■ Indonesia
Megawati mulling appeal
Despite securing a landslide win in Indonesia's presidential polls, future leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday continued to avoid declarations of victory pending a possible challenge to the result. The campaign team of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who on Tuesday urged her nation to accept the election outcome but stopped short of conceding defeat, said they may appeal the Sept. 20 vote outcome.
■ China
SARS monkeys get respect
Thirty-eight Chinese rhesus monkeys that died in SARS research have had a monument erected in their honor, state media said yesterday. The monument, which is in granite and weighs 16 tonnes, has been set up at the lab animals center of Wuhan University in central Hubei province, Xinhua news agency reported. "For lab animals that have died for the health of humans," the monument reads, while on the back the inscription goes, "In special memory of the 38 rhesus monkeys that devoted their lives to SARS research." The text was written by Professor Sun Lihua, a researcher who last year tried to work out a vaccine to fight SARS.
■ Australia
Pilot ditches plane in Pacific
An Australian pilot forced to ditch his small plane in the Pacific Ocean says he spent more than a dozen hours at the mercy of the open sea -- and that he may give up trans-Pacific flights because of the ordeal. Ray Clamback, 67, treaded water with only a lifejacket for up to seven hours after being forced down Monday when his Cessna 182 suffered engine trouble while he was alone on a flight from Hawaii to Australia, he said. A US Coast Guard plane then dropped him a lifeboat, and he was rescued more than nine hours later by a passing container ship, Clamback said yesterday. It was the second time he had to ditch a plane in the Pacific, and maybe it's time to give up flying over the ocean, he said.
■ Hong Kong
Bank crushes heirlooms
The valuable contents of some of the 83 safety deposit boxes trashed in a Hong Kong bank's embarrassing renovation blunder have been recovered, a media report said yesterday. However, many of the salvaged articles were badly damaged after the boxes were crushed in a scrapyard's industrial compressor. Bank officials fear that millions of dollars of cash, jewellery, heirlooms and other valuables were lost when the shoe-carton sized boxes were mixed up with some 900 unused and empty lockers earmarked for scrapping by a branch of DBS Bank. Company officials said they only discovered the bungle after the boxes had been destroyed at the scrapyard on Sunday.
■ Malaysia
Retiree marries 53rd wife
A Malaysian septugenarian tied the knot in 1957, and tied it again and again -- 53 times. This week, he's gone back to where he started, remarrying wife No. 1. "I am not a playboy. I just love seeing beautiful women," Kamaruddin Mohammed, 72, was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper. Kamaruddin's latest bride, now 74, also was the first woman he married and divorced. In between marrying Khadijah Udin, in 1957 and again on Monday, the "easy going charmer" married 51 times, including to an Englishwoman and a Thai. He stayed with the Thai the longest, for 20 years. All his previous marriages ended in divorce except with the Thai woman, who died of cancer.
■ Cyprus
Israeli jets in airline mix-up
Israeli fighter jets mistakenly buzzed a Swiss aircraft close to Cyprus on Tuesday before intercepting a German airliner and forcing it to land on the island because of a bomb threat, a senior official said yesterday. Cyprus is furious that Israeli fighters scrambled to intercept the aircraft, a potential security risk, without clearance within Cyprus-administered airspace and "forced" it to land at a Cypriot airport. Communications Minister Haris Thrassou said that before the Lufthansa jet was approached a Swiss plane had to switch altitude because it was approached by two Israeli F-16s. "It appears they then realized their mistake and moved on to the Lufthansa plane," he said.
■ Belgium
Proviso set in Turkey EU bid
The EU's head office opened a meeting in Brussels yesterday where it was likely to recommend that Turkey begin EU membership talks with one key proviso: that negotiations be halted if Ankara backtracks on sweeping democratic and human rights reforms. If the European Commission's expected recommendation is formally approved by the 25 EU leaders at a December summit, entry talks could begin early next year, capping years of lobbying by Turkish officials who say their country could form a bridge between Muslim countries and Europe. "I hope there will be a consensus today," EU Commission President Romano Prodi said as he entered the meeting.
■ United Kingdom
Brain surgery nothing new
The history of brain surgery is being rewritten after the discovery of a skull which shows that complex operations were performed in Anglo-Saxon England. A century before the Norman invasion of 1066, a doctor or itinerant healer was delicately removing scraps of skull from a 40-year-old peasant from Yorkshire in northern England who had been whacked on the head. The unknown surgeon, working around the year 960, remodelled healthy bone as well as removing broken splinters. According to English Heritage archaeologists, the patient lived for many years after the operation, finally dying of unrelated causes.
■ France
Lethal virus recreated
Scientists working in top-security labs say they have recreated pathogens from the 1918 flu pandemic, the greatest plague of the 20th century, in a bid to find out why this strain was so extraordinarily lethal. Using reverse genetic engineering, the US team took two key genes from the 1918 virus and slotted them into human flu viruses to which lab mice were known to be immune. The mice were injected in the nose with the recombinant viruses. Within three days, mice that had been exposed were mortally ill. The virus produced inflammation and hemorrhaging characteristic of the symptoms induced by the 1918 outbreak.
■ Kenya
`Place of Ghosts' claims 17
At least 17 people died and 34 were injured when a bus plunged into a dry riverbed east of the capital, Nairobi, Kenyan media reported yesterday. Police suspected the bus had been speeding before swerving off the road on Tuesday and crashing into the riverbed at a spot locals call the "Place of Ghosts" due to the frequency of accidents there. The bus was reportedly carrying at least 61 passengers. It had a 48-passenger capacity. Among the dead were women and several children.
■ United States
Rodney Dangerfield dies
US comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who was known for his self-deprecating jokes and the phrase "I get no respect," died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospital, his publicist said. He was 82. The cause of death was complications since surgery in August to replace a heart valve, a spokesman said. Among those complications were a stroke and coma. Along with numerous TV appearances, the bug-eyed, rumpled Dangerfield also appeared in 21 movies, including Caddyshack and Back to School. He also won critical nods for his first dramatic role in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers in 1994. His claim to fame was portraying a loveable loser and the aggravations of the average man.
■ United states
Lennon killer denied parole
Mark Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980, was denied parole on Tuesday for the third time, the New York State Parole Board said. The panel of three Parole Board members at Attica state prison wrote that a release of Chapman, 49, would "significantly undermine respect for the law," because he had demonstrated "extreme malicious intent" when he fired a revolver at Lennon outside his Manhattan apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980. Chapman first requested parole in October 2000. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in 1981 for the shooting, which devastated music fans throughout the world.
■ United States
No bail for `regretful' Gotti
Rejecting a lawyer's argument that his client now prefers writing children's books to extortion and racketeering, a federal judge on Tuesday denied bail for John Gotti, prince of the Gambino crime family, who is accused of trying to murder Curtis Sliwa, the New York radio talk show host, 12 years ago. "He's done with organized crime, and he's made it impossible to go back to it," said Gotti's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, citing jailhouse conversations secretly recorded by the government. On the tapes, Gotti is heard cursing the violent life he said his family had imposed on him, according to an affidavit describing the conversations. "I am ashamed of who I am; I'd rather be a Latin King," he said, referring to the notorious Hispanic street gang.
■ Mexico
Leftists storm Congress
Mexican leftists defending the embattled mayor of Mexico City stormed the nation's lower house of Congress on Tuesday to protest a plan to cut federal education funding for the city. Dozens of Mexican leftists, mostly Mexico City legislators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, seized the dais to protest a proposal by the two biggest parties to cut federal funding to capital city schools. Demonstrators, many of whom got into shoving matches with federal legislators trying to remove them from the podium, still held their positions late into the night on Tuesday.
■ Brazil
Powell woos president
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, stepping up courtship of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on Tuesday that the US had no concerns that Brazil was planning to develop nuclear weapons, despite the country's resistance to allowing international inspectors greater access to one of its nuclear reactors. Powell also said that Brazil's contributions to peacekeeping in Haiti and other actions made it worthy of permanent membership on the UN Security Council.
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