■ Thailand
Pandas to get pornography
A Thai zoo that has hosted a couple of pandas for four years will play "porn" videos for the male next month to encourage him to breed in captivity, the project manager said yesterday. The pair -- who have been living chastely together at the zoo in the northern city of Chiang Mai since arriving from China in 2003 -- would be separated next month, but stay close enough for occasional glimpses of each other, said panda project chief Prasertsak Buntrakoonpoontawee.
■ Singapore
Poker makes its debut
Singapore will lay its cards on the table today when it hosts an international poker tournament billed by organizers as the first-ever in the city-state. Britain-based Betfair, a betting exchange, says it has teamed up with local operator Capital Events for the six-day Betfair Asian Poker Tour. "This is the largest poker tournament to take place in Asia and the first poker event in Singapore," Betfair's head of poker, Ben Fried, said in a statement. Qualifying starts today. Last year Singapore lifted a four-decade ban on casinos despite strong domestic opposition, saying two planned casino projects would boost the tourism sector.
■ Malaysia
Malay purified on TV
The state-owned television station will drop programs that use a mishmash of Malay and other languages, a newspaper reported yesterday. The Star quoted the information minister, Zainuddin Maidin, as saying that the government-owned station RTM will take "stern measures" to uphold the Malay language's purity in its programming. The government has long promoted a Malay identity.
■ Malaysia
Mahathir moved from ICU
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has been moved out of an intensive care unit as he continues to make a speedy recovery from a heart attack, his son said yesterday. "He has progressed tremendously and has been moved to a normal ward in just two days," Mokhzani Mahathir said. The 81-year-old Mahathir shocked the country after he was taken to the National Heart Institute on Thursday after suffering a mild heart attack. He previously suffered a heart attack in 1989 and had bypass surgery. Mokhzani said Mahathir was already talking and meeting with visitors.
■ Thailand
Policemen killed in south
Suspected Muslim insurgents fatally shot two policemen yesterday in the country's restive south, police said. The attackers fled with the officers' guns after killing them in the Yaha district of Yala Province, said Yala police chief Major General Phaitoon Chuchaiya, who blamed the attack on insurgents. The killings were the latest in three years of almost daily violence that has continued despite efforts by Thailand's post-coup government to halt the deadly insurgency. Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who visited the region on Wednesday, has apologized for the hard-line approach of his predecessor Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in September.
■ Australia
Stiff blamed for speeding
A dead man has been blamed for hundreds of speeding offenses in what police believe is a major fraud designed to help motorists avoid traffic fines. Police in Sydney said 240 people were under investigation over the speeding scam, where hundreds of motorists blamed either the same dead man, or a person living in another state, for driving their cars at the time of the speeding offenses. "These offenses amount to fraud and, if proven, those involved could face stiff penalties including imprisonment," New South Wales Police Superintendent Daryl Donnolly said in a statement yesterday.
■ India
Police kill nine rebels
Police shot dead nine Maoist rebels, including five women, on Friday in a forest gun battle in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, police said. Commandos specially trained to fight the rebel insurgency that affects a large swathe of rural India ambushed the Maoists in Kadapa district, 390km south of Hyderabad, the state capital. Police had been searching for another group of rebels who had killed a local leader of the state's ruling Congress party on Thursday night at the time, top officer Y. Nagi Reddy said. Andhra Pradesh is one of the worst-hit of at least 13 Indian states facing Maoist violence. The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of millions of India's landless laborers and peasants.
■ Singapore
Teen nailed for wireless use
A teenager has been charged with tapping into someone else's wireless Internet connection, a crime that carries a penalty of up to three years in jail, a newspaper reported yesterday. Garyl Tan Jia Luo, 17, is the first person to be charged with this crime under the Computer Misuse Act, the Straits Times reported. The report said Tan is accused of using a laptop computer to gain unauthorized access to a home wireless network on May 13.The newspaper said a neighbor had apparently lodged a complaint against Luo.
■ Sweden
Elk terrorizes pupils
A drunken elk is terrorizing children at a school near Molndal in southern Sweden. "That could be the problem. We could be dealing with a boozy elk," said Jan Caiman, a police officer in Molndal. The elk was probably eating fermented apples in a garden and had become inebriated, Caiman said. Elk can weigh as much as 500kg and personnel at the school described the erratic male as "completely mad." "The children are really scared," a receptionist at the school said. Caiman said police had contacted hunters and that if the elk did not calm down, it could be shot.
■ Iran
Complaint filed on Israel
Iran has complained to the UN over a "series of threats" by Israel after an Israeli official refused to rule out a military strike against the Islamic republic, it was reported yesterday. Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the UN, submitted the complaint to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the UN Security Council on Friday following the comments by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. "The letter, underlining threats from Sneh and other Israeli officials, regards these statements as illegal, ridiculous and a sign of the Zionist regime's criminal policies and terrorist intentions," the report said.
■ United Kingdom
Manners make millionaires
For international executives navigating the minefield of corporate politics, help is at hand in Scotland -- impeccable British manners can clinch that big deal. So says etiquette expert Diana Mather who on Friday launched a weekend house party at a Scottish castle for businessmen, academics and diplomats eager to prove the 14th century proverb "Manners Maketh Man." As well as traditional country house pursuits such as clay pigeon shooting, bridge and formal Scottish dancing, participants will be tutored in the finer arts of charm and proper etiquette -- all in the name of good business.
■ Spain
Town stops signpost sexism
The town council of Fuenlabrada south of Madrid has vowed to banish sexism from street signage by demanding that half of all road signs and traffic lights show female figures with skirts and ponytails. The council will replace old and damaged road signs and traffic lights with new stock within a year. "In this way the sexism, which until now has seen only masculine figures appear in traffic signals, will be brought to an end," the council said in a statement. The statement, which said it would ask manufacturers to incorporate female figures in their signs, said the new policy would not cost taxpayers an extra cent.
■ Russia
Pasternak grave desecrated
Unknown vandals have desecrated the grave of dissident Russian poet Boris Pasternak, whose novel Doctor Zhivago won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Russian television channels said on Friday. The modest tombstone, at a cemetery in the famed writers' retreat of Peredelkino outside Moscow, was covered with soot after vandals put wreathes around it and set them on fire on Thursday night, TV reports said.
■ United States
Oscar-winning star dies
Oscar-winning actor Jack Palance, one of Hollywood's best-known screen villains who personified evil as a cold-blooded gunslinger in the classic western Shane, died on Friday at the age of 87, his spokesman said. Palance, who later won an Oscar for the comedy City Slickers and famously brought down the house by performing one-armed push-ups on the stage, died of natural causes, spokesman Dick Guttman said.
■ Canada
World title up for grabs
Top players from around the globe will gather in Toronto this weekend to compete for a C$10,000 (US$8,840) prize and the title of world rock, paper and scissors champion. More than 500 contestants are expected to attend. Tournament organizer Graham Walker said players will have to steel themselves against psychological pressure as players typically form teams to rally each other. "The team will surround the arena, provide moral support and usually try to intimidate the opponent," said Walker.
■ United States
Hospital under scrutiny
Federal investigators are looking into patient care at the hospital made famous in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where there have been reports of abuse, short staffing and overcrowding. The Oregon State Hospital is one of the oldest and most dilapidated state mental institutions in the nation. The movie was filmed there in 1975. The Justice Department alerted Governor Ted Kulongoski in June that it would investigate whether patients' constitutional rights were violated. Reports of abuse and other problems have led lawmakers to reassess the hospital's future. Lawmakers have proposed replacing it with two separate hospitals and two residential facilities at an estimated cost of at least US$324 million.
■ United States
Two die in derailment
The bodies of two workers were recovered from the wreckage of a derailed maintenance train and investigators said the dead crew members had tried to stop the locomotive with emergency brakes as it barreled down a slope in California. Survivors told authorities that the men who died had been working together to apply the brakes when the train ran off the tracks in a ravine about 100km east of Sacramento. The emergency brake slowed the locomotive only slightly before the train's supervisor -- in a final, desperate move -- threw it into reverse, said Dave Watson, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. The train kept rolling and gathering speed, eventually hitting a curve at about 80 kph.
■ Mexico
Newspaper editor slain
A newspaper editor was found dead in the Pacific resort city of Zihuatanejo, a day after running stories about organized crime and city government corruption. Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of El Despertar de la Costa, was found on Friday with his hands tied behind his back, in a room of a motel, Zihuatanejo police officials said. He was lying on a bed, covered only with a sheet, and investigators found three puncture marks on his body, one in his right hand and two others in a forearm. The cause of death was a heart attack, forensic investigators said. Tamayo Hernandez had published a story on Thursday alleging that city officials had given illegal discounts on water services to individuals and businesses. Thursday's edition also contained stories on organized crime.
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