■ AUSTRALIA
Aussies spied on US
The nation spied on its ally the US in the 1980s and stole top-secret radar codes for its fighter jets, former defense minister Kim Beazley said in parliament yesterday. Beazley said Australia felt compelled to spy when he was defense minister because Washington refused to share the codes its F/A-18 fighters needed to identify potentially hostile aircraft. In his farewell speech to parliament before retiring, Beazley said he went "up hill and down dale" in Washington trying without success to persuade top US defense officials to hand over the codes. "In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves and we got another radar that could identify them [enemy planes]," Beazley said.
■ THAILAND
Man shoots noisy neighbors
A man angry at his noisy neighbors shot three of them dead before gunning down his former mother-in-law, police said yesterday. They said Chakrit Siwapornrangsan, a 40-year-old motorcycle repairman, took out the gun because of the noise and drinking of neighbors in Chantaburi Province, 245km from Bangkok. He then went looking for his former wife and when her parents tried to stop him, gunned down his former mother-in-law, local television reported. Police said the suspect took another man hostage but surrendered after his sister and a police friend negotiated with him. "He is under serious stress that triggered the quarrel with his neighbours," deputy provincial police commander Colonel Aungkool Poolcharoen said.
■ INDIA
Crowd greets astronaut
Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who made it to the record books in June for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, arrived to a hero's welcome yesterday, witnesses said. Williams, 42, from the western state of Gujarat, was whisked away by relatives and security personnel from the airport in Ahmedabad soon after her arrival. The astronaut, on her first visit to India in about a decade, looked slightly bemused as a large crowd of cheering fans, well-wishers and photographers blocked the main exit of the airport.
■ AUSTRALIA
Lesbians sue over twins
A lesbian couple are suing their doctor after they had twin girls from an in vitro fertilization procedure when they only wanted one child. The two women are seeking more than A$400,000 (US$340,000) in damages to help pay for the cost of raising the second child, including private school fees, saying they had made it clear to their doctor that they only wanted one baby. The twins are now three years old and the civil case has prompted debate about the value of children and the role of parents. The court has ordered a gag on the identity of the women.
■ MYANMAR
Monks march again
Almost 1,000 Buddhist monks wound up a march yesterday through the streets of the nation's biggest city, protected by a human chain of onlookers as they kept alive the most sustained and defiant protests against the military government in at least a decade. The monks, who attracted several thousand followers as they marched through some of Yangon's main thoroughfares, said they would protest again on the next Buddhist holy day. Having gathered at the golden hilltop Shwedagon pagoda, the country's most revered shrine, the monks marched to Sule pagoda in downtown Yangon and rallied briefly outside the US embassy. It was the third straight day the monks have marched in Yangon.
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