■ Singapore
Young bomb victim recovers
A five-year-old Indonesian girl critically injured in last month's Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta has made a remarkable recovery and will leave hospital this week, press reports said yesterday. Elisabeth Manuela Musu posed for a photograph in a wheelchair. "When she came to the hospital, she was almost dead," neurosurgeon Wang Hui Fen told the Straits Times. "Both her pupils were not reacting, which means that statistically she had a less than 5 percent chance of making it." She was expected to leave the hospital today.
■ Thailand
Dog contracts bird flu
Asia's deadly bird flu has been found in a dog for the first time in Thailand, authorities said yesterday, as the country battles a second major outbreak of the virus this year. The H5N1 virus was discovered in a dog in an area where previous cases had been found in humans and poultry, Health Ministry spokeswoman Nittaya Chanruangmahaphol said. Thai newspapers reported yesterday that the dog was still alive.
■ Peru
Fujimori's wealth located
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who fled to Japan from a corruption probe, has hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign and domestic bank accounts, far more than he could ever have earned as president, Peru's Controller of the Currency has reported. Fujimori has denied wrongdoing but authorities say some US$275 million is proof that he stole public money while in office. Peru has been asking Japan to extradite Fujimori, but Japan has thus far refused. Prosecutors say Fujimori stole donations by Japanese charities from 1990 to 2000. Fujimori claims that in the days of his presidency he earned only the equivalent of US$600 a month.
■ Bangladesh
Editor slain with axes
An editor of a newspaper in Bogra was killed early yesterday by five ax-wielding youths who appeared to be professional killers, police said. Dipankar Chakroborty, 59, editor of the daily Durjoy Bangla, was heading home when the gang struck, police said. "Some five criminals did this murder, and from the type of attack it seems they were professional killers," said Nurul Islam of the Bogra police. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has said at least 26 Bangladeshi reporters were attacked or threatened in January alone.
■ Hong Kong
Filipino maids protest fees
More than 200 Filipino maids protested outside their government's consulate in Hong Kong yesterday, denouncing its contract and passport fees, police and an organizer said. The workers chanted slogans criticizing the HK$212.50 (US$27) charge for authenticating maid contracts and its HK$425 passport fee, said protest organizer Eman Villanueva. He called the authentication fee "a moneymaking scheme" because Hong Kong immigration officials don't require the contracts of foreign maids to be authenticated, while the passport fee is much higher than the HK$100 charged in the Philippines.
■ Serbia
Serbs hold second election
Serbian voters went to the polls for the second round of local elections yesterday to choose between moderate and ultra-nationlist candidates for mayors in cities and towns throughout the country. These are the first democratic local elections in Serbia since nationalist president strongman Slobodan Milosevic and his regime were ousted in October 2000. Serbian reformist President Boris Tadic and moderate nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica have joined forces since the first round of the local elections on Sept. 19, in a bid to strengthen the democratic bloc and defeat the hardline nationalist Serbian Radical Party.
■ United Kingdom
Police may `cover up' attack
The police, seeking to minimize public panic, would withhold the true death toll if there is a catastrophic attack on Britain by the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda, the Sunday Times newspaper claimed. Citing leaked secret Scotland Yard plans, the paper said officers should not disclose the "numbers or seriousness/nature of injuries" immediately after a "dirty bomb" attack, even if there are thousands of casualties. One of the confidential memos, titled "Communications Strategy for Dealing with a Terrorist Attack," suggests that poor handling of an attack will have "political implications" that could damage the police and government, it said.
■ France
17 ETA suspects arrested
Seventeen people were arrested in an operation against suspected members of armed Basque separatist group ETA in southwestern France yesterday morning and stocks of equipment were seized, a source close to the operation told reporters. The police said searches were continuing, but they did not yet have sufficient information to confirm whether those detained were senior members of ETA, which has been fighting for over three decades for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.
■ Germany
45,000 protest welfare cuts
Some 45,000 demonstrators marched through Berlin on Saturday in a protest against upcoming welfare cuts agreed by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder with the conservative opposition. Leftist parties and trade unions organized the rally, intended to restore some vitality to the flagging campaign against the cuts, which are known by the code word Hartz Four. The marchers hired 97 buses to reach the capital from all over Germany. Organizers concurred with police that 45,000 people were on the streets. Commentators said the movement was hurt by squabbling among the organizers, who also include the anti-globalization group Attac.
■ Slovenia
Voters hit the polls
Slovenians went to the polls for parliamentary elections yesterday, with the government facing a strong challenge from the center-right. Some 1.6 million voters were registered to elect the 90 members of the legislature from 1,390 candidates from 17 parties, eight of which are represented in parliament, several civilian organisations and independent lists. It is the tiny former Yugoslav state's first parliamentary elections since it joined the EU in May. Polls will be opened from 7am to 7pm. Exit poll projections are expected after the closure of polls.
■ United States
US ship readies for prize bid
A private US spaceship was set to blast off for the second time in five days today in the final stage of an attempt to clinch a US$10 million prize aimed at launching a new era of space tourism. SpaceShipOne is the front runner to win the coveted Ansari X Prize that organizers hope will spawn an age of space travel rivalling the dawn of commercial air transport in the late 1920s. Wednesday, test pilot Mike Melvill took it on its second successful -- if hair-raising -- foray out of the earth's atmosphere that simultaneously bedazzled and horrified onlookers.
■ Mexico
Anniversary rally peaceful
Thousands of students, union leaders and activists flooded the streets of Mexico's capital Saturday to mark the anniversary of the Oct. 2, 1968, massacre of protesters in Tlatelolco plaza. Unlike in years past, the 36th anniversary demonstrations were largely peaceful, as protesters gathered in Tlatelolco, then marched 2.2km to the main square of Mexico City's historic downtown district. Protesters demanded President Vicente Fox bring to justice those responsible for the massacre, in which snipers and army troops fired on a pro-democracy student demonstration that came 10 days before Mexico City began hosting the Olympics.
■ United States
Shoplifter barred from CIA
The man chosen for the third-ranking job in the CIA resigned under pressure from the US spy agency more than 20 years ago after being caught shoplifting, The Washington Post reported yesterday. Michael Kostiw, picked by new CIA Director Porter Goss to be the agency's executive director, has not received final clearance to take the job, although he had been scheduled to be sworn in today, the newspaper reported, citing a friend of Kostiw whom it did not identify. Citing past and current agency officials, the Post said Kostiw was caught shoplifting in late 1981 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
■ United Kingdom
Contracts called `unjustified'
A London-based lawyer worked with three British executives from the US construction group Halliburton to pay at least US$132 million in "unjustified" fees to contacts in Nigeria, the Independent on Sunday reported. These payments, many of which occurred when Halliburton was being run by Dick Cheney, now the US vice president, helped a consortium including the US group to win a US$12 billion contract to build a gas terminal at Bonny Island in Nigeria, it said. In court documents submitted to a French corruption probe, Halliburton has admitted it paid US$132 million to Jeffrey Tesler, a British lawyer who works in Tottenham, north London, it said.
■ Brazil
Millions vote in local polls
Nearly 120 million Brazilians went to the polls yesterday in mayoral elections seen as a key midterm test for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as the campaign was shaken Saturday by the killing of a candidate and the discovery of a bomb. Analysts will be measuring whether Lula's Workers' Party benefitted at the local level from his popularity and encouraging economic news, with an eye on his chances for re-election in 2006. In the town of Redentora in Rio Grande do Sul state on the border with Uruguay and Argentina, city council candidate Antonio Euribides da Silva, 56, was shot and killed Saturday.
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