■ Hong Kong
Police seize 10kg of cocaine
A 72-year-old man returning from Peru has been arrested with 10.2 million Hong Kong dollars (US$1.3 million) worth of cocaine at Hong Kong's airport, the government said yesterday. Customs officers arrested the Hong Kong man, identified by his surname Lam, on Saturday morning and seized his 10.3km haul, the government said in a statement. He had traveled to Hong Kong from Lima, Peru, via the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, it said. Lam will be charged with trafficking a dangerous drug, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and a HK$5 million (US$640,000) fine in Hong Kong, the statement said.
■ Singapore
Couples may get HIV tests
Couples in Singapore may face mandatory HIV tests before marrying, Singapore media reported yesterday, a week after the government said all pregnant women would be screened for HIV/AIDS to stem a rise in new infections. Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said Singapore planned to seek public feedback on the pre-marital HIV tests in the wealthy, tightly controlled city-state, where the number of new HIV infections reached a record high this year. "If you ask me as a parent, I think there is no harm. I have three girls and you do not know what their boyfriends will be like," Khaw was quoted by The Straits Times as telling local reporters on Saturday.
■ China
Thousands put to death
China carried out nearly 90 percent of the world's executions last year, putting at least 5,000 people to death, according to an activist group campaigning to end capital punishment. China is one of 60 countries that still have the death penalty, the Rome-based group Hands Off Cain said in a report issued Friday. It said other governments carried out more than 500 executions. China's government relies heavily on the death penalty in effort to reassure the public that it is taking action against corruption and rising crime. People are executed for crimes ranging from murder and rape to tax fraud, petty theft and other nonviolent offenses. The figure given by Hands Off Cain for China's executions is higher than those reported by other human rights groups.
■ Bangladesh
Muslims pray for peace
Millions of Muslims prayed together for peace and harmony on a riverbank near the Bangladeshi capital yesterday, concluding an annual assembly that is considered one of the world's largest Islamic gatherings. Gathered under a huge bamboo-and-canvas marquee on the banks of the Turag River, the pilgrims listened to recitations from the Islamic holy book, the Koran, and took part in the noon prayer. Organizers said as many as 4 million people were expected to attend the event, which wraps up a three-day congregation.
■ Hong Kong
Fortune-telling books seized
Customs officers have seized nearly 1,500 fake fortune telling books that contain published predictions for the wrong year, a customs official said yesterday. The fake books, which were seized Friday, purport to offer predictions for the next Chinese calendar year, the Year of the Rooster, but their texts are lifted from published predictions for previous years, said Customs and Excise Department official Chiu Yuk-hung. The fakes were published under the names of local fortune tellers and legitimate publishers, he said. Six people were arrested and customs officials are still investigating, Chiu said.
■ Germany
Iraqi militants arrested
Two Iraqis arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting an attack against visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi were remanded in custody Saturday, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor said. An investigating judge continued to question a third suspect. The three men were arrested on Friday after early morning raids in three German cities. The men, believed to be members of the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam, were suspected of planning an attack during Allawi's visit this week. The prosecutor's office said a fourth man, a Lebanese, was arrested Saturday in Berlin on suspicion of supporting Ansar al-Islam, described as a foreign terrorist organization, and his home searched.
■ Turkey
Parliament passes reforms
The Turkish parliament on Saturday approved proposals to scale down police powers and improve conditions of detainees before a crucial EU summit that will decide whether to start membership negotiations with Turkey. The amendment to Turkey's code on criminal proceedings is one of three reforms the nation's government promised to adopt in time for a Dec. 16 to Dec. 17 EU summit at which European leaders will decide whether to give the green light for accession talks.
■ Niger
Nigeriens go to the polls
Telling Niger to show the world it is a democracy, President Mamadou Tandja cast his ballot in a runoff for re-election in this western Sahara nation. Tandja, Niger's first elected president to complete his term without being assassinated or ousted in a coup, faced former Prime Minister Mahamadou Issoufou, whose party holds the most seats in parliament. Tandja got the most votes of the six candidates in the Nov. 16 first-round balloting but failed to win an outright majority.
■ Hungary
Divisive referendum held
Hungarians headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in an emotionally charged referendum on granting dual citizenship to millions of ethnic Hungarians living abroad. Supporters of the proposal say it could heal the hurt of a nation which lost two-thirds of its land after World War I, while critics say a "yes" would be backward-looking for a modern EU state -- as well as costly. Hungarians will also vote on Sunday on an end to hospital privatization.
■ France
Police lose explosives
Police training sniffer dogs at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives had been placed, a police official said Saturday. The luggage could have made it on to a flight, but there was virtually no risk of detonation, he said. Police at Charles de Gaulle airport deliberately placed the bag containing 100 to 150 grams of plastic explosives into a passenger's luggage early Friday evening, police spokesman Pierre Bouquin said. But a "momentary lack of surveillance" led to the bag being lost on an internal conveyor belt carrying luggage from check-in to planes, he said. Police didn't know the bag's destination. Authorities immediately alerted the relevant airlines that one of between 80 and 90 planes that left the French capital from 5:30pm to 7pm Friday could be carrying the explosives, Bouquin said.
■ United States
Designer crypts available
For the sum of US$300,000, aficionados of the great American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright can be buried in one of the last of his works to be completed: the Blue Sky Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. Designed 76 years ago and finally built 45 years after Wright's death, the mausoleum has 24 two-coffin crypts. The first crypt has been sold and negotiations under way on others. Recalling the layered slabs of his prairie-style houses, the mausoleum is inscribed with a Wright quote expressing his intention for a "burial facing the open sky."
■ United States
Woman sells `ghost' online
A woman's effort to assuage her 6-year-old son's fears of his grandfather's ghost by selling it on eBay has drawn more than 34 bids with a top offer of US$78. Mary Anderson said she placed her father's "ghost" on the online auction site after her son, Collin, said he was afraid the ghost would return someday. Anderson said Collin has avoided going anywhere in the house alone since his grandfather died last year. In a description titled "This isn't a joke," Anderson told Collin's story on eBay: "I always thought it was just normal kid fears until a few months ago he told me why he was so scared. He told me `Grandpa died here, and he was mean. His ghost is still around here!'" Lest the boy's fears scare off potential bidders, Anderson added, "My dad was the sweetest most caring man you'd ever meet."
■ Egypt
Arab-Israeli spy released
Israel has released six Egyptian students in exchange for Israeli businessman Azzam Azzam in a prisoner swap yesterday, Arab television Al Arabiya reported. "Israel has announced that the Israeli spy Azzam Azzam would reach Israel within one hour from now," the satellite channel's correspondent said but gave no details. Sources close to the Egyptians' families said the six had been released yesterday. Israel has been pressing for Azzam's release since an Egyptian court sentenced him in 1997 to 15 years in jail for spying.
■ Canada
Over 1,000 to go to Ukraine
More than 1,000 Canadians are planning to travel to Ukraine on a democracy mission to monitor the Dec. 26 revote of the annulled presidential election, the leader of a Ukrainian-Canadian organization said. In Alberta, where nearly 10 percent of the province's population has roots in Ukraine, turnout is expected to be strong for the planned 1,500-member mission, said the president of the Alberta Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. "It touches all of us," Catherine Chichak said Saturday.
■ Iran
Site access discussed
Iran said yesterday it was not obliged to allow UN atomic energy agency inspectors to visit military sites alleged to be involved in secret nuclear weapons work, but that it was willing to discuss the issue. "It is not a matter of unlimited commitments and unlimited inspections," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters when asked if International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) teams would be able to probe two suspect military facilities. The Vienna-based watchdog has asked Iran if it can visit the Parchin military base east of Tehran, where US officials have said the Iranians may be testing "high-explosive shaped charges with an inert core of depleted uranium" as a dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work.
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