■ Hong Kong
Monks slain in monastery
A Taiwanese and a Hong Kong monk were stabbed to death at the Tung Lum Monastery, police said yesterday. The motives for the killings were unclear. The body of the 84-year-old Hong Kong monk was found lying in a pool of blood beside two knives on Satur-day near a dormitory, a police spokeswoman said. Yau said the monk suffered a fractured skull, eye injuries and knife wounds to both hands. The 53-year-old Taiwanese monk, Hsu Chian-wei, was found lying next to a pickax, had a stab wound to his chest and knife wounds to his left hand. No arrests had been made.
■ Indonesia
Militant guilty of bombings
A Muslim militant was jailed for 20 years by an Indonesian court yesterday for a 2000 car bomb attack on the Philippine ambassador's residence in Jakarta which killed two people, badly wounded the envoy and injured 17 others. Abdul Jabar was also convicted of involvement in a series of Christmas 2000 church bombings. Police have said they believe the car bombing was funded by Hambali, the top al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah militant captured in Thailand in August and now in US custody.
■ Australia
Gel could replace glasses
A revolutionary gel that can be implanted into the eye could enable millions of people to throw away their glasses, scientists at the government's Vision Co-operative Research Center believe. They claim a simple injection of the gel into the lens of middle-aged people could prevent the otherwise inevitable onset of sight deterioration. The technique, which is expected to unde-rgo human trials by the end of next year, could herald a revolution in ophthalmic surgery, according to experts. The scientists have been working on the gel technique to combat cataract surgery. But the technique could also be used for the ageing eye, which loses its ability to change shape and focus due to an inevitable hardening of the lens.
■ Australia
Lunar land for sale
Lunar Realty opens its doors in Melbourne today selling .40 hectare blocks on the moon for A$59 (US$40) and 4-hectare "lifestyle" blocks for A$298. Paul Jackson, 33, announced yesterday that he had bought the Australian rights to sell the land from Nevada-based entrepreneur Dennis Hope. Since 1980 Hope has been exploiting what he said is a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty that barred nations from laying claim to the moon but said nothing about individuals. Hope registered a claim for the moon and planets with the US, the USSR and the UN and has been selling plots of the moon's real estate ever since. Jackson said 2 million people from 180 countries have bought a slice of the moon since 1980.
■ Japan
Arrests over export scam
Police arrested several used car dealers yesterday over the export to North Korea of a large trailer that could be used for launching missiles, Kyodo news agency said. A police spokesman said that he could not confirm the arrests, but that officers had searched premises and homes linked with a used-car dealership in the town of Onojo on suspicion of fraud. The company is suspected of falsifying documents to show the price of the trailer as less than ?300,000 (US$2,770), so that it would be exempt from strict export controls, Kyodo said. The real price was more than ?3.4 million, the agency said.
■ United States
100 injured in derailment
A commuter train derailed on Chicago's South Side, injuring as many as 100 people, officials said. At least 45 people were taken to nearby hospitals, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Patrick Howe said. Most of the injuries were minor, he said. Three people were taken to the trauma unit at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where a 22-year-old man was in serious condition Sunday night, hospital spokesman Don Rashid said. The two others from the train were in fair condition.
■ Italy
Man kills two burglars
A Chinese martial arts expert was in custody yesterday after turning the tables on four burglars armed with knives, killing two of them and seriously wounding a third. The 28-year-old man, known as "the doctor" for his practice of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, managed to seize one of the two knives carried by his assailants and saw off the entire group with the ferocity of his reaction. Magistrates in the central Italian town of Empoli are now seeking to establish whether his self-defense constituted an excessive use of force. Investigators found the body of one man, who had been stabbed in the heart, sprawled on the staircase and another man bleeding to death in the street from a wound to his leg. A third man is recovering in hospital from a punctured lung.
■ Russia
Fire kills 30 patients
At least 30 psychiatric patients, some of whom were sedated, were burnt alive at a hospital in western Belarus on Sunday after a patient set fire to the building, the Emergencies Ministry said. Interfax news agency said staff at the hospital had attempted to fight the blaze on their own, delaying the deployment of emergency services. "The medical personnel tried to fight the fire and to save the patients on their own, and therefore the emergency services only heard about it half an hour after it started," Emergencies Minister Valery Astapov was quoted as saying. "By initial indications, one of the patients started the fire," an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.
■ United Kingdom
Boy gets new arms
An Iraqi boy who lost both arms and most of his family during the US-led war on Iraq has been successfully fitted with artificial limbs, a newspaper reported yesterday. Ali Ismaeel Abbas, whose armless torso, horrific burns and haunted eyes symbolized civilian suffering in the conflict, was pictured wearing the prosthetic arms in the Daily Mirror newspaper. "I'm all here now. My arms feel good," 13-year-old Abbas told the paper. "I didn't think they'd look this good. Now I want to hug my sisters and the rest of my family. I also want to brush my teeth by myself and wash my face.
■ United States
McDonald's widow dies
Joan Kroc, the billionaire widow of McDonald's Corp founder Ray Kroc who became known for her philanthropic donations to groups promoting world peace, died Sunday of brain cancer. She was 75. Kroc died at her home in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, several months after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, said Dick Starmann, her spokesman. With an estimated net worth of US$1.7 billion, Kroc ranked No. 121 on Forbes magazine's latest list of the nation's wealthiest people.
■ France
Deal with Libya in the works
Libya and families of the victims of a French airliner bombing could strike a compensation deal this week, a victims' group said on Sunday after Tripoli missed a deadline to settle the case. "I think it's quite possible that there will be a definitive accord before the end of the week," Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, a spokesman for some of the families of the 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing, said. "It all depends on the willingness of the parties," said Denoix de Saint Marc, whose father died when the French UTA airliner exploded over Africa. Tripoli has never acknowledged responsibility for the bombing, although a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia. As a result, Libya paid out some US$34 million.
■ United Kingdom
Reporter tackles Tory leader
A journalist presented a file to Britain's parliamentary watchdog yesterday suggesting that the leader of the opposition Conservative Party wrongly employed his wife. Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said in a statement that he had done nothing wrong. Michael Crick, an investigative journalist for the BBC, presented his file to the commissioner for parliamentary standards, Sir Philip Mawer. Crick says he has assembled documentation questioning whether Betsy Duncan Smith did the work for which she was paid from her husband's Parliamentary allowance. She was on his payroll for 15 months. "I have also instructed my lawyers to review the press reports with a view to taking legal action," Duncan Smith said in a statement.
■ Serbia
Wedding guests down plane
A two-seater sports plane on an unauthorized joyride was apparently shot down by mistake when it flew over a Serbian wedding party where guests were firing guns into the air, local media reported. Two men were reported to have been seriously hurt when their aircraft burst into flames and crashed near Kraljevo, central Serbia. "I heard shots from a wedding party which was very close to the crash site. Then I saw the plane in flames. It was shot in the left wing. A few moments later, while attempting a crash landing, it was caught in overhead power cables," witness Zoran Vukadinovic said. Local media said neither of the men held a pilot's licence.
■ Italy
Snake terrorizes airliner
A runaway snake which worked its way loose from cabin luggage terrorized passengers aboard a Qatar Airways flight as it was about to land at Rome's Fiumicino airport, passengers said on Sunday. Witnesses said the metre-long reptile escaped from a passenger's hand luggage and slithered its way along the overhead luggage bins towards the front of the plane. The owner of the snake tried to assure his fellow passengers that the pet was harmless, but rose from his seat to capture it when other passengers became alarmed, they said.
■ Cyprus
Briton tries to swim 320km
A Briton who tried to swim almost 320km from Cyprus to Israel ended up in hospital with hypothermia, Cypriot police said. The 39-year-old was rescued by yachtsmen off the southeast of the Mediterranean island. "He told police he was trying to swim to Jerusalem from Protaras," a police spokeswoman said, referring to a popular tourist resort on the southeastern coast. The unidentified man had set off travelling light with a just a passport, but he said he lost that at sea. He did not say why he wanted to go to Jerusalem.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not