saying that it had allowed safety checks to lapse after former state-owned mines were sold to private investors.

  ■ Togo

  Polls considered `suicide'

  Warning of violence and saying the poll would be "suicide," Togo's Interior Minister Francois Boko called yesterday for weekend elections to be canceled in the face of mounting tensions. He said he would ask interim President Abbas Bonfoh to call off the vote and establish a transitional government for one or two years to better prepare the country for democracy. "The risks of a bloody confrontation which will be the result of these elections are real and actual. In the face of this danger, the pursuit of such an electoral process is suicide for our country," Boko said.

  ■ Spain

  Gay marriage law passed

  Spain has become the third country in Europe to legalize gay marriage, with parliament also giving same-sex couples the right to adopt children. A petition signed by half a million opponents of gay marriage had been handed in to the parliament. The bill was passed by 183 votes in favor, 136 against. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic leaders, however, joined together yesterday to condemn the new law, which looks set to be rubber-stamped by Spain's upper house before summer.

  ■ Norway

  Thieves botch getaway

  The two Norwegians thought they had the perfect escape vehicle for their heist -- a rowboat. But neither knew how to row it. The men had broken into an ambulance boat, and likely were looking for drugs or cash. The boat's burglar alarm alerted the ambulance crew members, who quickly arrived and saw the two men trying to flee. Their paddling attempts were hopeless, police said. "They didn't have much of a chance," the deputy sheriff said. "They were rowing in opposite directions." The pair were rowing in tiny circles, and managed to get their rowboat to land, where they immediately were taken into police custody.

  ■ United Kingdom

  Viewers mimic TV shows

  Patients are mimicking the illnesses suffered by their favorite soap and television stars, a British survey said. More than nine out of ten doctors claimed to have seen patients reporting symptoms based on what they had seen on TV or read in newspapers. It was found that 60 percent of the 200 doctors questioned thought the growing number of medical issues covered by soaps, lifestyle programs and newspapers and magazines were making their patients paranoid. They said that this exposure was encouraging patients to undertake self-diagnosis by seeking advice from friends and family before speaking to their doctors. Nearly nine in ten doctors claimed their patients arrived for an appointment having already decided on their diagnosis.

  ■ United States
  `Minutemen' change tactics

  US volunteers fighting illegal immigration from Mexico said Thursday they were winding up their disputed citizen border patrols in favor of targeting firms that employ clandestine workers. But organizers of the "Minutemen," branded vigilantes by US officials, claimed success in their controversial mission and insisted that their shift in focus did not mean they were giving up their quest. US Border Patrol officials have slammed the group's taking the law into its hands, and say the Minuteman patrols have got in their way since they started in the western state of Arizona earlier this month.

  ■ United States

  Finger shocker explodes

  A woman who claimed she found a well-manicured finger in her bowl of chili at a Wendy's fast-food restaurant last month was arrested at her home, police said. Police in San Jose, California -- the site of the Wendy's in question -- announced the arrest of Anna Ayala in Las Vegas Thursday night. Police spokesman Enrique Garcia said authorities would not give any details until later yesterday. The arrest is the latest twist in the bizarre case about how the 4cm finger tip ended up in a bowl of fast-food chili. Ayala told police she found the finger March 22 while eating at a Wendy's in San Jose. She said she intended to sue but relented, claiming the publicity was too emotionally taxing.

  ■ Germany

  Terrorist suspect innocent

  A German citizen suspected of being a terrorist was whisked by the CIA out of Macedonia in 2003 and imprisoned in Afghanistan for six months even though half way through his detention it became clear he was completely innocent, NBC News said late Thursday. Khaled El-Masri was held in secret at an Afghani prison nicknamed the "Salt Pit" for three months while Central Intelligence Agency agents considered what to do with him until Condoleezza Rice, who was then National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush, ordered him set free.

  ■ Brazil

  Death squad smashed

  Police in Brazil smashed a death squad yesterday responsible for killing at least 50 people and possibly many more according to authorities and media reports. Nine out of 12 suspected members of the so-called "Avengers" were arrested in Planaltina de Goias in the central state of Goias, not far from the national capital Brasilia, following a two-year investigation, local media reported Thursday evening. A total of 120 officers and 30 police vehicles were deployed in what was termed a "spectacular police operation."

  ■ United States

  Moussaoui to plead guilty

  Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the US in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, was set yesterday to admit his role in the plot and plead guilty to charges that carry the death penalty. Rejecting arguments by Moussaoui's attorneys who questioned his mental competence, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, has scheduled a hearing at 3:30pm to accept his guilty plea. Moussaoui, charged three months after the attacks in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people, is accused of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, use weapons of mass destruction, murder US employees and destroy property.
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