World briefs

A Scottish cleaner who won a record bingo jackpot over the Easter weekend said she would return to work as normal. Soraya Lowell, 38, won the national jackpot of £1,167,795 at a bingo hall in Coatbridge, north Lanarkshire.

"I don't intend to give up my job. I like the girls I work with, and they have already said to me 'don't pack it in'," she said on Monday. "I haven't slept at all but I will be back at work as usual tomorrow."

The mother-of-four from Hamilton, Lanarkshire, said her husband Frankie didn't believe her when she rang home with the news. Her eldest children have already asked her to buy them cars.

Diner gives discount for bugs

A group celebrating a birthday at a Dubai diner were cheered by a 25 per cent discount but not necessarily the reason: "Bug on food".

The restaurant cut the bill for seven customers at a birthday dinner after they found four insects crawling around their meals, the Gulf News reported yesterday.

"We were surprised when the receipt said 'bug on food' as a reason for the discount. I think they were trying to be funny," it quoted one of the disgruntled customers as saying.

An official at the restaurant defended the phrase saying it was "an inappropriate detail", the paper reported. "It was a misunderstanding from our side - the guys thought being friendly and having a joke about the environment would relax the diners because it was a birthday, but unfortunately it didn't," he added.

Doomsday cultists fire on police

Members of a doomsday cult who have shut themselves up in caves beneath a Russian hillside to await the end of the world shot at police to drive them away, a newspaper reported yesterday.

Around 30 people, including some children, have barricaded themselves into the caves dug out of a hill in the Penza region of central Russia. They say the world will end on May 28.

The Kommersant newspaper quoted a policeman as saying the shots were fired after he had tried to help cave dwellers who said meltwater had dislodged earth in the caves and they were afraid of being buried alive.

President's wife takes the bus

Members of Taiwan President-elect Ma Ying-jeou's family are shunning the limelight and trying to go about their normal lives in spite of intense media interest after Mr Ma won the election by a landslide last weekend.

Mr Ma's banking lawyer wife Christine Chow has continued to take the bus to work as she normally does, even with camera crews from the island's feisty television stations following her on board and taping her as she topped up her bus fare card at a convenience store.

Major Taiwanese newspapers plastered on their front pages pictures of Ms Chow getting on and off the bus with other commuters.

"Ma's wife takes the bus - stands listening to mp3", the Chinese language United Daily News wrote yesterday in a headline on its second page, most of which was devoted to Ms Chow.

Appeal on British hostess death

Japanese prosecutors appealed yesterday against a verdict clearing a former businessman of raping, drugging and killing former British Airways flight attendant Lucie Blackman eight years ago. The 'not guilty' verdict on Joji Obara, 55, in the Blackman case showed a gross misunderstanding of the facts, the prosecutors said.

In one of Japan's most horrendous sex crime cases, Mr Obara, a former property developer, was sentenced last year to life imprisonment by Tokyo District Court for raping eight women and drugging, raping and slaying Australian Carita Ridgway in 1992.

In a surprise ruling, however, Mr Obara was cleared of similar charges regarding Ms Blackman, 21, who had been working as a bar hostess in Tokyo's Roppongi nightlife district when she vanished in July 2000.

Ms Blackman's dismembered remains were found in a seaside cave near a condominium owned by Mr Obara seven months later.

More risk of human trafficking

Sri Lanka's protracted and increasingly bloody civil war is making the country more vulnerable to human trafficking, a senior UN official said yesterday.

People fleeing conflict-torn areas in Sri Lanka's north and east, where fighting between Tamil Tiger rebels and state security forces has raged since 1983, opened the door to people smugglers keen to profit from the vulnerable, the UN said.

"The conflict you have is quite clearly going to be a major factor in increasing vulnerability of some of the country's young people," Gary Lewis, representative of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime in South Asia, said. "Migration is the key in which traffickers and traffic victims meet," he added.