■ Indonesia
Militant leader arrested
Indonesian police arrested and then deported to Singapore an alleged militant leader wanted in the city-state for plotting to crash a plane into its airport several years ago, a police spokesman said yesterday. Slamet bin Kastari -- who served time in an Indonesian jail in 2003 for immigration offenses -- was arrested in east Java province on Jan. 20 because he was found to be using a fake identity card, said Anton Bachrul Alam.
■ Malaysia
Son disowned over loans
A 60-year-old Malaysian widow has disowned one of her three sons to stop illegal money lenders from harassing the family to pay his gambling debts, reports said yesterday. Chong Au Yen was quoted by the New Straits Times as saying that she used up her life savings of 100,000 ringgit (US$26,667) last year to pay off loan sharks after her son, Yap Choon Wai, swore that he would stop gambling. But he broke his promise and started racking up more debts, she said.
■ China
Manhole cover theft drops
Thieves in Beijing stole 4,000 manhole covers and sold them for scrap metal last year, despite government efforts to put a lid on the pilfering, state press said yesterday. The loss was a sharp fall from the 24,000 manhole covers that went missing in 2004, but still left city streets and sidewalks hazardous, Xinhua news agency reported. Thieves can get up to 20 yuan (US$2.40) from scrap dealers for each manhole cover, equivalent to the daily wage of some migrant workers, the report said. Recent laws forbid scrap metal traders from buying the covers, while local utilities are liable for not replacing missing covers.
■ Japan
Language also for the birds
Pet birds can not only imitate sounds, they can distinguish between languages, potentially offering new clues on how the brain recognizes speech, Japanese researchers say. It has already been confirmed that monkeys, mice and other mammals can recognize different languages but this is the first time that birds have been found to possess the ability, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. "If we study common traits in brain structure, this may shed light on the mechanisms of speech recognition," Keio University experimental psychology professor Shigeru Watanabe, who led the research, was quoted as saying.
■ Japan
Burial hidden for pension
A man and his mother were arrested for allegedly burying his father's body in their backyard to keep the old man's pension benefits, police said yesterday. Buntaro Makizuka, 93, died last September, apparently of natural causes, but his death only became known to authorities last week when they searched his home in southwestern Kagawa Prefecture. The son, Fumio Makizuka, 59, and his mother, Fumiko Makizuka, 85, are suspected to have pocketed the more than ?1 million (US$8,440) in pension benefits that arrived after the elderly man's death, he said.They were arrested on charges of abandoning the body.
■ India
Troop cutback planned
New Dehli said yesterday it would withdraw 15,000 troops from the restive state of Jammu and Kashmir, in a move seen as bolstering a slow-moving peace process with Pakistan. A government official said the troop withdrawal would take place in phases, but gave no more details. An estimated half a million soldiers are based in the Himalayan state, many of them fighting Islamic militants opposed to New Delhi's rule there. New Delhi had earlier rejected proposals made by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to demilitarize three Indian Kashmir cities in an attempt to push talks over the disputed Himalayan region forward.
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