■ Malaysia
Wedding called off via SMS
A jilted bride was left waiting on her wedding dais after her groom called off the engagement via a mobile phone text message, a report said yesterday. But Norlida Abdul Rahman, 23, put on a brave face and her wedding dress on Friday night and carried on with the wedding feast for 1,000 guests at her family home although her fiance, a state football player whose identity was not revealed, did not turn up. "Everything was going well until last Monday when he began behaving differently and showed doubts about the marriage," Norlida was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times. Early on Friday, she received his text message, cancelling the wedding and asking her to forgive him. "We were not meant to be together," he had written.
■ China
Jury trials to be used
China will start holding jury trials next year as part of court reforms that also will increase the number of judges. Jurors are to be elected to five-year terms and must have at least two years of university education, Xinhua reports said. It wasn't clear how the use of juries would affect the two biggest public complaints about Chinese courts -- corruption by court officials and interference by Communist Party officials in rulings. Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, promised that courts would take tougher action on the politically sensitive issues of corruption and intellectual property theft, as well as smuggling and dereliction of duty, the reports said.
■ Japan
Cancer victim slashes two
A man distraught over his losing battle with cancer went on a stabbing spree at a Tokyo hospital yesterday, fatally slashing two fellow patients and wounding a nurse with a kitchen knife, police said. Mitsuru Asami, 59, was arrested by police at Shirahigebashi Hospital yesterday morning, accusing his two victims of watching him too closely, a police spokesman said on condition of anonymity. An 86-year-old man was stabbed in the chest and abdomen, and a 75-year-old man was stabbed in the throat and stomach, the spokesman said. A 41-year-old female nurse was stabbed in the back and was in critical condition, he said.
■ China
14 die in mine explosion
Fourteen workers died in a gas explosion at a coal mine in southwest China, workplace safety officials said yesterday. The blast Sunday in Shilin town, Sichuan Province, occurred when 17 miners were underground, the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety said on its Web site. Rescuers hauled eight bodies from the shaft and brought the other nine workers to the surface only for six to die later in hospital from their injuries. The remaining three were receiving treatment. The coal mine, which has an annual capacity of 27,215 tonnes, belongs to the Xingwen County Yinfang Mining Co.
■ Cambodia
US to give funds for Angkor
The US government will give a US$550,000 grant to help protect one of the temples in Cambodia's renowned Angkor temple complex, officials said. The grant will be given to the World Monuments Fund (WMF) to conduct research and to create a plan to manage tourism at the 9th-century Phnom Bakheng temple, the US State Department and the WMF said in a statement received yesterday. It would be the first time the US government has directly supported conservation work at the Angkor temples.
■ Turkey
Church leaders acquitted
A Turkish court yesterday acquitted Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Turkey-based spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, and other top church leaders of charges that they prevented a Bulgarian priest from conducting religious ser-vices. The court dropped the charges without giving a reason in a case that represented a challenge to Bartholomew's authority. Bartholomew and the 12 senior clerics were charged in this predominantly Muslim, but secular, country on rarely invoked charges of "preventing others from observing faith and conduc-ting religious services" after the priest was dismissed in 2002.
■ South Africa
Mandela's party canceled
Nelson Mandela's Christmas party was brought to a halt on Sunday after around 76,000 people, far more than organizers had expected, turned up at his rural Eastern Cape Province home. Children and adults reported-ly began pushing and shoving at the event that had seen many arrive a day early to queue for a meal and Christ-mas gifts at the anti-apartheid struggle hero's house in the village of Qunu. Officials from the Nelson Mandela Foundation that catered for around 45,000 people said they were forced to call off the event that police feared could end in a stampede. Mandela was not in attendance for the first time since the party was initiated 11 years ago.
■ United States
Bush `Person of the Year'
After winning re-election and "reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style," US President George W. Bush for the second time was chosen as Time magazine's Person of the Year. The magazine's editors tapped Bush "for sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes -- and ours -- on his faith in the power of leadership." After a grueling election campaign, Bush remains a polarizing figure in America and around the world, and that's part of the reason the magazine selected him, managing editor Jim Kelly said. The magazine gives the title to the person who had the greatest impact, good or bad, over the year.
■ Chile
Pinochet on the mend
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was still in hospital recovering from a stroke yesterday, as an appeals court was readying to rule on whether to drop the latest criminal charges against him. Officials at the hospital where the former general is being treated said that Pinochet's health was improving, but that he would remain hospitalized for more tests. The former dictator had regained consciousness and his mobility, they said. Pinochet, 89, suffered a stroke on Saturday.
■ United States
Cancer a risk for war vets
Veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War exposed to pollution from oil well fires, exhausts and other sources face an increase risk of lung cancer, a government advi-sory group reported yester-day. A committee of the Institute of Medicine con-cluded there isn't enough evidence to determine whether most of veterans' health problems are asso-ciated with such exposures. But it said occupational and environmental exposure to combustion products has been shown to increase danger of lung cancer. The committee said evidence is too weak to connect other cancers to exposure to combustion products.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the