■ Singapore
Baby-killing detective jailed
A private investigator was sentenced to four years in a Singapore jail over the death of his lover's baby by pouring oil into the 7-month-old girl's mouth, news reports said yesterday. Teo Chee Seng, 35, pleaded guilty on Monday to manslaughter, The Straits Times said. The death of Jovanna Goh Jia Ying of acute salicylic acid poisoning was a twist to a relationship that started when the mother, Tay Seoh Hong, 31, hired Teo in April 2000 to check on her husband, whom she suspected of having an affair. Two months later, the mother and the investigator became lovers, the court heard. Frustrated by the baby's incessant crying, Teo applied medical oil to the infant's lips and nostrils. When that failed, he poured the contents a new bottle of oil into her mouth.
■ Hong Kong
Wishing tree gets last wish
Residents were banned yesterday from hanging offerings and requests on a century-old wishing tree after an overburdened branch fell off, injuring two people. The tree was cordoned off late Monday to Lunar New Year crowds, and people were told to pin their wishes and offerings to a nearby fence instead. An elderly man and a 4-year-old boy were injured when an 8m-long branch fell from the tree Saturday in Hong Kong's Tai Po district.
■ Hong Kong
Flu-struck Tung urged to rest
The territory's 67-year-old Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) pulled out of attending two Lunar New Year receptions yesterday because of illness. The Beijing-appointed chief executive, who rarely takes time off and boasts of working from 7am to 11pm daily, was advised by doctors to rest after being diagnosed with the flu, his office said. Tung's illness is likely to revive previous speculation that he could step down due to ill health before his second five-year term runs out in 2007. A former shipping magnate, Tung has run Hong Kong since it was returned to Chinese sovereignty by Britain in 1997.
■ Pakistan
Rocket hits troop positions
Rocket attacks against security forces in southern Pakistan damaged a vehicle and part of a protective wall at one of the compounds, an official said yesterday. No one was wounded. In the first attack on Monday, four rockets landed near a post of the Frontier Corps in Naushki, a town about southeast of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, said Lieutenant Colonel Rizwan Malik, a spokesman for the force. One rocket struck a pickup truck that was parked near the check post, smashing the vehicle's windows and its body. Three other rockets slammed into a nearby field, Malik said. In the second attack the same day, five rockets were fired at a base housing paramilitary troops in the tribal town of Kohlu and one of them struck and damaged a perimeter wall at the compound, he said.
■ China
Quake rattles northwest
An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale rocked northwest Xinjiang region yesterday, close to where a similar strength tremor killed more than 260 people in 2003. The quake struck at 7:38am with the epicenter in remote Wushi county near the border with Kyrgyzstan, according to the State Seismological Bureau. There were no immediate reports of casualties. A 6.8 magnitude earthquake in February 2003 in the same vicinity in the foothills of the Tianshan Mountains which separate the area from Kyrgyzstan claimed 268 lives and razed 20,000 houses.
■ Egypt
Weapons claims dispelled
The UN nuclear agency said on Monday that Egypt was guilty of repeated failures to report nuclear activities but downplayed any suggestion this could be related to secret atomic weapons development, in a confidential report obtained by reporters. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found traces of plutonium, a potential atomic weapons material, in "hot cells" used to handle radioactive material, the report said, with Egypt saying this was due to contamination rather than plutonium production. The report said Egypt's failures to comply with international nuclear safeguards agreements, including not reporting the building of a plutonium reprocessing facility, were "a matter of concern" but that Cairo was now cooperating and had claimed it had erred as it had not understood its reporting obligations. The Egypt report will be submitted to a meeting that opens in Vienna on Feb. 28 of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.
■ Denmark
Commuter trains collide
At least 50 people were injured, although none seriously, when two commuter trains collided on Monday at Lygnby, just north of Copenhagen, police said. Half of those injured would likely remain in hospital, but police revised earlier reports that two people were seriously injured, the Danish news agency Ritzau said. An investigation into the accident has been launched, said Henry Greve Petersen, head of railway security at the Danish State Railways. He would not speculate on the cause of the accident when a south-bound commuter train collided with another commuter train that was at the station. There were some 100 passengers on the two trains. The accident caused delays in train services, and buses were used on some destinations. Police eased road blocks erected on a nearby highway after ambulances ferried injured passengers to nearby hospitals.
■ United States
Teacher to wed former pupil
Mary Kay Letourneau plans to marry the former sixth-grade pupil with whom she had two children, months after her release from prison for raping him, according to an online bridal registry. Letourneau, 43, and Vili Fualaau, 22, set a wedding date of April 16, according to their registry at a department store. Letourneau served more than seven years on a 1997 conviction for raping Fualaau, who has said in the past that he hoped to wed his former teacher. "It's been long overdue," Noel Soriano, a friend of the couple, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a story published on Monday. "It's going to be fabulous, seeing them get hitched finally." Letourneau was a 34-year-old married mother of four when she began a sexual relationship with her then-12-year-old elementary school student in 1996.
■ United States
Missile defense test fails
A US missile defense test failed on Monday when an interceptor missile was unable to launch, the Pentagon said. Military officials were investigating the cause of the failure, and initial suspicion focused on faulty ground support equipment, not the interceptor itself, at the site on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said. It was the second setback for the system in three months. In December, the target missile failed to launch.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of