World Briefs

A Chinese teenager was allegedly beaten to death by trainers at a rehabilitation camp in southern China where his parents had sent him to cure his internet addiction, reports said yesterday.

The three supervisors who allegedly beat Deng Senshan, 16, were arrested after the boy's death, his father Deng Fei told the Global Times.

"We are investigating a case where a high school student was beaten to death by his camp supervisors. The case is still under investigation," a police officer in Nanning, Guangxi region, was quoted as saying.

Deng Fei said he paid 7,000 yuan ($1,000) to give his son a month's training at the Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to rid him of his addiction to the Internet.

But instead, he said, the boy was put in solitary confinement shortly after his arrival and then beaten to death by his trainers who scolded him for running too slowly.

"My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an internet addiction when I left him at the camp," Deng Fei told the paper.

"We can't believe our only son was beaten to death."(AFP)

Zawahiri lashes out at Obama

Osama bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri took aim at US President Barack Obama in a new video, accusing him of continuing to spill the blood of Muslims and saying Israel was a "crime" that must be wiped out, according to a US monitoring group.

He also dismissed Obama's Middle East peace push as a "deception," and accused Mr Obama of seeking to create a "Palestinian state that works as a branch of the Israeli intelligence," according to a transcript published by the Site Intelligence Group. Mr Zawahiri also rejected Mr Obama's overtures to the Muslim world as an illusion, pointing to raids in Pakistan's tribal regions and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and speaking of "bloody massacres." (AFP)

Climbers fall to their death

Three Belgian mountain climbers - a woman and two men - fell to their death in a ravine in the Peruvian Andes, police officials said on Monday. The accident took place on Sunday while the group was trying to scale Tocllaraju mountain, whose peak is 6,032 metres high, Ingrid Villanueva of the Huaraz police station said.

Ann Houttekviet, 22, Koen de Bacher, 26, and Hans Marien, 20, were already dead when rescuers arrived at the scene, and their bodies were brought to Huaraz, 180 kilometres northeast of Lima.

It was the third accident in just 10 days in the treacherous Peruvian mountains.

Argentine Daniel Monton died after falling into a 200-metre deep ravine on July 26. He had reached the Esfinge (sphinx) summit, at 5,325 metres, before his fatal fall.

Another climber, 68-year-old Takao Mitsui of Japan, went missing that week while scaling Huascaran, which peaks at 6,768 metres, alongside his Peruvian guide Claudio Lliuya. (AFP)

Thief thanks police for rescuing him

An Italian thief thanked police officers for arresting him and putting an end to a beating from Korean tourists whom he had robbed in Rome, police said.

"I must thank you, they were massacring me," the 48-year-old criminal told police after he was arrested near the Theatre of Marcellus, one of the monuments in Rome's historic centre.

The thief, from the northern region of Liguria, stole a handbag from a Korean family when they were not paying attention. He threatened the family with a knife when he was spotted and then tried to flee.

Two men from the family, in their twenties, chased him for several hundred metres before they got him down with taekwondo moves. They disarmed the thief and continued to beat him.

A patrolling police officer intervened, separated the three and arrested the thief immediately.

"Normally tourists will just call us and report the incidents," the officer said. "In this case, the two got really excited and could have seriously injured the thief."

The young Koreans left after they got the handbag back. The thief was transferred to a prison in Rome and will face robbery charges. (AFP)

Man arrested in Milly Dowler murder case

A 40-year-old man from London was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the murder of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002, police said.

Surrey Police said the man was being questioned about "the potential disposal of a red Daewoo Nexia car." They also appealed to the public for information about the car as part of their investigation into the murder.

Dowler was abducted in broad daylight in March 2002 as she walked home from the local train station after school.

Her remains were discovered in September 2002 by a couple picking mushrooms in woodland about 25 miles from her home town of Walton-on-Thames in Surrey.

Despite a huge police inquiry that at one stage even involved the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, her killer has never been caught.

The suspect was arrested at 10 a.m. yesterday after voluntarily attending a police station, police said in a statement. (Reuters)

Former Thomas Cook staff arrested

Protesting former staff at travel operator Thomas Cook were arrested yesterday after defying a court order to end a four-day sit-in at company premises in a dispute over redundancy payments.

Police said 28 people were removed from a central Dublin office which management said on Friday was to be shut immediately, with the loss of 77 jobs.

Local media said more than 15 police officers broke down the door of the premises and removed the protesters, including a pregnant woman. The former workers will be taken to the high court, which ordered them on Monday to end the protest. (Reuters)