hEx-British rocker jailed

hEx-British rocker jailed
VUNG TAU, Vietnam -- Former British rocker Gary Glitter is being held at the Phuoc Co prison. Glitter admitted to police that an 11-year-old girl slept in his bed but denied sexually abusing her, his attorney said. Glitter, 61, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, is being held on suspicion of engaging in obscene acts with a child, a charge punishable by up to 12 years in prison if he is convicted.
School chief apologizesfor language suspension
KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Superintendent Bobby Allen of the Turner School District has issued a personal apology to a high school junior suspended for speaking Spanish in school. The student was sent home from Endeavor Alternative School last week after he used his native language at lunch and again later in the day. Principal Jennifer Watts sent the student home Nov. 28 and suspended him through the following day. She told his father that the suspension was a direct result of his son's speaking Spanish, district officials said.
N.J. governor-electappoints U.S. senator
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Gov.-elect Jon Corzine on Friday appointed Democratic Rep. Robert Menendez to serve out the remaining year in Corzine's Senate term, giving New Jersey its first minority senator. Menendez, 51, becomes the third Hispanic in the Senate, joining Democrat Ken Salazar of Colorado and Republican Mel Martinez of Florida. Menendez, with his huge $4.1 million campaign war chest and status as the third most powerful Democrat in the House, was long considered the front-runner for Corzine's seat. National Democrats pushed for a solid candidate to keep the seat in the party's hands in the 2006 election, a post no New Jersey Republican has won since 1972.
Mich. fugitives captured
ADRIAN, Mich. -- A convicted murderer and another inmate escaped from prison Friday by hiding in the back of a garbage truck, but they were quickly arrested, a state corrections spokesman said. Lyle Harvey Curtis, 37, and William Dean Michels, 47, left the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in a garbage truck but were captured less than an hour later, said Russ Marlan, the prisons spokesman. Curtis broke his leg when the two men jumped from the back of the truck at a nearby landfill, but the two kept going, Marlan said. He said the prisoners abducted a man shoveling his driveway and forced him to drive them to a strip mall, but neighbors who witnessed the abduction called authorities. The men were arrested when they arrived at the strip mall, he said. Curtis is serving a 40 to 70 years for second-degree murder, Marlan said. Michels is serving 34 to 60 years for rape, he said.
Riot police seal off village
BEIJING -- Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 10 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday. It was the deadliest known use of force by security forces against Chinese civilians since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989, and marked an escalation in the social protests that have convulsed the Chinese countryside. During the demonstration Tuesday in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, thousands of people gathered to protest the amount of money offered by the government as compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant. Police started firing into the crowd, killing as many as 10 people, mostly men, and wounding up to 20, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. They said many remained missing.
5-year-old dies of bird flu
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A 5-year-old boy became Thailand's second bird flu fatality in two months, while Vietnam announced two new outbreaks and China its fifth human case amid concern that infection rates could soar this winter. Thai health authorities said Friday that lab tests showed the boy died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which international experts fear could trigger a human pandemic if it mutates into a form easily passed between people. Health officials believe the boy had contact with the feces of chickens belonging to an uncle living next door.
Combined dispatches