The Playa de Bakio, which was hijacked a week ago off the Horn of Africa, arrived safely in the Seychelles yesterday after its crew of 13 Spaniards and 13 Africans were released on Saturday. A ransom price of €767,000 was paid to the pirates.
The crew of the Spanish tuna fishing boat freed by Somali pirates yesterday talked about their ordeal after the ship was hijacked by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa in the world's most dangerous waterway.
"We were treated in a humiliating manner so we were very frightened," captain Amadeo Alvarez told reporters in Victoria. All the crew were said to be in good health.
Tajiks urged to chip in
The impoverished Central Asian nation of Tajikistan urged its people yesterday to give up their salaries to help build a new hydroelectric plant.
Millions of people in the Muslim nation north of Afghanistan struggled without heating and electricity during a record-cold winter this year, prompting the government to speed up efforts to finish the construction of the Rogun power plant.
Makhmadsaid Ubaidulloyev, speaker of the upper house of parliament, said yesterday the government could raise about $10 million for its construction if all residents of the capital Dushanbe were to give up half their wages in May and June.
Tormented by nuisance calls
Police helping a German man track down a nuisance caller discovered his tormentor for two years was a faulty card payment system in a hairdresser's shop.
The 58-year-old man in Frankfurt did not recognise the Hamburg number that kept ringing him and had it blocked. After several months, he got tired of paying for the blocking service and the calls began again on working days.
Police traced the number to a Hamburg hairdresser whose payment system dialled the man whenever it accepted a card. Staff were oblivious to the problem, which is being fixed.
Record price for men in underwear
A Beijing auction raised a record 57.12 million yuan (€5.26 million) for a mainland Chinese oil painting of men playing cards in their underwear, state media said yesterday.
The Breeding Ground No.1, from the contemporary painter Liu Xiaodong's Three Gorges Series, was bought by a private buyer at the China Guardian 2008 Spring Auction, Xinhua news agency said.
The painting, 2.6 metres high and 10 metres wide, was drawn in the Three Gorges area from 2005 to 2006, depicting 11 men in their underwear playing cards.
Billboard ban irks ad companies
Advertising companies in China's commercial capital Shanghai are confused and angry after city authorities placed a sudden and mysterious ban on billboards, state media reported yesterday.
Advertisers had speculated the move was driven by officials' concern that the billboards would harm Shanghai's image ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August, the China Daily said. The city will host some soccer qualifiers.
Authorities in China's capital Beijing last year launched a crackdown on billboards promoting luxury housing, concerned they would fan resentment among less affluent residents.
Wrong-coloured sculpture felled
A two million yuan (€183,000) sculpture in northeastern China that took two years to build was dismantled days before its unveiling because a senior government official disliked the colour, local media said yesterday.
Fly, a show-piece installation at a new airport terminal in China's northern port city of Tianjin, was taken down after a local vice-mayor took exception to it while touring the terminal three weeks before its opening, a report posted on the official China Central Television (CCTV) website said.
"He didn't like the colour. That was enough to seal Flys' death sentence," the report quoted its designer, Qu Jianxiong, as saying.
Promoting a violent region
Russia's southern region of Ingushetia is trying to overcome its reputation for bombs, murders and shootouts by paying for a glossy supplement featuring strutting dancers and smiling mothers.
The eight-page, full colour supplement entitled My Favourite Republic appeared inside copies of the popular Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda yesterday. Inside the supplement a minister explains the secrets of the republic's economic success story, a baby lies peacefully in a modern hospital ward and photos show children laughing and playing football.