■ Indonesia
Jakarta is sinking fast
The construction of high-rise buildings and the over-exploitation of groundwater has triggered Jakarta to sink by up to 1m over the past 12 years, a news report said yesterday. A joint study carried out by PT Sucsofindo and the City Mining Agency indicated the sinkage in Jakarta would undermine any efforts to mitigate the capital over the past few years, the Jakarta Post reported. According to Haris Pindratno, head of the city mining agency, the land subsidence varies from one place to another, with North Jakarta experiencing the greatest amount of sinkage.
■ Vietnam
Bird flu claims 14th victim
Health officials yesterday raised alarms about a northern province where the latest bird flu death was reported, along with another confirmed infection and two suspected cases of the disease. Officials confirmed on Sunday that a 69-year-old man from northern Thai Binh Province had died from bird flu, making him the 14th person to die from the disease in the most recent outbreak over the past nine weeks. The man had eaten chicken with his family during Lunar New Year festivities, health officials said. A 21-year-old man from the same province has tested positive for the deadly disease. He is in critical condition in a Hanoi hospital.
■ Japan
Man held in family murders
A man is suspected of strangling five members of his family including an 85-year-old woman and her infant great-grandchildren and then attempting suicide, newspapers reported yesterday. Taira Hara, a 57-year-old nursing home worker, was found by police near the bathtub at his home on Sunday with a kitchen knife sticking in his neck. "I did it. I ... I ...," the Mainichi Shimbun quoted him as saying before he collapsed unconscious. Hara, who lived with his mother, wife and adult son, had driven his daughter and her two infant children to his house. He later went back to his daughter's house to pick up his son-in-law. When his son-in-law entered the family's home, Hara stabbed him in the abdomen but the man was able to escape and call the police.
■ China
Rice used in Great Wall
Rice fills the bowls on many Chinese tables -- and also the cracks in its ancient buildings, and maybe even the Great Wall, Xinhua news agency reported. "The legend that ancient craftsmen used glutinous rice porridge in the mortar while building ramparts has been verified," it said in a report seen yesterday. Archaeologists researching an ancient wall around Xian were stumped by the ingredients of a resilient mortar holding bricks together. The paste reacted similarly to glutinous rice in chemical tests, Qin Jianming, a researcher with the Xian Preservation and Restoration Center of Cultural Relics, was quoted as saying.
■ Thailand
Cellphone shoes prompt ban
Forty-six students have been banned from the military for life after they tried to cheat in an army examination by hiding mobile phones in their shoes, an army spokesman said yesterday. He said the students were found with phones in the soles of their shoes and pagers under their clothes by examiners using metal detectors before the multiple-choice entrance exam. Media reports said the students' parents had paid 10,000 to 20,000 baht (US$261 to US$522) each for the shoe contraptions.
■ United States
Apple pioneer dies
Jef Raskin, a computer technology pioneer who started the team that created the Macintosh computer, died on Saturday at his home in Pacifica, California, at age 61. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Blum. Raskin, who named the Macintosh after his favorite apple but altered the spelling for copyright reasons, played a significant role in transforming computers into friendlier machines, helping to catapult them into the commercial sphere. Raskin left Apple in 1982 after his relationship with Steve Jobs, the company's co-founder, soured.
■ South Africa
Baptism goes too far
Five people drowned when a participant in a baptism ceremony went into a trance and waded too far out to sea. The tragedy occurred on Saturday night off Battery Beach near Durban, where members of the new Corinthian Church at Jerusalem, a part of the Zionist movement, was holding a mass baptism. The drowned were two pairs of brothers and a priest of the church. Siyabonga Nxumalo, 20, who managed to swim back to the shore, said after the baptism of the males, one of them wanted to be baptized again. "He was overcome by the Holy Spirit and wanted to go further into the sea and we had to try and restrain him," Nxumalo said. "While we were busy, a big wave hit and pulled us in."
■ Kenya
Multinational army sought
Warlords and lawmakers from a clan that controls the Somali capital rejected plans to include troops from neighboring countries in a regional force to secure the country's transitional government as it returns from exile in Kenya. Some 61 lawmakers, including warlords-turned-Cabinet ministers, said on Sunday that including troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya in the force to secure Somalia would undermine fragile efforts to end a 14-year civil war in the nation. Ethiopia actively supported Somali factions with money and weapons in the war, and its troops could seek to advance Ethiopian interests if deployed in the country. The lawmakers filed a motion for Somalia's transitional parliament to back a multinational force -- minus troops from the neighboring countries -- to help restore peace.
■ Brazil
Facilitators questioned
Police have arrested two men working for the rancher who allegedly ordered the killing of American nun Dorothy Stang, authorities said. Cleone Santos and Magnaldo Santos, known as Negao, were taken into custody on Saturday evening, accused of aiding the two gunmen who shot 73-year-old Stang on Feb. 12 in the small Amazon town of Anapu. Santos and Negao allegedly gave food and clothing to the gunmen while they hid in the jungle to ambush Stang Santos and Negao were expected to be charged with facilitation. Police are seeking the whereabouts of Vitalmiro Moura, the rancher who wanted to log the area Stang was trying to protect.
■ Vatican City
Pope seems to recover
Pope John Paul II made a surprise appearance at the window of his hospital. After the pope's fourth night in hospital care, Sunday's appearance was his first since the tracheotomy to insert a breathing tube in his throat. A Vatican official outside St. Peter's Basilica read the 84-year-old ailing pontiff's appeal for prayers. The pope appeared for only a minute and didn't speak.
■ Somalia
Fighting breaks out
Two people died and at least nine others were wounded when fighting broke out early yesterday in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses said. Witnesses said that militias of the city's Islamic courts had clashed with residents of the so-called SOS Village area for control over that part of the capital. Residents said guns as well as missiles had been used in the fighting. Tension has risen in the Somali capital in recent weeks ahead of the planned relocation of the country's government-in-exile from Kenya, and the proposed deployment of thousands of African Union peacekeeping troops.
■ United Kingdom
Soldier under investigation
A member of the elite fighting squad the SAS is among 50 British soldiers being investigated after fresh allegations of the murder, manslaughter, and assault of Iraqis, it was disclosed Sunday. The SAS soldier faces the prospect of being charged with murder after shooting dead an Iraqi during a military operation in Basra in January last year, defense sources confirmed. It is understood that the soldier's commanding officer and the director of special forces are resisting a prosecution, arguing that no crime was committed. The disclosures follow the announcement on Friday by the head of the British army, General Sir Mike Jackson, of a wide-ranging inquiry into allegations of abuse by British soldiers serving in Iraq.
■ United States
More BTK victims expected
The man arrested in Kansas on suspicion of being the BTK serial killer confessed on the day of his arrest to six slayings, a source said. Investigators, who allege Dennis Rader committed a decades-old string of 10 slayings, also are looking into whether he was responsible for another three killings, the source said. Rader made the confession Friday, the day of his arrest, according to the source. Rader is being held on a US$10 million bond.
■ United States
Iran incentives considered
Washington is close to a decision on joining Europe in offering incentives to Iran in exchange for giving up plans to develop nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The new willingness comes after President George W. Bush's talks with German and French leaders in Europe last week and a meeting with key cabinet members and Vice President Dick Cheney. "There's no timetable," a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, "but we're looking for a decision." Officials told the Post that after "really good" meetings in Europe last week the White House "wants to move quickly to finalize a list of incentives to offer Tehran as part of European talks with Iran," the daily said.
■ France
Aristocrat's wife arrested
The wife and brother-in-law of a British aristocrat who disappeared on the French Riviera were arrested on suspicion of murdering him, judicial sources said Sunday. The 66-year-old Earl of Shaftesbury, whose full name is Anthony Ashley-Cooper, vanished from a Cannes hotel on Nov. 6. Police arrested his wife, Djamila M'Barek, 37, on Friday in Cannes. A judge put her under investigation for murder, a step short of formal charges, judicial sources said. The couple had been in the process of getting a divorce, police said. It was the third marriage for Ashley-Cooper. During questioning, the wife allegedly confessed to working with her brother to abduct her husband, officials close to the investigation said.
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