Two foreign tourists arrested for failing to pay Philippine hotel
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Manila - Two foreign tourists were arrested Tuesday in the Philippines for failing to pay hotel bills worth more than 1,000 dollars, police said.
Australian Susan May Jennifer Taylor and Moroccan Youssef Mouflih have been billeted at the Millionaires Hotel in the suburban city of Pasay in metropolitan Manila since August 11.
But the two tourists were only able to pay their bills for up to August 23, said Senior Superintendent Agrimero Cruz, a national police spokesman.
Cruz said the hotel management sought police assistance to apprehend Taylor and Mouflih after the two visitors again failed to pay nearly 59,000 pesos on Tuesday.
"Apparently the two foreigners have been promising to pay their bills since August 23 but have failed to produce the money," he said.
He noted that prior to their arrest, Taylor and Mouflih visited a cash machine to withdraw money but the money was not enough to pay the full amount.
Cruz said state prosecutors were studying criminal charges against the two foreigners currently detained at Pasay City's police station.
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French, German leaders say Roma row was misunderstanding
New York - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has cleared up a misunderstanding over what German Chancellor Angela Merkelsaid about illegal Roma settlements in Germany, German officials said Tuesday.
Sarkozy had said last week that Merkel told him she, like him, was planning to clear illegal Roma settlements, but the German government denied she made such a statement.
The president made the statement when he came under fire at an EU summit in Brussels over France's deportation this year of more than than 8,300 Romanians and Bulgarians, most of them Roma, or Gypsies.
He met Merkel Monday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's special session on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, and cleared up the misunderstanding, the officials said.
They did not say whether Sarkozy apologized to Merkel, but said the matter that had threatened to turn into a diplomatic dispute had now been forgotten.
The two leaders spent one minute on the topic during their friendly conversation in New York, and another 20 on Franco-German cooperation in the context of the G8 and G20 group of countries, the officials said.
Both Sarkozy and Merkel were said to have expressed surprise that the incident had been reported by the media as damaging to bilateral relations.
The officials did not explain how the misunderstanding came about. There are no reported camps of Roma immigrants in Germany.
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