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Woman is found after 19 years lost in jungle

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 19, 2007

A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child has been found 19 years later, according to police and a man named Sal Lou who says he is her father. The woman, identified as Rochom P'ngieng, 27, does not speak any intelligible language, Sal Lou said Thursday. He said he recognized his daughter by a scar on her right arm. The girl, then 8, disappeared in 1988 while herding buffalo, police said. "If she is not sleeping, she just sits and glances left and right, left and right," Sal Lou said. Officials want to take DNA samples from the parents and the woman to see if they match, and the parents have agreed.

Cleric urges youth to become martyrs

A radical Australian cleric drew widespread condemnation Thursday over a series of video lectures in which he encourages children to become martyrs for Islam and ridicules Jews as pigs. "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam," Sheik Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Center in western Sydney, said in one video broadcast on Australian television. The lectures were denounced as offensive by Australian government leaders and as not helpful by the head of the Islamic Friendship Association. The chief of the opposition Labor Party called them an incitement to terrorism. In one video, the cleric said, "Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a (holy warrior). Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom."

Elsewhere

VENEZUELA: The National Assembly gave initial approval Thursday to a measure that would let President Hugo Chavez enact laws by decree for 1 1/2 years, a key step in what leftists call an accelerating march toward socialism. Among the laws planned by Chavez are moves to nationalize the main telecommunications company and the electricity and natural gas sectors.

INDIA: An overcrowded boat capsized Thursday in the Krishna River in Mahbubnagar district en route to a religious festival, killing at least 10 people and leaving 35 missing, police said.

CHINA: Rescuers freed six miners trapped in a flooded shaft in northern China and were in contact with five others, a news agency said, but there was no word on the fate of 24 other miners.

MONTENEGRO: The Balkan republic of 620,000 people has joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, boosting the each institution's total membership to 185 countries.

AFGHANISTAN: President Bush plans to nominate William Wood, the current U.S. ambassador to Colombia, to become ambassador in Afghanistan.

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has selected Maj. Gen. Claudio Graziano of Italy as the new commander of the peacekeeping force in Lebanon, the U.N. announced.

[Last modified January 19, 2007, 00:53:53]