■ JAPAN
Probe to make new attempt
A Japanese spacecraft will make another attempt to touch down on an asteroid to collect the first samples from such a celestial body, a task one expert said was like landing a jumbo jet in the Grand Canyon. The Hayabusa probe, which successfully touched down on the rotating Itokawa asteroid last Sunday but failed to collect material, is set to try again shortly past 7am today, Japan's space agency said. If the mission succeeds it would be the first time that material from an asteroid is brought to Earth and could help scientists learn more about how the solar system was created. The spacecraft is also meant to leave an aluminum plate bearing the names of 880,000 people from 149 countries, among them US filmmaker Steven Spielberg and British science fiction author Arthur Clarke, on the asteroid.
■ THAILAND
HIV carrier sneaks in again
A German national at the center of an HIV scare involving hundreds of Thai women was arrested for trying to enter the country for the third time and will be expelled, police said yesterday. Hans-Otto Schiemann, 54, was detained on Thursday night in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum and will be handed over to immigration police. Immigration police in Bangkok confirmed that they will expel Schiemann as soon as possible but declined to say how and when he re-entered Thailand. Schiemann, 54, who claims to be infected with HIV and had unprotected sex with hundreds of Thais, was arrested for a second time in March after re-entering the country despite being blacklisted. Schiemann, a one-legged army veteran, had been deported earlier in the month for overstaying.
■ INDIA
Alcoholic stitches wife's lips
Fed up with his wife's demands that he give up drinking, an alcoholic in India's eastern Jharkhand state sewed her lips together, it was reported on Thursday. According to the IANS news agency, Savitri Devi had asked her husband repeatedly to quit drinking because it left them very little to feed their four children at their home in West Singbhum district. "Whenever I requested him not to drink, he threatened to sew my mouth," she was quoted by the news agency as saying. Some 10 days ago, the couple got into a spat again after the man returned home drunk. The inebriated man attacked his wife and sewed her lips together with a needle and thread. He then escaped to a nearby village.
■ INDIA
Spy drones crashing
India has expressed concern over the high crash rate of its Israeli-made spy drones, taking up the issue with Israeli officials, media reports said on Thursday. Four of the 50 Searcher and Heron unmanned aerial vehicles India purchased from Israel have crashed over the last two years, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee as telling parliament in a written response. According to PTI, Mukherjee said investigations attributed the crashes to systems failure. Indian defense officials have raised the issue with their Israeli counterparts and the manufacturer, Israel Aircraft Industries, has agreed to repair the drones for free, he said.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Farce follows Cleese
In a scene that could have come from a Monty Python sketch, a star of the television series, John Cleese, was shown around the New Zealand parliament on Thursday by a Cabinet minister skulking to avoid tennis balls being tossed around the debating chamber. The British comic -- who is using New Zealand audiences as guinea pigs for a comeback stage show called John Cleese, His Life, Times and Current Medical Problems, which he is contemplating taking onto other international stages -- was unaware of the political drama around him.
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