■ Thailiands
Thais asked to turn off lights
Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has asked the kingdom's entire population to turn off their lights for five minutes on Wednesday at 8:45pm as part of an energy-saving campaign that the government hopes will reduce a growing trade deficit because of recent sharp increases in oil prices. Thaksin said he would lead a televised countdown for switching off lights starting at 8:45pm on Wednesday. Besides turning off unneeded lights, the government is also urging Thais to turn off air conditioners every day during the one-hour lunch break, and to drive at speeds of no more than 90km an hour. Energy Minister Wiset Jupibal has said that Thailand could save 1.2 billion baht (US$29 million) a year if every house switched off a light for one hour each day.
■ Singapore
Malay royals miffed
Singapore has built a Malay heritage center on the land, irking a group of 96 Malays who claim descent from Sultan Hussain Mahomed Shah, an early 19th century ruler of the island. "They never answer our letters," said Tengku Othman Tengku Aziz, a sixth-generation descendant of Sultan Hussain, adding that the Singapore government had turned the sultan's old palace into a heritage center without compensating his descendants. The center, situated on a 56-acre plot in central Singapore, houses a typical "kampong" or village house of the 1960s and is a repository of items of Malay literature, film and art such as the works of Zubir Said, composer of Singapore's national anthem. The center is due to open on June 4. "If Singapore plays a deaf ear, I may go to the International Court of Justice and claim the whole island of Singapore," Tengku Othman, a Malaysian citizen, said on Friday.
■ Thailand
Three die in unrest
Three people, including a deputy village headman, were shot dead and two others wounded in new attacks by suspected separatist militants in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority south, police said yesterday. Unknown attackers gunned down Panawa Ladeng, 35, the deputy chief of Kororamae village in southernmost Yala province, at about midnight Friday, regional police said in an official report. Hours earlier, 29-year-old villager Sompop Yingyong was shot in the head by two assailants as he traveled with his family in neighbouring Pattani province.
■ Afghanistan
Bin Laden not here: official
Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said in an interview released Friday that he has seen no evidence to convince him that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is hiding in Afghanistan. "Personally, as well as the foreign minister of Afghanistan, I haven't seen any evidence to convince me that he is in Afghanistan at this stage," Abdullah said in an interview with CNN to be aired today. "Perhaps in other phases, he was able to come back and forth, go back and forth" between Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said.
■ Thailand
Prisons short on underwear
Female inmates in Thailand's prisons are so short of underwear that the head of the main women's prison appealed to the public for donations -- new or recycled. The director of the Central Women's Prison, Ankhanueng Lebnak, said Friday that the government refuses to provide a budget to buy each female prisoner more than two pairs of underpants each year because they are considered a luxury item, the official Thai News Agency reported. An appeal for assistance yielded donations of 74,010 new and used garments, and Ankhanueng began distributing the extra underwear to prisons across the country on Friday, the report said.
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