■ 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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of