Sun, Mar 16, 2008 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ INDIA

  Protesters mark killings

  More than 10,000 people took to the streets in Kolkata on Friday to remember those killed by police fire one year ago while they were demonstrating against government land use plans, authorities said. Fourteen people died in the eastern state of West Bengal last year as locals clashed with police over plans to seize farmland to make way for an industrial hub. Some of Friday's protesters carried placards reading "Shame" and "Abandon the killer communist government." West Bengal is ruled by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which has drawn widespread criticism over the killings.

  ■ INDIA

  Court suspends Gere case

  The Supreme Court suspended on Friday legal proceedings against Richard Gere, who faced obscenity charges for publicly kissing Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty last year. Gere made headlines when he arched over and kissed Shilpa Shetty, winner of the British reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, several times on the cheek at an anti-AIDS show in New Delhi. Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan and Justice R. V. Raveendran stayed the arrest warrants against Gere and granted permission for him to travel to India, criticizing the complainant for his "moral policing" and observed, "such complaints are publicity hunting. You are bringing a bad name to this country."

  ■ Philippines

  Hand grenade kills three

  Three people were killed and 19 injured when a drunk detonated a hand grenade he had been toying with at a village dance in the south, the town police chief said yesterday. The man was among the dead at the village in Suluk town on the island of Mindanao, Inspector Imalex Mabalot said. It was unclear where the man obtained the grenade but there are many armed groups in the south, including Muslim and communist guerrillas, with access to weapons.

  ■ INDONESIA

  New bird discovered

  A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists. The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai. It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto. "We observed the species in the field from 1997 to 2003," Indrawan said. Pamela Rasmussen, a taxonomist at Michigan State University, completed the identification, reported in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Togian white-eyes are small, greenish-colored and have conspicuous white eye-rings.

  ■ UNITED NATIONS

  Countries lax on sex tourism

  India, Cambodia and Thailand are not doing enough to protect children against the risks associated with sex tourism for fear of damaging their economies, a UN human rights expert said on Friday. Juan Miguel Petit, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of children, said authorities are often not willing to tackle the issue of children's sexual exploitation for tourists' benefit. "Sometimes there are big pressures on governments, explicitly or implicitly, when there are enormous touristic activities going on, making millions of dollars," he said. He denounced this "insane tourism that puts at risk the lives of hundreds and hundreds of children," saying it was against the public interest in such countries.

  ■ CZECH REPUBLIC

  Mail bags found in tunnel

  Construction workers have made a discovery that should come as good news to the thousands of foreigners who might never have heard back from Czechs they wrote to between 2001 and 2006. Their mail ended up in a train tunnel. The Czech Post said on Friday that 60 postal bags of mail and parcels that were mailed from other countries were found by workers renovating an unused tunnel at a train station in the southeastern town of Breclav. Postal spokesman Gabriel Pleska called the discovery "unprecedented"and "shocking," and said police are determined to find out who is to blame.

  ■ GERMANY

  Police shoot US soldier

  Police shot and killed a US Army soldier in Bavaria after he took a former girlfriend hostage, police said on Friday. The 30-year-old soldier, armed with a M-4 assault rifle, broke into the German woman's apartment in Koenigsberg on Thursday night, the police said. He tied her up, but she managed to escape and notify the police. Officers then sealed off the area around the apartment building and searched in on foot and with a helicopter equipped with a thermal camera. When police officers attempted to arrest the soldier, he threatened them with his gun, leading them to open fire, the police said. He died at a local hospital on Friday morning. It was unclear whether he had been shot once or multiple times.

  ■ FINLAND

  Artist charged over porn

  Prosecutors have pressed charges against Helsinki artist Ulla Karttunen over her photographic exhibition of child pornography. Karttunen could in theory face two years in jail, although news agency STT on Friday said prosecutors are seeking a fine having acknowledged her artistic aims. Karttunen said the work criticizes child porn and is comprised of pictures found on the Internet. While attacking police for "fighting against the power of critical art," she acknowledged that the images at the center of the debate "should not exist," the daily Helsingin Sanomat reported. The photos were confiscated by police from the Kluuvi Gallery last month after a member of the public complained. Karttunen's home was also searched with a computer and camera memory card taken by investigators.

  ■ SYRIA

  School bus crash kills 24

  Twenty-three high-school students were killed on Friday when a bus carrying them on a recreation trip overturned and hit a house in a coastal Tartous Province, officials said. The owner of the house was also killed. A total of 31 people, mostly students, were injured, nine of them in critical condition, the officials said. The bus was going too fast and the driver lost control on a curve, one official said. President Bashar al-Assad ordered a sharp increase in traffic fines last month in an attempt to lower accidents.

  ■ RUSSIA

  Brother defends Viktor Bout

  The case against alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout who was arrested earlier this month in Thailand was fabricated and unjust, his brother said on Friday. "If he's such a bandit, then show me some facts. If you can't, then it's all lies," said Sergei Bout, 47. "He's just a normal guy." Sergei said his brother was only a "transporter" of air cargo who never knew what the planes he chartered were carrying. Sergei said the family and business associates were preparing a documentary film about Bout's life, to be called Who Are You, Viktor Bout?

   

  ■ PERU

  Lawmakers defend coca use

  Lawmakers defiantly chewed coca in congress on Thursday while criticizing a UN recommendation to criminalize traditional uses of the plant. The coca leaf, the raw ingredient of cocaine, is used by millions of people to stave off hunger and fight altitude sickness. It is also used in teas, in cooking and by fortune tellers. "The coca leaf has existed for thousands and thousands of years. It's part of our agriculture, our food and our medicine. It's sacred," Congresswoman Hilaria Supa told reporters before the start of Thursday's session. "The United Nations doesn't know our culture. It doesn't understand our values."

  ■ COLOMBIA

  UN condemns killings

  Six organizers of a recent march to protest violence by the state and paramilitary death squads have been killed and more than two dozen threatened with death, the UN and the Movement of Victims of State Crimes said on Friday. The victims, including union workers and human rights activists, were killed around the time of the March 6 national protest, they said. "On March 12, organizations connected with the protest received an e-mail with threats made by the `Black Eagles' [a death squad], which came with a list of 28 human-rights defenders saying the group would be implacable with those people who had organized the protest," said Ivan Cepeda, director of the victims' movement. The UN human rights agency condemned the threats and demanded the killings be investigated.

  ■ UNITED STATES

  Woman finds grenade

  The police department in Corpus Christi, Texas, was briefly evacuated after a woman brought in a hand grenade she found. The unidentified woman handed it to an officer on Thursday after finding it while cleaning out a relative's belongings. The officer immediately took it outside the building and police cleared the building until the bomb squad took it away and detonated it about an hour later. "When we countercharged it, it went boom," bomb squad supervisor Lieutenant James Brandon told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, an online newspaper.

  ■ COSTA RICA

  Drug smuggler falls sick

  An American was caught smuggling 0.4kg of cocaine in his stomach after he went into convulsions on a plane bound for Miami, Florida, police said on Friday. The 22-year-old man swallowed dozens of capsules stuffed with the drug before boarding a plane on Thursday in San Jose. The authorities said he started to vomit and convulse before the plane took off and was rushed to a hospital where he was still recovering on Friday. "They had to open him up to remove the capsules," a police spokeswoman said.

  ■ UNITED STATES

  Droopy pants banned
  

  The Florida Senate wants public school students to pull up their pants. Lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that could mean suspensions for students with droopy britches. It won't become law unless the House of Representatives passes a companion measure. Florida could join several southern US towns and cities that have passed "saggy pants" laws aimed at outlawing what some teenagers consider a fashion statement -- wearing pants half way down their buttocks, exposing flesh or underwear. Supporters say schools sometimes don't properly police dress codes and parents are often "under aware" of what their kids are wearing to school. Critics say the measure is unnecessary. 
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