■ IndonesiaMegawati 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.
■ CyprusIsraeli 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.
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