■ THAILAND
Thaksin to visit England
A spokesman for deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he would be allowed to leave the country tomorrow for a four-week trip to England despite a pending corruption case against him. A court has granted Thaksin's request to visit England through April 10, his spokesman Pongthep Thepkanjana said. Thaksin requested the England trip so he can attend a Manchester City soccer match, a club he bought while living in exile in England, the spokesman said yesterday. He faces graft charges in connection with a 2003 real estate deal and is scheduled to make his first court appearance today.
■ CHINA
`Ugly Betty' learns Chinese
A TV station says it plans to make a Chinese version of the Colombian series about a plain woman trying to fit in at a fashion company. Hunan Satellite TV said a woman had been cast as the female lead. The air date of the show, called Invincible Ugly Woman in Chinese, has not been decided. Colombia's Betty la fea, or "Ugly Betty," has been dubbed into several languages and has spawned numerous adaptations, including a US version.
■ JAPAN
Sisters hide inheritance
Authorities yesterday arrested two sisters for allegedly hiding some ?5.9 billion (US$58 million) in cardboard boxes to evade tax on their inheritance. It was the largest sum of inheritance money ever concealed from authorities, said the official from the National Tax Agency, which arrested the women in Osaka. Hatsue Shimizu, 64, and Yoshiko Ishii, 55, inherited money after their father, who was in the real estate and financial business, died three years ago. "They concealed most of the money in cash" in a shed attached to Shimizu's house, the Osaka tax official said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
PM snubbed by Tussauds
Madame Tussauds said it was not sure it wanted a waxwork version of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- a statement that delighted opposition lawmakers. A spokesman for the waxwork museum said there were no plans to create a Brown figure and suggested there might not be enough public support to justify it. "We are going to wait for a general election to see what will happen because that's the ultimate test of public opinion," public relations manager Ben Lovett said. Britain's opposition Conservatives seized on the apparent snub to ridicule the prime minister, whose popularity has suffered amid a series of political blunders and funding scandals. "I guess Madame Tussauds don't want to scare their young visitors," Conservative lawmaker Chris Grayling said in a statement.
■ MOZAMBIQUE
Cyclone kills at least seven
A powerful cyclone left a trail of destruction across northern Mozambique, killing at least seven people, officials said on Monday. Cyclone Jokwe -- with winds blowing up to 200kph -- made landfall on Saturday on Mozambique Island and Nampula Province in the north, as well as the central province of Zambezia. North and central areas had been hit by their worst flooding since 2001, when 800 people died. Flood waters were subsiding, but there were now fears the cyclone would bring new devastation. Four people were killed in the coastal town of Quinga and another three died when a mosque collapsed in the town of Namige.
■ IRELAND
Ministers get death threats
Two government ministers and officials at two fertility clinics have received death threats accompanied by shotgun cartridges in the mail. The threats came from a previously unknown group calling itself the Irish Citizens Defence Force. The letters said the group was threatening to kill the ministers and clinics because the government permitted clinics to store unused embryos. Those targeted were the current health minister, Mary Harney; her predecessor Michael Martin, the current minister for trade and employment; a doctor at a south Dublin fertility clinic and the office of a west Dublin fertility clinic.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Site accident injures eight
A building under construction collapsed in Northern Ireland on Monday, injuring eight construction workers, police said. The government Health and Safety Executive opened an investigation into what went wrong at the construction site in central Belfast, where more than 50 workers were building a new headquarters of the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Witnesses said construction workers had begun pouring cement to lay the second floor of the building when it buckled, causing a domino effect that toppled concrete pillars.
■ NIGER
Rebels release hostages
Tuareg rebels released 25 soldiers who were taken hostage nine months ago in the country's troubled northern desert, the government said on Monday. Their release comes just days after Tuareg rebels in Mali, Niger's neighbor, released 22 hostages last week -- the last of about 40 soldiers and government officials taken prisoner in August raids. The hostages were flown to Niamey on a Libyan plane, suggesting the role that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi played in the negotiation.
■ UNITED STATES
WWII body found on glacier
The Department of Defense has identified the remains of a World War II airman found atop a glacier last year in California. The military announced on Monday that the airman was Ernest Munn of St Clairsville, Ohio. Munn went missing in November 1942 when his navigational trainer plane disappeared after taking off from Sacramento. He was 23. In August, backpackers in a remote area of Kings Canyon told rangers they had discovered a body near an undeployed military parachute. Munn is the second of four airmen aboard the missing plane to be identified.
■ UNITED STATES
Pills in fish harmless: firm
A company said pills found inside a Pennsylvania family's fish fillets last month were harmless over-the-counter herbal supplements. Gorton's Inc spokesman Jud Reis said the incident remains an isolated case and federal authorities were investigating. Gorton's said the woman and her children sought medical attention but weren't sickened. As a precaution, the Gloucester, Massachusetts-based company has recalled about 1,000 cases of its 6 Crispy Battered Fish Fillets in 11 states. Reis said the voluntary recall had harmed the company's business, but it would be difficult to say how much.
■ UNITED STATES
`Endeavour' on longest trip
The space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven are on their way to the international space station. The space shuttle blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, early yesterday morning to begin what is expected to be the longest space station mission ever. It is a 16-day voyage to build a two-armed robot and add a float-in closet for a future lab. Five spacewalks are planned. Liftoff came in the middle of the night, and it was the first shuttle launch in darkness since 2006. Japan supplied the laboratory storage compartment that is flying aboard Endeavour. Canada built the robot, named Dextre.
■ UNITED STATES
Tasered man compensated
A motorist who became an Internet celebrity after video of him being stunned with a Taser by a state trooper appeared on YouTube will receive US$40,000 in a lawsuit settlement with the state, the Utah attorney general's office said on Monday. Jared Massey claimed in civil suit filed in January that his civil rights were violated because Utah Highway Patrolman Jon Gardner fired his Taser before stating he was under arrest. The confrontation was widely viewed on the Internet after Massey obtained a copy of a video taken by the cruiser's dashboard camera. The video has been viewed on YouTube at least 1.7 million times.
■ UNITED STATES
Priest loses sacrifice suit
A federal judge on Monday ruled against a Santeria priest who challenged an animal slaughter ban on the grounds that it interfered with his right to perform religious sacrifices in his home. Jose Merced sued the city of Euless, Texas, after city officials denied his request to sacrifice a goat. Merced accused the city of infringing on his religious freedom. The city said that killing goats would violate local laws prohibiting animal cruelty, the keeping of livestock and disposal of animal waste. In his ruling after a one-day trial, US District Judge John McBryde said Euless was protecting public health by banning animal slaughtering within city limits.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
POINTING FINGERS: The two countries have accused each other of firing first, with Bangkok accusing Phnom Penh of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital Thai acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai yesterday warned that cross-border clashes with Cambodia that have uprooted more than 130,000 people “could develop into war,” as the countries traded deadly strikes for a second day. A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, and the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday. A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported that one civilian — a 70-year-old man — had been killed and
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
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