■ East Timor
Martial arts gangs clash
Two martial arts gangs clashed in East Timor, leaving four dead including a 70-year-old man who tried to break up the brawl, police said yesterday. The clash started late on Tuesday when one gang accused the other of attacking innocent civilians in Urahu village, about 50km outside the capital of Dili, National Police Commissioner Paul Fatima Martins said. The fight quickly escalated to include hundreds of villagers fighting mostly with sticks and homemade spears as friends and supporters of the gangs joined the fray, Martins said.
■ China
Death for baby trafficking
A woman has been sentenced to death and two others given life imprisonment after being found guilty of trafficking 120 babies in impoverished Henan Province, state press said yesterday. Li Guoju was sentenced to death by the Puyang intermediate court on Friday for buying and selling children, the Legal Daily reported. Eleven other defendants were convicted in the case, with two sentenced to life imprisonment, the paper said. The gang bought and sold mostly baby girls from August 1998 to March last year, it said. Li planned to appeal the verdict, it added. Police have said 42,215 women and children kidnapped in the three years since 2001 had been located and freed from captors.
■ Malaysia
HK gang leader caught
Malaysian police have captured a gang leader wanted in Hong Kong and Macau for his alleged involvement in a wave of killings and car bomb attacks, a news report said yesterday. Kai Hong -- the leader of a Hong Kong-based triad crime gang known as Sun Yee Onn -- was on the run for over a decade before he was arrested in a drug bust last week in Malaysia, the New Straits Times newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. Kai Hong is wanted in Macau for allegedly attempting to kill the police chief. Separately, six Chinese nationals were also arrested in and around Kuala Lumpur last week in connection with an international methamphetamine-making operation in Fiji.
■ Myanmar
Suu Kyi's birthday celebrated
More than 400 members of Myanmar's pro-democracy party yesterday prayed for the release of their leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she spent her 59th birthday under house arrest. Gathering at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy, party members released nine doves and 60 balloons to mark the beginning of Suu Kyi's 60th year. After the meeting at their headquarters, about 200 of the NLD members marched to Yangon's hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda, where they prayed for Suu Kyi's health and freedom. The group was closely watched by about 30 security personnel, but no incidents were reported.
■ Hong Kong
Hut razed in call for help
An elderly Hong Kong man -- hungry and stuck in his telephone-less home due to leg injuries -- tried to signal for help by setting fire to a quilt but started a blaze that razed his single-story hut, police said yesterday. The 60-year-old man, identified only by his surname, Leung, was seriously hurt in the fire, police spokesman Ng Ting-kai said. Leung said he had run out of food following an accident six days earlier that injured both his legs, Ng said. The burning house prompted a neighbor to call the police, and Leung -- found sitting outside the ruins of his home with his hair singed from the fire -- was later arrested for arson, Ng said.
■ Colombia
Police officers killed
At least four Colombia police officers were killed in a bomb attack believed to be carried out by leftist rebels, an official said late Friday. The car bomb went off on a street connecting Florencia and Neiva in southern Colombia as the police officers passed by, said General Martin Carreno. Carreno said Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were believed to be responsible for the attack. Peace talks between the government and FARC have failed.
■ Russia
Putin backers slam media
A pro-Kremlin youth organization has denounced "corrupt media" and declared a campaign against some of the last independent newspapers left in the country The group, which calls itself "Those who walk together," on Friday released a file on "false reporters," which mostly included newspapers critical of the authorities. Vasily Yakemenko, chief of the organization, which claims to work to promote morality and makes President Vladimir Putin's portrait their emblem, called on the incriminated newspapers to "recognize their faults and apologize before the entire society, which they lied to."
■ Israel
Commanders dismissed
The Israeli army dismissed the commander and deputy commander of a platoon whose gunfire killed a 31-year-old Palestinian in a wheelchair on June 6 near Ramallah, a military spokesman announced on Friday. It also transferred the entire platoon from the Kalandia refugee camp outside Ramallah and compelled them to undergo retraining. According to a statement issued by the army, Arafat Ibrahim Yaakub was shot and killed while people described as Palestinian rioters were sabotaging a fence near the inactive Atarot Airport. Israeli soldiers who were sent to the scene pursued the Palestinians, who then began hurling firebombs and rocks.
■ United States
Gays target VP's daughter
A campaign to compel the US vice president's lesbian daughter to oppose a proposed ban on gay marriage is launching its first Internet ad tomorrow. A series of cartoon panels features stick figures of Mary Cheney and Vice President Dick Cheney. One image reads, "Dick's daughter sold out to help Dick run again." The story line refers to Mary Cheney's job as director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney campaign. President George W. Bush is asking Congress to move on a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. "They've clearly made the decision to keep her in the closet for this campaign," said John Aravosis, who launched www.DearMary.com.
■ United Kingdom
Knighthood for Wiesenthal
Britain has awarded an honorary knighthood to Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal in recognition of a "lifetime of service to humanity." Wiesenthal, 95, survived incarceration in Nazi prison camps in eastern Europe during World War II and has since dedicated his life to bringing those responsible for the Holocaust to justice. He is perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Adolf Eichmann, the one-time SS leader who organized the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes committed against the Jews.
■ United States
Pope to get US medal
US President George W. Bush has selected a dozen people, including Pope John Paul II, to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House announced. Two of the recipients will be honored posthumously, while the others are invited to receive America's highest civilian honor at a White House ceremony with Bush next Wednesday. Among medal recipients are: Doris Day, Pope John Paul II, Estee Lauder, and golfer Arnold Palmer.
■ United States
Commission wants info
The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The commission's chairman, Thomas Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know. "Probably," Cheney replied.
■ United Kingdom
NATO force planned for Iraq
London and Washington are drawing up a plan to send a NATO force including up to 3,000 British troops to Iraq to support the interim Iraqi government as it takes over power, a British newspaper said yesterday. The troops would be "temporarily extracted" from NATO and labelled a British-led international force to make it more politically acceptable to members of the alliance -- notably France and Germany -- that were opposed to the war, The Guardian said. Officials said that the plan is expected to be formally agreed at the NATO summit in Istanbul on the eve of the official handover of sovereignty on June 30.
■ United States
Minimum wage to rise: Kerry
Asserting that "right now our economy is not working for the average American," Senator John Kerry on Friday promised to increase the federal minimum wage to US$7 an hour from US$5.15 by 2007 if he is elected. "You put in a week's work, you ought to be able to take care of your family, you ought to be able to pay your bills," Kerry, the Democrats' White House hopeful, told a small audience of union workers at Northern Virginia Community College. "If we're going to say to people, `Go to work,' if we're going to say to people, `work is a value in America,' and if we're going to say to people, `You ought to be able to go to work and be able to do better,' then we've got to make it real."
■ United States
Marshmallows cause trouble
A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine. Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge on Friday that she was roused at 6:30am by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had paid the US$50 fine before she left Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food. US Magistrate Judge John O'Sullivan, who had a copy of a citation indicating the fine had been paid, apologized to Clarke, who spent nearly nine hours in detention, and demanded that the US attorney's office determine what went wrong.
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