■ China
Faye weds Li Yapeng
Chinese pop diva Faye Wong (王菲) has tied the knot with actor Li Yapeng (李亞鵬), Hong Kong and Chinese media reported yesterday. The 35-year-old songstress married Li, 33, a Chinese actor, on Thursday in his hometown of Urumqi in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Hong Kong's Apple Daily reported. The two, accompanied only by Li's brother and a friend, turned up at the marriage registry in casual clothes, the report said.
■ Hong Kong
Women outnumber men
Hong Kong females will soon massively outnumber men, according to government estimates yesterday. Because of a steady flow of women from China seeking wealthy husbands and more than 200,000 female domestic helpers mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, there are more than enough women to go around. Census and Statistics Department figures show that whereas in 1981 there were only 1,000 women for every 1,087 men, there are now only 929 men for every 1,000 women.
■ Afghanistan
First election ballots arrive
The first shipment of millions of ballot papers for legislative elections arrived in the Afghan capital yesterday, about eight weeks ahead of the polls that will see the war-torn country take another crucial step toward democracy. The papers, flown in on a giant Antonov transport plane, were the first to arrive of some 40 million that have been printed in Britain and Austria ahead of the Sept. 18 elections. "The arrival of these ballot papers marks an important milestone in our plans to hold" the elections, said Bissmillah Bissmil, chairman of the UN-backed Joint Electoral Management Body.
■ Japan
Eye glasses mugger nabbed
A fetish Japanese mugger who longed for his boyhood friend's eyeglasses was arrested with 154 pairs of glasses or contact lenses he allegedly seized by force, police and reports said yesterday. Construction worker Toru Nagasawa, 29, was caught after he went outside a man's apartment building and asked for directions. Nagasawa then punched the victim in the face, saying he did not answer politely enough, police said. Nagasawa then allegedly followed the victim into his apartment and forced him to take off his contact lenses, a police spokesman said.
■ India
Train blast due to bomb
Police said yesterday that an explosion in a train that left 13 people dead and dozens wounded was caused by a bomb planted in a toilet. Railway officials had earlier suggested the blast late on Thursday near Jaunpur town in northern Uttar Pradesh state may have been caused by a cooking gas cylinder, sometimes carried by villagers on trains. But bomb experts discounted this yesterday. "There is enough evidence to confirm the use of RDX explosive," a member of a police bomb squad said. Uttar Pradesh Home Secretary Alok Sinha said authorities did not have any specific leads on who was behind the blast which occurred in an unreserved coach.
■ Indonesia
Pilot nabbed for murder
Prosecutors filed charges yesterday against a pilot accused of helping poison to death an Indonesian human rights activist on a flight to Amsterdam late last year, officials said. Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was a pilot for the national Garuda Indonesia Airways, was charged with helping plan and carry out the Sept. 7, 2004 murder of Munir Said Thalib, said Yan Witra, a clerk at the Central Jakarta District Court. He faces a maximum penalty of death if convicted. "We have a very strong case against him," said prosecutor Gianto, who did not know when the trial would be held.
■ Thailand
Muslims frightens workers
A militant demand that the Islamic holy day be observed as a day of prayer brought much of a southern Thai province to a halt yesterday. Rubber tappers and merchants in the relatively poor province of Narathiwat, where 80 percent of the 800,000 people depend on rubber for a living, said they were simply too scared to work after militants issued their first such demand. "All my five Muslim workers dared not go out buying from farmers today," said rubber merchant Uthai Kosiyaporn. "They said their ears could be cut off if they went out today on the grounds that they did not listen to the threat," he said. "They also told me if they work next Friday, then they will be killed, either by beheading or 357," he said.
■ Austria
Python visits pizzeria
Would you like a python on that pizza? Diners at a pizzeria in the western Austrian town of Freidstadt certainly didn't -- they called police in a panic Thursday evening after a 3m-long tiger python was seen slithering across the restaurant floor. A police officer captured the python and stuffed it in a box. Authorities said they were mystified as to how the python ended up in the pizzeria, and were checking with local snake breeders to see if any of their reptiles was missing.
■ United States
Killer schoolboy locked up
A 13-year-old US schoolboy who beat a 15-year-old rival to death with a baseball bat after his team lost a game was on Thursday ordered locked up in a youth detention center until he is 25. The boy was convicted of the second degree murder of Jeremy Rourke, a casual acquaintance who he allegedly struck twice with an aluminum bat in a snack bar line at a baseball field near Los Angeles on April 12. Some team mates said a row broke out after Jeremy allegedly teased the boy about his team's loss at a Pony League baseball game in the town of Palmdale, northeast of Los Angeles.
■ Nigeria
Birds destroy farms
Large swarms of birds have invaded parts of northern Nigeria, destroying grain farms and threatening harvests in a region bordering famine-stricken Niger, officials and farmers have said. More than 8,000 hectares of rice have been destroyed in the three worst-hit local council areas of Maradun, Bakura and Mafara in Zamfara state, Tukur Maru, a senior agriculture ministry official said. Maize, millet and sorghum farms are also under attack from the swarms of tiny birds, known locally as "Quela." The invasions are usually seasonal, but farmers and local officials say the absence of yields in Niger has resulted in abnormally large swarms invading Zamfara state.
■ United Kingdom
Lennon sale rakes it in
The authentic military-band tunic that inspired the album cover for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has sold at auction for £100,000 (US$173,000) -- more than three times its estimated value. The tunic, worn by John Lennon in a Life magazine photoshoot in 1966, had been predicted to sell for £30,000. It went under the hammer on Thursday night at the Cooper Owen auction, at the Hippodrome in London's Leicester Square, in the biggest sale of Lennon memorabilia for 20 years. Lennon's handwritten manuscript of All You Need Is Love, retrieved from the stage floor directly after the Beatles' final live TV performance in 1967, sold for £600,000. A pair of his trademark glasses, which came in a box addressed to "Mr. John Lennon," went for £55,000.
■ United Kingdom
Disease donations double
Britain will double its donation to a global fund that fights diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and it hopes other donors will follow suit, the government said yesterday. International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said the government would increase its aid from ?51 million pounds (US$88.68 million) a year to £100 million pounds for next year and 2007. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) was set up in 2002 to pay for anti-retroviral treatment, HIV testing and training of people to diagnose and treat the diseases.
■ Russia
Drug abuse `catastrophic'
Drug abuse has reached "catastrophic" proportions, posing a threat to national security, a top anti-narcotics police officer was quoted as saying yesterday. Viktor Khvorostyan, head of the Moscow section of the Federal Narcotics Service, said some 4 percent of the population, or about 6 million people, were addicts. "The question is not just in the rise in numbers, it is also in their getting younger. The age of people first trying drugs two or three years ago was 17 years, now it is already 14-year-old kids," he told the Moskovskiye Novosti weekly.
■ United States
Resolution toughened
The US on Thursday formally introduced the final version of a draft Security Council resolution that would toughen UN sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. US Mission spokesman Ben Chang said Washington hopes for a vote Friday on the resolution, which better defines groups and individuals who should fall under the sanctions regime. UN sanctions currently require all 191 UN member states to impose a travel ban and arms embargo against those "associated with" Osama bin Laden's terror network and the former Afghan rulers and to freeze their financial assets.
■ United States
CIA pooh-poohs Iran claim
A month after some former hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran asserted that the president-elect of Iran was among their captors in 1979, government officials say they have turned up no evidence to support that claim. Detailed analyses by the CIA comparing photos from 1979 of an Iranian captor who resembles the president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with recent pictures of Ahmadinejad clearly showed that the photos were of two different men, the officials said. "There were some very serious differences," one official said.
■ United States
Predator database approved
The Senate voted to set up a national sex offender database that would be available on the Internet and to require strict monitoring of high-risk sex offenders for a year after they leave prison. The legislation, sponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, is known as ``Dru's Law'' for Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old University of North Dakota student who was abducted from a shopping mall and killed in 2003. Senators approved the bill by voice vote. An identical version is pending in the House Judiciary Committee. The man charged with abducting Sjodin and killing her, Alfonso Rodriguez, is a sex offender who had been released from prison six months before she disappeared.
■ United States
`Terror cleric' convicted
A Yemeni cleric who bragged about his ties to Osama bin Laden was sentenced Thursday to 75 years in prison -- the maximum -- in a terrorism financing case that was nearly derailed when the government's star witness set himself on fire outside the White House. A jury in March found al-Moayad, 57, guilty of conspiring to support and attempting to support al-Qaeda and the Palestinian extremist group Hamas. He also was convicted of actually supporting Hamas, but acquitted of supporting al-Qaeda. The judge called the secretly recorded conversations "chilling" and drew a connection between al-Moayad's desire to fund terrorism, the Sept. 11 attacks and a suicide bus bombing in Israel that was described during the trial by one of the survivors.
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