■ INDONESIA
McDonald's bomber escapes
Police yesterday hunted for an Islamic militant who escaped from a prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence for transporting explosives used in a 2002 attack on a McDonald's restaurant that killed three people, officials said. Wirahadi, who goes by one name, was among 17 men convicted for involvement in the blast in South Sulawesi Province. Wirahadi, 26, broke out of Makassar prison on South Sulawesi on Sunday with an accomplice, using a rope to scale a 5m high barbed-wire wall, provincial prison chief Sumarni Alam said.
■ PHILIPPINES
Bank robbers die in shootout
Five suspected bank robbers, including a former policeman, were killed in a shootout with police in Manila yesterday, an official said. They opened fire from a van with stolen license plates after refusing to stop at a police checkpoint in northern Manila, Superintendent Edwin Butacan said. In the ensuing shootout five suspects were killed and a sixth was taken to hospital with unspecified injuries, Butacan said.
■ INDONESIA
Earthquake sparks fires
A strong earthquake in eastern Indonesia triggered electrical short circuits and toppled stoves, setting more than 20 homes on fire, officials said yesterday. The power of the temblor also sent coastal residents fleeing inland, but a feared tsunami never came. The 5.8-magnitude quake was centered 10km beneath the ocean floor and 15km north of Manokwari city in Papua Province, the US Geological Survey said. It struck at 12:12pm, as many people were preparing lunch. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Many residents living along the coast fled to high ground, but the quake was not strong enough to spawn a tsunami, police said.
■ CHINA
Buns don't have to be perfect
Thousands of Chinese snack vendors are happily digesting news that China's ubiquitous steamed bun, or mantou, does not have to be perfectly round. China has battled to boost food quality and standards in the wake of a string of food safety scandals, but media reports of a new standard for mantou, a cheap wheat-based snack sold on street corners, outraged Internet users and academics. China's quality watchdog denied that standards recommending a "perfect shape" for mantou held the force of law. "There are no specific regulations on the shape of wheat-flour mantou in the standard," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.
■ MALAYSIA
Bookies refuse sex tape bets
Illegal betting syndicates in a northern state have refused bets on the number of the hotel room where an ex-government minister was allegedly filmed having sex, the New Straits Times said on Monday. Bookies in Perak declared the number 1301 off-limits in a numbers game, disappointing punters who had hoped to make a killing on the room where former health minister Chua Soi Lek was purported to have been taped engaging in sexual acts with an unidentified woman. Chua resigned after the video was widely circulated in the southern state of Johor. "We are not taking any more chances this time around," the paper quoted an unidentified source as saying. "The last time we accepted bets after a particular set of numbers was published on the front page of a Chinese daily, we were badly hit and lost several million ringgit.
■ EGYPT
Policemen jailed for abuse
A court in Alexandria has jailed a police officer for five years and two policemen for a year each for humiliating a detainee by forcing him to wear a woman's nightdress, a judicial source said on Sunday. The court on Saturday sentenced Yusri Ahmed Eissa to five years and two of his deputies to a year each for "degrading" local car park attendant Ibrahim Abbas in April 2006, the source said. Abbas, who had been detained for alleged theft, was beaten with batons in the police station and then forced to wear a woman's nightdress and walk down a street, the source said.
■ IRAN
Criminals lose hands, feet
Five criminals convicted of armed robbery and hostage-taking had their right hands and left feet amputated, the student ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. The amputations, a legally permissible but rarely used punishment in Iran, was carried out in the presence of doctors in the southeastern city of Zahedan. The men were found guilty of "acting against God" and "corruption upon this Earth" for taking part in the robberies and taking hostages. The report did not say whether the punishment was carried out in prison or in public.
■ UNITED STATES
`Ninja Bandit' strikes again?
The costumed crook known as the "Ninja Bandit" may have struck again in New York City, police said. A home burglary this week seems to fit the pattern of 18 previous heists attributed to the black-clad, masked thief since May, police saud. The "Ninja Bandit" was so named after an intruder wielded a set of nunchucks when he scuffled with a homeowner in his kitchen in September. Other residents have said they, too, have encountered the burglar, but the suspect has managed to escape each time. The latest incident happened between Wednesday and Friday at a home in the Castleton Corners neighborhood of Staten Island. News reports said the thief entered the home through a sliding door and left with thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.
■ AUSTRIA
Avalanches leave five dead
Avalanches killed five people over the weekend, with the latest victim buried on Sunday by a thick mass of snow while skiing in the northern Pongau region. The 33-year-old Italian woman, who was not identified by name, was dug out by her skiing partner within minutes of the avalanche, but she was already dead, the Austria Press Agency said, citing Alpine rescue officials. The two had been skiing in the northern Alps, in the Pongau region of Salzburg Province. The other four victims were killed on Saturday in other skiing regions in Austria.
■ FRANCE
Driving on the wrong side
A "visibly drunk" motorist was caught driving for up to 30km on the wrong side of the Paris ring-road, police said on Sunday. In a "manifestly inebriated state," a 21-year-old male spent the early hours of Sunday in a cell after a preliminary hearing set a court date for May, police said. The driver's Peugot 206 was spotted by police at near Porte de Clichy, one of dozens of gateways into the city served by the ring-road. The police car was on the inner ring-road and noticed the driver traveling at roughly the same speed on the outer portion, and thus in the wrong direction. The man turned on to the A1 motorway, heading north, again on the wrong side of the road. He was finally stopped by traffic cops near the Stade de France stadium.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of