■ MALAYSIA
Mother offers to do jail time
A woman wants to join her son in jail to make sure he receives insulin injections three times a day, as well as anti-rejection drugs for a transplanted kidney. "I don't want him to die in jail," a tearful Chew Ten Hee, 67, told the New Straits Times newspaper, adding that her son, Sim Chung Mine, 41, would die if he did not get his medication regularly. "I don't understand how the police can claim he was involved in a robbery when he is so weak, he can't even walk without assistance," she added.
■ CHINA
Man sets himself on fire
A man set himself on fire in front of the office where citizens go to petition for help from the National People's Congress, a witness said yesterday. "A man who looked 40 to 50 set himself on fire in front of the petition office of National People's Congress Building in Beijing on Wednesday," said Li Jian, who witnessed the incident. "He poured gasoline on his body, set himself on fire with a lighter and was shouting: `My son was murdered, I was set up,'" Li said. "The guards ... sent him to hospital. We heard he died."
■ INDONESIA
Floods kill 107
The death toll from devastating floods and landslides on Sulawesi Island has risen to 107, as aid distribution to survivors gained pace yesterday, an official said. Forty-four bodies have been recovered but 63 people remain missing, presumed buried under landslides, said Rustam Pakaya, who heads the health ministry's crisis center in Jakarta. Officials have said at least 45,000 people were affected by the floods, which have hit in an area known for rampant deforestation. Indonesia has been repeatedly afflicted by deadly floods in recent years, with activists warning that logging and a failure to reforest denuded land will continue to cause tragedies.
■ JAPAN
No damages for daughters
A court yesterday refused to grant damages to the daughters of a doomsday cult leader on death row for ordering a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Two of Shoko Asahara's daughters had demanded the state and a psychiatrist who checked him pay a total of ¥50 million (US$420,000), accusing them of deliberately rushing court proceedings. Asahara's death sentence was finalized last September after courts refused to accept an appeal that was submitted late. Tokyo District Court judge Nobuhiro Katada rejected the daughters' arguments, saying: "It cannot be recognized that judges proceeded with an unlawful or unfair intention." Asahara and his sect shocked the world on March 20, 1995, by releasing sarin gas in rush-hour Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.
■ POLAND
Bus driver loses big
A bus driver has been fired for sending 38,000 text messages on his company cellphone in a losing effort to win a contest jackpot, a spokesman said on Thursday. Leszek Wojcik, a bus driver in Slupsk, ran up a tab of some US$34,000 with his text messages while trying to win a US$36,000 SMS contest that ended on June 30, Slupsk city transport spokesman Hubert Boba said. Boba said a city bus drivers' monthly company phone bill is supposed to be limited to US$5. Wojcik sent an average of 1,200 SMS text messages a day, each costing US$0.86, on his work cellphone.
■ LEBANON
Soldiers killed in fighting
Troops were battling Islamist militants house-to-house at a Palestinian refugee camp yesterday as the death toll from 10 weeks of fighting, the country's worst since its civil war, rose to 248. Security sources said two soldiers were killed in overnight exchanges, bringing to 122 the number of soldiers who have died since fighting against Fatah al-Islam militants at Nahr al-Bared camp in the north began on May 20. A military source said on Thursday the army was gradually occupying the last pockets controlled by the al-Qaeda-inspired group in the heart of the camp, once home to 40,000 refugees.
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